I have been teaching myself how to do book layout with Adobe InDesign
, which is supposed to be a great way to lay out a quality hardcopy of your book. That appears to be true, but it’s not the easiest thing to master. I have been able to get some results, but it will require me to split my one MS Word doc up into 50 separate files (one for each chapter), and apply styles to the text, etc. In short, it’s a lot of work. But it sure looks nice, so far. I’ll go into a little of that in another post.
, which is supposed to be a great way to lay out a quality hardcopy of your book. That appears to be true, but it’s not the easiest thing to master. I have been able to get some results, but it will require me to split my one MS Word doc up into 50 separate files (one for each chapter), and apply styles to the text, etc. In short, it’s a lot of work. But it sure looks nice, so far. I’ll go into a little of that in another post.What looms in the back of my mind is, “why bother to do a hardcopy edition?” especially when I read this morning (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/technology/20kindle.html?_r=1&hpw) how Amazon’s e-book sales had outstripped hardback sales (143 sales of Kindle 
for every 100 hardbacks). We all know that is where everything is going, eventually. And with the present Kindle, there is no need for the fancy formatting, because it disregards that.
for every 100 hardbacks). We all know that is where everything is going, eventually. And with the present Kindle, there is no need for the fancy formatting, because it disregards that.Here are a few reasons:
- I’ve been doing a lot of business travel lately, and spending a lot of time hunkered down in waiting areas and sitting on the tarmac with fellow conscripts, I mean travelers. And most people who are reading are clutching a paperback book. I have seen maybe 2 Kindles in 20 flights. I looked about on one flight and every person in the seats around me were reading a paperback (THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
is the current fave).
- Hardback books are grossly overpriced. Spend $26 for a novel? Not in this family.
- Kindle sales may be outstripping bloated hardback book sales, but I bet paperbacks are still kicking the Kindle’s shiny little butt.
- I am not knocking the Kindle, in fact I plan on reaching a wider audience than with any hard copy. But I still want to have a physical copy in my hands, something for someone to stumble across in a few decades, and say, “hmm, what’s this?”
- I also know that later editions of the e-books will be able to support proper book formatting, so learning this now will give me a jump on the change-over. I love learning this sort of thing, and it keeps me out of trouble. So far…
Mark E. Poole
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