I’ve been seeing a lot of the books self-publishers are producing on their own. Most of these books are “typeset” with Microsoft Word or another word processing program.
The problem is that these programs are the direct descendents of typewriters, not typesetting systems. They were originally meant to mimic the “look and feel” of the familiar typewriter. This was partly intended to calm the anxieties of the millions of secretaries and assistants who were being asked to switch to computers.
In fact, the original word processors typed with mono-spaced fonts—where each letter or number or punctuation takes up exactly the same amount of space—just like on a typewriter.
In contrast, today’s typesetting programs are descendants of early professional-level computerized typesetting systems that had taken over from film-based typesetting machines. Typesetting was an expensive business, and the people who bought type for books and magazines were skilled professionals who expected a quality product.
No, It’s Not The Same
I thought it would be interesting to look at a direct, head-to-head comparison. Here’s what I did.
- Located some text and placed it in a Microsoft Word document.
- Formatted the document to the size of a typical softcover book, 5-1/2″ x 8-1/2″ and set the margins all around at 1″.
- Set the text to Minion Pro, 11 point with exactly 15 points between lines.
- Turned on hyphenation, set the first line in each paragraph to indent 1/4″ and set the paragraph to justified copy.
I saved the resulting page as a PDF file so I could export it to a JPEG.
Let’s Try InDesign
Next I revved up Adobe InDesign. This program is the inheritor of decades of typesetting expertise and programming. It has remarkable flexibility and amazing precision in its controls. It’s not cheap, but it’s designed as a tool for professionals, and in that context it’s actually a bargain. Here’s what I did.
- Grabbed a template for a 5-1/5″ x 8-1/2″ book
- Set up a text frame and imported the file
- Arranged my page and type specs to match the Word file
- Exported the page as a JPEG.
I think it’s really interesting to compare these two pages. Here they are:
Word (left) and InDesign (right). Click to enlarge
Almost every line of the Word version shows why it’s not a typesetting program. For a clear example, look at the third paragraph down. Gangly lines of words with large spaces, barely holding together. Compare it to the density and even “color” of the InDesign page. It’s a startling difference, at least to me.
Keep in mind that these pages are the result of raw text “dumps.” Although Word has almost no spacing, kerning or tracking controls, InDesign has many. I could start to manipulate this InDesign page to get exactly the look and feel I’m looking for. Incremental, almost infinitesimal changes will alter the overall tone of the page, and make it a more or less enjoyable reading experience.
And also keep in mind that the adjustments a designer might make for this layout in this case, with this specific typeface, are not necessarily the same ones she would make with another layout or even just another typeface, even of the same size and spacing.
So not only is the raw output of the InDesign typesetting algorithms far superior to anything Word can generate, in the hands of a competent designer, it will be that much better. Not only that, but I’ve used a premium font, one built for typesetting, for these samples. Most DIY self-publishers are using the fonts that came with their system.
Does This Story Have a Moral?
The explosion of interest in self-publishing has lead to an unprecedented number of books being produced on word processors. If you want your book to look the best it can, if you want a book that looks like a book and not like the report you did for English Composition, it’s good to know the difference. Sure, you can “typeset” your book on a typewriter, but then again, why would you want to?
I look forward to your comments.
Takeaway: Word processors are descended from typewriters. If it’s typesetting you are looking for, they are not the right tool.
Image: Stock.xchng / Kriss Szkurlatowski
{ 32 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes, but…
InDesign costs £699 in the UK (or the same in dollars in the US — the logic of which is a whole other conversation).
That’s around two months’ rent. And here lies the difference between DIY and a publishing business: DIY is about accessibility — everyone has the right to share their ideas, and publishing a book can be done a lot more easily and cheaply than most people realise, especially when most folks are still under the impression that they have to be discovered, chosen, or otherwise given permission to do it. But that price is just not accessible to a lot of potential indie publishers.
It’s great that there are type purists carrying the torch in a digital age, reminding us of important distinctions like “Comic Sans is evil masquerading as friendliness!” (Ugh! Make it go away!) But most people would never be able to see what you see when you look at those two pages. They might have an unconscious sense that something is more “right” about a properly typeset page, but I’m happy to produce my books in Apple’s Pages, which costs £71 (in a suite of other programs), and people seem to like the books I produce. And it’s a helluva lot easier to work with.
I would also rather buy what I can afford than steal the overpriced software, which is what many independent people end up doing, and there’s no pride in that (and potentially a lot of hassle, technically and legally).
