Beyond the “Book Basics” Episode
In a comment about my last episode on the Book palette, Alexandre asked:
“…when you did that monstrous job with the two-hundred-and-something-page magazine, did you use the book feature?”
My response was about three times longer than is allowed for comments (I do go on!), so I thought it warranted a post of its own. The “monstrous job” in question was a 256-pages magazine I did in July and talked about in Part 1 and Part 2 of my InDesign Inventory episode. It’s a relevant question to the episode I just finished, as well as to the 528-page issue I’m just now starting (no…that is not a typo).
In fact, I don’t actually do any issue (large or small) of my magazine using the Book palette. While it is possible, there are a number of factors that make me choose not to.
First…not every page of the magazine is an InDesign document. Many of them are full-page advertisements, which are PDF files. The book palette only allows InDesign documents to be contained within it. Of course, I could place those PDFs in an InDesign file and add them to the book that way, but that’s another step added to the process, and I look to reduce extra steps wherever possible.
Second, but somewhat related, most of the left-hand pages in my layouts are held for ads, too. I usually have an opening spread for a magazine feature, but it is typically folllowed by single left-hand pages in order to accommodate advertising on the right-hand page. I don’t really want those ads in my layout as I’m working. It’s a distraction…and if it’s a large PDF, it can slow me down a lot. I prefer to just keep a blank page to the right of my editorial content during the design process.
Third, there are often many versions of a given layout as we go through the design and production cycle. Often, an editor will take a file home to work on it…or I will. And to help us keep track of the different versions, we give them different names. This reduces the “automation” usefulness of the Book palette, since we’d have to keep adding and dropping those revised documents from it…a task that would typically fall on me (no thank you!).
Fourth, the potential for unwanted synchronization problems. For instance, I have several types of bulleted list styles used throughout my magazine. For most columns and departments, they’re used 100% consistently. But for feature stories, I will modify those styles (rather than create new ones from scratch) to make them fit the more unique and free-form design approach feature stories allow. But I don’t re-name them (the names help me remember the structure of the style and its nested styles), so if I synchronized my whole magazine with the book palette, my modified styles would revert to whatever the Style Source document’s settings are. To be perfectly honest, sometimes I just have to cheat and modify styles elsewhere in the magazine, too, in order to fit copy or deal with a non-standard bit of information. The Book palette’s strict synchronization would keep me “too honest.”
And, finally…the speed factor. Changes happen fast — and there are many last-minute ones — in a magazine workflow. Not tying all of our documents to a Book, or needing to rely on one person to re-synchronize elements regularly actually makes us able to work faster and be more flexible.
That being said, I have sometimes used the Book palette purely as a document manager, to give me easy, one-click access to a collection of InDesign files I know I’ll be working on a lot. When I do this, I turn off Auto Pagination and make sure that I never choose Repaginate, which would introduce problems with my individual documents. Similarly, when doing this, I also uncheck everything in the Synchronize Options dialog box, and never choose Synchronize Book at any time.
Another benefit of using the Book palette this way is that you can see when someone else has the file open, or if it’s been modified outside of the book, or which documents I have open myself at any given time. Status icons next to the file names indicate this, depending on the situation.
I was actually going to mention a lot of this in one of the next two parts of the series…but since Alexandre asked, now the info is “out there” ahead of schedule.
Wow, this is what one would call a reply!
I imagined the answer would be “no”, but I never realized there would be so many reasons why.
Mr. Murphy,
I really enjoyed this podcast, and all the others before. Your unique explanations, examples and approach are refresing and insightful. You are certainly “holding it down” and showcasing InDesign exceedingly well.
I have learned plenty. Thank you and keep up the good work!
Best,
Raymond
Thanks for the very professional podcasts. They are really helpful and your style is superb. I just wish they were weekly.
I can relate. Just finished a book project that got too, too, awkward as a book so I shifted to a single file. Neither was completely satisfactory, but the single file version did make handling AAs a bit faster. The document management idea is brilliantly simple, though. I have several projects where it will surely speed up the workflow.
A great topic - long documents - and as always very clearly presented.
