December 22 2009 • 2:30 PM
By:
David Blatner
This Week in InDesign Articles, Number 17
Well, we successfully avoided singing our eyebrows during Chanukah, the solstice has thankfully passed, and now it’s the week of Christmas! So consider this a happy holidays list for you! I have a browser-full of great stuff you should see — some focused on InDesign, some on publishing in general. I think you’ll like it!
- If you can speak Dutch, you don’t want to miss this new InDesign e-mag, courtesy of the Netherlands ID user group! (You must sign up as a member to even see the download link.)
- Into PDF/A? Or fearful of it? Better read through this list of Top 10 Myths about this archival format.
- There is an ongoing question about DRM (digital rights management) and ebooks. David Pogue weighs in with some thoughts about it at the NY Times. I have very mixed feelings about this. Adam Engst reports that the Take Control eBooks have never used DRM and they are doing just fine, thank you. We are not currently implementing any protections with our eBooks. What do you think? Is that a good idea or a bad idea? I haven’t listed to this MacJury podcast about ebooks yet, but I like their panel and I’m sure it’ll be interesting.
- Here’s a fun excerpt with fun effects tricks from InDesign Magazine.
- Here’s a good website discussing how to design and build books (especially for the self-publisher).
- I love this Adobe Commando team movie at youtube. In my opinion, InDesign ought to have been one of the primary team members, but at least our little pink winged friend shows up to help later.
- Everyone uses black… but which black?! Check out this great article by Andrew Kelsall about the use and misuse of Black.
- If you use Page Control from DTP Tools (which lets you make different-sized pages within the same InDesign document), you should definitely check out these cools (free) scripts that help you set up great documents. If you don’t use Page Control, check it out anyway, as the scripts make a valuable tool even more valuable.
- Michael Murphy has created another great InDesigner videocast, this time on Acrobat-friendly form design. Check it out!
- Do you use Acrobat? If so, check out this list of great upcoming free webinars all about PDF and Acrobat.
- This is a fascinating workflow: Exporting XML from Excel, using XSL to convert to CALS, then importing into InDesign. I don’t need to do it, but you might!
Whew! That’s a lot. Let me know (below) if you find any of these links particularly useful.
In the meantime, Happy InDesigning!
Thanks for linking to my Article -I hope it can help someone
Wow
These are some awesome articles… I recently subscribed to your rss feeds, and gush I don’t regret it! Keep sharing articles like these! I’m a designer myself, and I just love reading good articles like these.. so please keep sharing them with us!
DRM and other technical forms of copy protection do little to deter piracy — one cracked copy on the internet multiplies quickly — but can easily be a pain for people who buy the book/software/etc, as it often locks you into specific reading software/hardware.
David Pogue may be terrified by piracy, but I think being terrified of alienating existing customers and obscurity are far more realistic fears for most authors and publishers. Pogue may well be enough of a name that those fears are lesser in his mind, but I think that’s a flawed perception. Piracy has existed for a long time and will continue to exist. It is a social problem, not a technical one, and no technical means can ever ’solve’ it.
If Pogue is thrilled about music publishers selling unrestricted files … I think he should also be thrilled about publishers doing the same. I know that I am, both as a customer and as a publisher!
My day job [Catalyst Game Labs, a publisher of analog games such as roleplaying games, card games, etc] published a new 400-page full-color RPG this year; $50 in print, $15 to buy the PDF, but we licensed it under a Creative Commons license that allowed free redistribution, and we seeded it ourselves to major bittorrent trackers. Not only did we get “props” from those who saw us as forward thinking, but sales of the PDF alone hit our 1-year goal in less than 2 months, and many of those sales were from people who had grabbed the free PDF and then ordered a print+PDF bundle from us — paying for not only the print book, but the PDF they already had a legit and free copy of! Initial print sales are strong, also.
I believe that treating the customer and potential customer well will reward publishers, and treating them all as potential thieves does far more harm than good.
David/Anne Marie,
Thanks so much for linking to TheBookDesigner.com. I’ve really enjoyed your InDesign tutorials, especially the videos. Great stuff. I’ll ping you back next week, when I’m releasing an InDesign-specific PDF report for self-publishers who work with Lightning Source. Best.
I don’t know if this has been published here, but I found this article, (“(Almost) Everything I Know About Magazine Design – part 3″, published last week), very interesting. If I recall corectly, I learned about the first part of the series here, but I could very well be wrong.
Thanks for mentioning the new Dutch InDesign e-mag!
Thanks for the link, guys. I’ve never had that many views til now. You really made my day.
Just released the PDF I referenced in my comments above. If anyone needs a reliable step-by-step guide to PDF creation for Lightning Source print-on-demand book printing, you can get it free (no signup required) by clicking the link. Thanks again!