That said, I have a legitimate copy of QuarkXPress a client gave me (so I could edit copy in place), and I just won’t use the program if given a choice. These apps are meant to output to large-run printing presses, and I’ve had nothing but trouble trying to use them with home inkjet and laser printers.
So, as someone who’s encouraging writers to do their own thing now, I appreciate the importance of good type design, but I wouldn’t want to start putting roadblocks back in place, saying that someone shouldn’t produce a book until they can attain all the things a corporate publisher uses.
If someone really, really cares about these things, but doesn’t want to take on a whole new education or take out a loan, they should just hire you to do it for them!
The comparison pages say it all. Thanks for making this point really clear for me. I’ll never use Microsoft for my DIY book (whenever that happens).
Also, it’s possible to get InDesign for much less. When I took a basic web design course at Parson’s, being at the school gave us access to a discount price on Adobe products. I bought the full suite of InDesign, PhotoShop, etc. ALL for under $300. The catch was that if you pay full price, you can buy software updates. I can’t do that. But I don’t think it really matters.
I’m told that if you cruise around online, you can find other ways to get Adobe at a discount; you don’t necessarily have to be connected to a college as a student. But it helps!
Well done, Joel.
I am always amused at the self-publishers who insist that their only options are either to steal the proper software or do it with Word (which also costs money, by the way — or do they steal that, too?).
There are open source alternatives to InDesign if somebody truly can’t (or won’t) fork over the money for ID — TeX is one. Of course, it is not WYSIWYG and does have a significant learning curve for those not familiar with non-WYSIWYG software. I prefer to use ID, but there are options. Scribus supposedly can do a reasonable job, too, but that statement is based on heresay only.
Unfortunately, for most self-publishers even having the right software does not result in a professionally typeset book anymore than having a fully equipped workshop makes one an accomplished carpenter. You will have to study and learn constantly…and, yes, that means you should buy (or at least borrow) and read some of the many good books on the somewhat esoteric art and craft of typesetting and book design (which are really two different things).
Another alternative, of course, is to hire a professional to do the job!
A poorly typeset book often annoys the reader and reduces their overall reading enjoyment, even though they rarely are able to identify why.
As long as the person doing the interior design knows what they’re doing, a high-level word processing program is perfectly good for the purpose. Why? Because they are no longer simply word processing programs but facets of desktop publishing systems. In other words, the basis for comparison you’ve applied is incomplete.
Is InDesign the best choice for a professional designer? Probably. For one thing, it automates many of the processes one has to do by hand using a “word processor.” But this nonsense that one has to either spend multiple hundreds of dollars or learn to use a program like TeX, which is only comprehensible to geeks and programmers strikes me as coming from exactly the same place as all the “no POD authors” rules the writers’ organizations propagate–trying to raise the barricades lest the hoi-polloi get into the castle.
When I looked at the examples, my only response was that the spacing on the Word version was nasty. However, I read on to discover all the other problems I had inferred would be there based on the previous discussion. I learned that the problem with the Word versions was…that the spacing was nasty.
A problem easily corrected, even using Word AS LONG AS THE PERSON DOING THE DESIGN KNOWS IT NEEDS TO BE DONE.
In other words, the main problem with DIY layouts is that 90% of the people doing them don’t know squat about doing layouts. Buying an expensive piece of software isn’t going to fix that, and they’ll have an even sharper learning curve to become proficient in that software.
As for “using the fonts that come with the software,” my software (I don’t use Word) came with Bodoni, Georgia, Baskerville and several other excellent fonts, all of which have been recommended to me for use by professional designers. Again, the issue isn’t lack of proper tools but lack of the skills to use them properly.
Are there things I can’t do using my particular word processor I wish I had available. Yes, if only because I suspect they would save me time and/or let me do things I just can’t with the less technical program. Eventually, I may even break down and buy InDesign when I know I’ll have time to use it correctly. At the moment, however, I have no quarrel with the results I get, and neither do readers, apparently.
I agree with Elizabeth here. I spent a significant amount of time in the desktop publishing end of things back in the late 90′s and the trick with word processing programs is to know their quirks and know how to manipulate the software in order to get the most out of it. Perfection is a subjective term here because we are talking about aesthetics.