Some questions - How do you get the pdf full page ads into your print flow? They do need folios correct? And those distracting left hand page ads you leave out must find there way to the printer too. Do you have someone ‘paginate for you’ or do you do it later?
Thanks
Your videocast was really helpful. Thanks.
I’m laying out a book of short stories. The choice to use an InDesign book file helps because my folio on recto pages changes to match the title of the current story.
Problem: I don’t want the introductory section (which I have saved as one .indd file) to be numbered automatically. I’d like this section’s pages to have lower-case roman numeral numbering or no numbering at all. Then I would like to start automatic page numbering (with regular numerals) at the first page of the first short story (which is the first page of the SECOND .indd document in the book palette).
Is there anyway to do this really efficiently?
Thanks for your help,
Mike
Neil –
The PDF full-page ads don’t require any folios (I don’t know of any magazine that puts folios on ads), so that makes it easier. In my workflow, the filename for each page (all PDFs) is used to assemble the book at the printer. All pages start with the page number in three-digit format (001, 020, 119).
As for the “distracting left-hand pages” — they’re typically right-hand pages (where advertisers want to be seen), and the just don’t get output as PDFs when we’re ready to go to print.
Pagination is built into the process using auto page numbering in each InDesign file, and Numbering and Section Options to start each file’s page number appropriately. This is done as soon as the pagination decisions for a given issue are “locked down.”
Mike –
When Part 2 of this topic is posted in the next few days, you’ll see me set up my Table of Contents exactly as you describe, with lower-case roman numerals. This is easy to set up with Numbering & Section Options in both your introductory section (where you set the numbering style and tell InDesign what number to start with), and the first short story document (where you set it to start at page number 1, using normal numbers). Every file that follows that first story in your book will continue with the numbering convention and information from the previous document.
There are so many considerations that go into creating a large book. As our books are generally around 300 pages, I prefer to keep them in 3 or less sections (generally the “book” section and the “appendix” section). I have discovered that if there are too many files created, future editing (which we do in abundance here) is much more difficult. It is SO very important, when first creating a document, to decide how may parts you want your document to be in for editing, for distribution of labor, for printing, etc.
Excellent point, Melissa. Time spent using your brain before diving into the software is the best first step toward efficiency in any project.
i dont know if this is all that relevant to the ongoing discussion, but it sparked my question: Whats the easiest way to make single pages (right or left) in a document set up with facing pages? Having to change every numbering option manually is too tedious. Example: an article with 2 spreads, 4 single lefts, and 1 single right.
Taylor, this post about single side and facing pages isn’t exactly what you’re asking for, but might it help?
Taylor, it sounds like you’re trying to set up a magazine layout which will be interrupted throughout by full-page ads. By setting up an InDesign file with only the pages that will contain the article, you’ll have no choice but to have each page after a full-page ad spot use a different section numbering start (Layout –> Numbering & Section Options). That will start the numbering again from that point.
I agree that this is cumbersome. To avoid that, I actually put blank right- or left-hand pages into my documents to maintain my page numbering throughout the document. Since I output my jobs as single-page PDFs, I just skip the blank pages when I export the docment.
Ok, can you tell me if you see any big problems with this idea:
Openthe document and create a few spreads. Turn off allow pages to shuffle. delete the pages you dont want. (all of your other pages should stay where they are, as singles, without jumping up to the spread above). Turn shuffle back on, and tell it to keep pages where they are. ?
Ok. scratch that. I just tried something else, but may be opening a bigger can of worms. In documents that are of a manageable size, is there a reason shuffle really needs to be turned on?
with that said, with shuffle off - if each page is treated as a section start, an arrow appears above it that allows you to move the page from left to right freely. Now, if only there were an easy way to make each page automatically act as its own section.. without manually adjusting the options for each one.
..any ideas?
After looking through my third party manual for InDesign CS2 as well as a few google searches I admit there is something I want to do in InDesign that appears to be impossible.
How do I get the page numbers in the pages palette to match the page numbers used instead of the number of pages in the document?
LT, you should be able to do this with the Page Numbering pop-up menu in the General pane of the Preferences dialog box.