I read on average 15-20 self-published books a year, some have terrible formatting, but most do not, and most are produced using Word or some other program of the like. Proper use of hyphentation can fix a lot of perceived issues with line spacing, most of those issues readers do not notice. I do not advocate that self-published authors spend a boatload of money on software for typesetting unless they know what they are doing, as the end result can come out worse than if they stuck with the WP program. I advocate the use of simplicity: simple print fonts, simple layout, and an uncluttered page. I have seen authors who follow the simple is best mantra and have come out with some very nice looking books sans the professional software/designer.
As for your examples … word might have some spacing issues as I don’t see one single hyphen on that page, but for the Indesign one, well, my eyes bugged out of my head at the tightness of text. For me, the word .doc, even with its issues, is much easier on the eyes. Most readers would barely, if at all, notice the difference. Especially if they were reading this in ebook format, where typesetting makes very little difference because of the auto-reflow. I read about 50 mainstream books a year on average, and I couldn’t tell you the difference between fonts used, line spacing, kerning, or any of that. I notice the differences in chapter starts and drop caps, but nothing when it comes to the interior block of text. For all the professional work, it all looks the same to me, and it all looks much same as most of the SP books I have read. “The Last Witchfinder” was the only book I read in the last 5 or so years that had noticeably spectacular and non-conventional interior text formatting.
I am all for professional type-setting, and I am all for helping Indies produce a better looking product, but I am also for helping them while keeping the issue of quality tangible and within their reach and their budget. I don’t want it to come down to: well, you shouldn’t be putting a book out unless you can afford this much for software or this much for a professional designer. Indie is about DIY and it’s also about DIY with what you’ve got. Learning how to make what you’ve got work for you, that’s the trick. I have seen mainstream books where I thought the formatting was a nightmare. Like opinions, no one reader’s eyes are the same as another’s.
I am glad that you are taking a crack at allowing the DIY community to explore the art of bookmaking through your eyes. Your professional wisdom is much appreciated by all. You are opening minds and making Indies aware of the possible pit-falls of lackadaisical software usage, but we need to keep all options open before we advise the already piss-poor Indie author to open their pocketbook even more. We need to offer options beyond professional software and/or a professional designer. We need to be able to say, “Here is what you can do to tweak Word, or Openoffice, or Wordperfect, or Works, or whatever to get you closer to the mark. Sure, it won’t be perfect in a typesetting sense, but you can get close enough not to look sloppy and infantile.”
That’s my take on it.
Hamish, thanks for your comment. Certainly the price of the software is an issue. Hey, I run a book design and production company, but I was pretty reluctant to part with the $700+ for the Adobe Creative Suite, and that was just the upgrade price!
It’s also interesting the experiences that we bring to the discussion. I don’t really see myself as a “purist” or a “gatekeeper” or someone who’s putting up “roadblocks” to publication. Because I’ve worked with small publishers and self publishers since the 1990s, I feel more like I am empowering people to get their work out. And I think the books you produce, Hamish, are completely charming and idiosyncratic. That’s incredibly valuable to me when so much that surrounds us is mass-produced. Are your books “perfect”? No, but they have something else—the hand of the artist is evident everywhere.
I’m not sure why you would be having problems using Quark for printing on inkjets (although I haven’t kept up with Quark in recent years). The output from Quark ought to be better than what you get from Word regardless of the device, as far as I know. And nice plug at the end, thanks for that!
Betty, thanks for the tip. I originally got a discounted version, but have had to pay full price for upgrades over the years.
Walt, thanks for stopping by. I fully understand the reluctance of authors to pony up the money for typesetting software, and why should they? It doesn’t make a lot of sense to buy, and then attempt to learn, complex software just to do one book.
Elizabeth, thanks for your comments. Although I have no idea what you mean when you say Word is a facet of a “desktop publishing system.” Does that make it any different in its operation? It still produces pretty mediocre output, regardless of what system it’s part of.
You’ll get no argument from me that the most important element in getting decent output, regardless of the program, is the skill of the operator. It’s pretty easy to produce dreadful layouts with InDesign or Quark, maybe easier than with Word, because you have so much control. I didn’t go into every failing of Word as a layout tool (illustrated books, anyone?) because I don’t really have any interest in bashing Word or its proponents. My idea was simply to show the difference. As far as the samples, my discussion only dealt with the different ancestors for these types of programs as a way of showing why they simply are not equivalents.
If authors have to choose between publishing with a word processor layout and not publishing at all, of course they should use their word processor. Although I’m a designer, I’m also a writer. The content is what’s crucial in a book, not the tool used to produce it, and I celebrate the wider availability of the tools of publishing.
But I disagree on one point: No amount of skill with a word processor will yield the same results as a skillful use of real typesetting software. So in some cases (not all the time), to produce certain kinds of typographic effects, you absolutely do need a different tool, a word processor just won’t have the controls you need.
Cheryl, thanks for your comment. I completely agree with your advice to stick with simplicity for the majority of DIY self-publishers. Many of the bad looking pages I’ve seen are the result of too much fiddling, the desire to ornament, or the feeling that the page is “too plain” to be effective. Simple is better, almost every time.
I have to say that while I was preparing this blog post I was quite aware that some people, looking at the samples, either wouldn’t see any difference, or might prefer the Word version. Hey, as my old boss used to say, that’s what makes horse races!
It’s also obviously true that very very few people ever notice the typefaces, layouts, formatting, hyphenation, or other details of the typesetter’s “arcane art” but that doesn’t mean nobody notices. And mediocre typesetting has never kept a book from being a bestseller, to my knowledge. But I notice.
I’m not sure I agree with you when you say that “Indie is about DIY and it’s also about DIY with what you’ve got.” I don’t think it’s all about doing everything yourself, and the ability to know where and when to spend a few hard-earned dollars to get an advantage for your book that you simply can’t do yourself is a smart choice. Becoming a publisher (for those trying to make money at it anyway) is going into business. The businessperson who tries to do everything themselves may not be doing the best thing for their business. Each person has to decide how to use the resources they have to the best effect, and I think we agree there, for sure.
Mostly what I’m interested in is education. Having the knowledge to know the difference is useful. Knowing the conventions of the field you intend to enter will make your work better and easier to introduce to other people. If you’ve read my article about Bembo over on Self-Publishing Review, you know that this can be taken to a ridiculous extreme, but that that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and it can even enlighten us about the work we do today.
Lastly, Cheryl, I am also concerned with developing either educational tools or actual software templates or add-ons that could be used at very reasonable prices to allow indie publishers to get MUCH better results without breaking the bank. Stay tuned, and thanks again for your thoughtful post.
I may be a philistine about typesetting, but I’m not really seeing the egregiousness in the side by side comparison. It seems to me something that would be noticed primarily by a typesetter. For me, indent spacing/orphan control/and flush margins are far more important.
Joel, you are correct, there is no comparison. We’ve done our books in both InDesign and in word processors…and for the print books, we won’t use anything but InDesign.
However….since we try to get our books in multiple different formats (especially Kindle and other ebook formats), the process is a bit cumbersome with InDesign. ID exports to ePUB, but the Kindle process will not accept that format. Amazon’s DTP takes word, HTML or PRC formats; there are ways to de-zip ePUB and get to the HTML, but it is painful, and not automatable.
So, the current process is word processor for raw, imported into InDesign for print and DTP for Kindle, and slightly modified for other formats.
Any other better processes appreciated!
Thanks for posting this. I’m a writer and a designer all-in-one, so I feel a natural annoyance towards Word. It does a lot of thinks automatically that just don’t make sense, especially when you’re trying to do anything more complex than a block of text. It will never be the same as a high-end layout program, no matter what you do with it.
Shop around for layout software if the newest stuff out on the market is out of reach. I got Adobe’s Creative Suite 2 about 4 years ago and it’s served me well ever since then. They’re at CS4 now and I still don’t need to upgrade. The tools as they were 4 years ago are still good enough for my job.
Shoddy layout and bad text spacing shows no matter if it’s via self-pub or trad-pub. If the investment is too much for one person, then why not see if a few people want to throw together for one skilled person to do book layout? Then the software’s there and several people are set for quite awhile, layout-wise. You end up looking more professional, which does count in a lot of ways. Good design practices are not out of reach for the self-pub crowd, they just have to get creative – which they’re already all about, right?
Thanks Joel. And making what you have work for you simply means not just having the tools but having the skill set. You are right, if you have never really looked at a book or don’t know your way around your WP program, then you need help. If you don’t know what to look for when doing the interior layout, then you need help from someone who does. So I think it’s great that you are educating people on the pit-falls of “what you don’t know can hurt your book.” Then after they “know” then they need to be made aware of all the options that can help correct it, whether that be a designer or an expensive software program or a backhanded trick of the Wordprocessing trade, of which I know many.
For me, line spacing can be problematic, especially if it lacks any form of hyphenation. I do notice lack of hyphenation. But wonders can be done with auto-hyphenation and then manual hyphenation on top of that without condensing the character spacing and possibly crowding the text. I find crowded text, while it looks dense on the page, it can be difficult to read, and a little white space can make all the difference.
WP programs, specifically Word, can do some funky things, and I find turning off all the auto-formatting tends to work best, then you can address the individual issues as you see them. I don’t know how many times I get an email about orphan and window control and the extra whitespace it can leave in its wake. Sadly, many DIY SPers don’t even know what an orphan or a window is. Once they are aware of it, then we can show them how to deal with it, and I find turning the auto-control off the best. Then I can manipulate other areas to take care of the issue and still have my text blocks end on the same line every page.
I read your article on Bembo and loved it. I also use Word to layout my books, and I may be guilty of an orphan from time to time — sometimes for the sake of text block integrity you just have to let one go — but people have commented that my books look and feel quite professional. They may look plain, but I find plain to be most effective.
Very interesting (although not a real surprise to anyone who has used InDesign). I do wonder what the same test would do with OpenOffice (which actually has better results in this areas than Word I believe) and more importantly Scribus.
I suspect that OpenOffice will be similar to Word but perhaps a little better. Scribus will be closer to InDesign but not as good. However, I think the real differences with InDesign versus even Scribus would show up in the tight type adjustments.
Having said all that, some forethought and planning and knowledge can make even Word look a lot better than it might. It would be interesting to see a ‘vanilla’ word layout (no line spacing changes, just use a system font, etc.) versus a tweaked as much as possible Word layout.
Anyway – thanks for your work.
By the way, has anyone here tried LaTeX? Someone just pointed it out to me while discussing typesetting software. It’s free.
http://www.latex-project.org/
Henry, thanks for stopping by. You know, it’s a little like an infection. Once you start looking at the typography from a certain angle, you just can’t stop.
Larry, appreciate your comments. The whole ebook format situation seems pretty chaotic, and with the number of different ereaders coming down the road, it may get worse before it gets better. I think services like Smashwords will thrive because they make it easy for people to get into lots of formats with a little work, but the continued evolution of epub and other formats should—I hope—allow some real typography to come to the ereader world. I hope.
Cheryl, I think we’re all in the education business, in a way. Your approach is going to help a lot of people get better books than they would have otherwise. What’s not to like about that? And I don’t see those books as “plain” if what they are doing is enabling the reader—through the typography—to get the author’s communication.
Owen, that’s interesting. I’ve never gone down the rabbit hole with Word, and don’t know that many tweaks. I use it everyday, but largely for prepping files. It’s incredibly powerful as a text handler, and very fast, a terrific program really. I’d be interested in seeing that comparison as well. Maybe Aaron Shepherd knows how to do it?
Irk, thanks for that. I’ve seen a lot of bad looking trade books too, there’s no joy in that. Then you look at a book like the one I profiled last week, by Jennifer Robin, Growing More Beautiful, and see what a self-publisher who’s really motivated can do. That’s what excites me!
Great post Joel, as usual. I have your blog bookmarked in my favorites. You’re right– the InDesign page looks a lot better. Everyone can see that. But I also understand the flip side of the coin. I invested a lot of money in my computer, my tax software, and Adobe Acrobat Pro– it kills me to have to purchase a design program, too. But eventually I will have to do it. Poor Word– I have not yet forsaken thee! Thanks for the great post.
Hey Christy, thanks, I’m honored. I’m not so sure you need to go this route though. Genres really differ substantially in their expectations, and your tax training books are probably fine as big format, Times Roman, word processor-originated publications. I have a number of real estate training books and they all look that way.
Now, if you start to publish novels, or popular nonfiction, you might have to change. And maybe before the second edition of The Step-By-Step Guide to Self-Publishing for Profit! you might think about it…
joel-
sorry i’m so late to this party… but…
to make your test fair, you should have
turned hyphenation on in ms-word…
also, since indesign will squeeze a line
that’s slightly larger than the measure,
fairness would’ve meant tightening its
measure ever so slightly, so you’d get
linebreaks in the same places in both.
finally, i was going to direct you to
the work of aaron shepard, who has
shown that it’s fully possible to use
ms-word to do high-quality layout…
but then you mentioned his name!
so why not see what he has to say?
-bowerbird
I’ve looked at some of these types of comparisons for my book too. BTW, Open Office is identical in behavior to Word; presumably it was reverse engineered. In general it is very inferior to Word in capability and stability, so beware.
Before giving up on Word, turn on the layout options “Do Justification like WordPerfect 6.x”. Most people think it is superior to the default. Also, consider “ragged right” which is fashionable now and some people believe is more readable than full justification of any form. Also, be sure to turn on Kerning in Word, amazingly it is not on by default.
In any case, LaTex and InDesign do the subtle stuff like optical margins (pushing punctuation beyond the margin which can make it subjectively look more even). They also use a fundimentally more sophisticated algorithm (dynamic programming) for justification, to suppress rivers.
Bottom line, I’m using word, because I think it is OK with Kerning and WordPerfect justification option turned on. But I’m still considering InDesign.
Don, thanks for that. I haven’t used Open Office but I’ve seen books done on it, and I think the limiting factor is the person who is doing the formatting. In other words, if you want to struggle with a document-oriented word processor, rather than the page-oriented layout programs like InDesign, you can do it, but it will take more work for a less-perfect result. But sure, you can turn out a decent book from a word processor if you put in the time and effort.
I’ve written two self-published books — one of which I sold more than 45,000 copies. I used professional typesetting equipment, specifically Linotype-Merganthaler equipment, to set both books, circa 1985-1995 (if you include two follow-up editions). I sold my graphic company years ago and am now working on my third book. Regretably, I find myself using Word 2007, which has to be the very worst software I believe I have ever used.
Between having to constantly massage galleys after inserting new text; dealing with mind-blowing, piss-poor hyphenation; word and letter kerning issues; struggle with unsettled paragraph breaks that leave white space at the end of pages; and extra space at the end of numerous paragraphs where the program decides on its own to override “justified” and go flush-left . . . I am left asking the obvious: who on earth uses this software to write books? And if they do, do they really have all that time on their hands to try and make their page-layout perform even as well as all typesetting equipment of the 1970′s did with ease and without question?
Sure, I was using $35,000 equipment at the time — (and that didn’t include the cost of fonts) — but the demands of non-technical, text-heavy books, fiction or non-fiction, are really quite simple.
I’ll admit I haven’t been using “WordPerfect justification” or any special kerning functions — (I’ll try that, thanks) — but I have read several books on writing books with Word that I now find deceivingly and unjustifiably reassuring. I’m going to give it another couple of days before I throw in the towel.
How do authors get away with using a program that, from a typesetter’s point of view, sucks so bad that even with a 75,000 word vocabulary, I find myself speechless in trying to convey its breathtakingly, embarrassing deficiencies?
If I can’t solve the problem on my own, I may just finish the work with a reliable text editor and hire an In-Design graphic designer to produce and polish the end product.
Thoughts?
Great post, thanks. I’m playing with inDesign, I think it’s true that professionals will immediately spot the difference.
I class myself “professional”, but I didn’t see much difference at all. I certainly wouldn’t say, Ah that’s a DIY and that other is the professional.
Great article. On the other hand, I’ve noticed these problems but haven’t found a poor man’s solution yet. Is there typesetting software available for people who can’t afford typesetting software?
Thanks for an interesting article – BUT – I’m laughing hysterically right now. I’m not a writer, but a reader who has stumbled upon this site, so forgive me, please, if I’m way out of line.
The first thing I did when I got my e-reader was set it to sans serif. The second thing I did was bump up the size of the type. I’m prepared for the strangeness that sometimes results on a page, and it doesn’t bother me a bit. I’d be delighted if writers would stop inserting blank pages and merely insert a couple of blank lines before starting a new chapter, but otherwise format doesn’t affect me (and I actually prefer the Word document above – it’s easier to read). I really don’t care about the format of traditionally printed books, either, although I do resent that I can’t get them in a sans serif font.
As readers, we’ve been forced to accept type and format that publishers produced. Now we can rebel – and most everyone I know is doing so. (We’re all getting old and our eyesight isn’t what it once was, so we’re all bumping up the size of the type and going to sans serif.)
Give us a great story, watch the typos and plot line, put up a cover we can actually read and that is pertinent to the book, and we’re happy.
Go forth and write – and don’t worry so much about the trappings!
I was involved in typesetting from the early 90s just as the industry was swapping from old Monotype computers to Quark on Macs.
What I found was that the extra abilities of the DTP programs left me as an OCD wreck – worrying about kerning, tracking and the overall colour of the text on a page.
Not to mention moire, screens and over-printing on film outputs.
This consumed more of my time than it should have.
>> Spend less of your time on computers.
Hi my name is Tonya and I read your article…I’m in need of a typesetter do you think you can help with my manuscript of 250 pages…
Could send contact information so I contact you …
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