Forum: Author Hangout

PDF has been around since the earliest days; if Word can't output a clean PDF, why beat yourself over the head with it? As for Scribus, you're really not helping yourself by begging for InDesign, but not making an effort to work with a new tool that thousands of users have found useful. Did a copy of Pages come with that new Mac? Try a test print to PDF with that.

The problem is, by suggesting I throw out all my existing tools, and the stories I've created with them over the years (copying the 'Styles' by definition involves copying over the 'offending' coding), means I'd have to recreate each document from scratch without relying on copy and paste (i.e. retyping everything).

That's a LOT to ask when all I want is to see whether this new publishing site is worth wasting time with or not.

As for trying the same thing on the Mac, as far as I understand the problem, it's how WORD stores their information internally, rather than how it saves it to different formats.

I'll give it a try, just as I'll try running it through Calibre, but I suspect the problem may be deeper than that (i.e. like why WORD keeps track of unused fonts at all!).

@Lazeez

If you don't need any design capabilities and you just need to handle PDF and make sure they're clean and functional, you need Adobe's Acrobat. It's the original PDF handling tool.

That's probably my next step, seeing whether I can strip the unused font out of the end pdf, rather than preventing it's being included initially.

However, since ALL the online advice centers around purchasing this one expensive tool--when a free tool wouldn't take nearly as much time, energy or financing--I'm skeptical that none of these alternatives haven't already been tried and rejected.

The fact a POD service requires authors to purchase an Adobe product just to submit a work is troubling, as I've never known any author to have InDesign laying around their office.

WORD has persisted—despite continually griping—because it's a 'legacy' product (i.e. most people have relied on it for decades from their days working for other companies) that it's hard to part with. That's certainly not true for ID!

Rather than chasing my tail, I suspect I'll simply have to abandon my dreams of selling my book to a grand total of 2 or 3 bookstores across the entire country. ::( (That's a 'rolling eyes' emoji).

You can 'rent' acrobat or indesign for like $15 for one month. They even offer a free trial, so you can try it for free and if it doesn't work like you want, you can simply cancel.

I've already tried it. It's NOT an easy solution to a one-time problem, instead there's a steep learning curve and an almost complete rewrite (restructuring) of the entire book a single page at a time. Since I'm not sure IS offers me any sales at all, I'm not going to invest a great amount of either time of money on trying them out—which is what they're demanding.

I'd hoped, if trying one out temporarily proved beneficial, it might be justified, but not if I have to jump through a thousand hoops to do it.

IS (Ingram-Sparks) is about the ONLY way to get a book into most bookstores,

They were once the topic of discussion on wattpad. If I remember right, when you publish with them your book didn't end up on a bookstore shelf. It ended up in their online catalogue. So someone would have to come into the store and ask for the book by title. Then the bookstore can order it for them. What's the advantage to that?

It requires a complicated strategy: essentially, you 'seed' the book to bookstores. If the store has it on catalogue, they're more likely to accept copies from the author directly (which they won't do with CreateSpace books). To get it into more store's catalogues, you get various people to 'order it', so the bookstore can get it once someone else orders it.

@Lazeez
You were right. Converting the file on WORD on the Mac produced only the truly embedded fonts—much more cheaply than purchasing a subscription to InDesign. I'll start posting that information online, since it's not common knowledge. Now I'll try, once again, to get IS to 'accept' my book. The place has more arcane guidelines about accepting payments than Congress!

Note: Ernest, I know you prefer Lulu for print books, but every time I see a lulu book in a local bookstore, I cringe as they all look incredibly low-quality, meaning few retailers will ever take them seriously.

The major part of that is due to the author choosing a set of low quality options to save on cost, also a major aspect is the quality of the artworks they have. I've not seen a Lulu book in the shops, but have had some printed and shipped to me, and they rate up there with the bought books, except for the first few early ones where I selected the cheap options.

The major part of that is due to the author choosing a set of low quality options to save on cost, also a major aspect is the quality of the artworks they have. I've not seen a Lulu book in the shops, but have had some printed and shipped to me, and they rate up there with the bought books, except for the first few early ones where I selected the cheap options.

I've always found the quality of lulu print books to be better (than CreateSpace), but the difference in price didn't seem to justify it (for me, since that's where you publish your ebooks, it makes perfect sense for you).

My point, though, was that there seems to be a general low opinion of Lulu books in most bookshops, while many (all those in my neck of the woods) won't even deign to sell anything published by Amazon.

My point, though, was that there seems to be a general low opinion of Lulu books in most bookshops

That's not surprising, because the books I have available to be purchased from Lulu at US$9.95 for a printed novel would be sold and sent to the Bookshop for the exact same price the book is sold to any other only purchaser. Thus the bookshop has to add their costs etc on to that and sell it for more than what people can buy it from Lulu for. There's no incentive for them to buy from Lulu to put it on their shelf.

I have seen some Lulu books in a bookshop in Sydney where the author bought a bunch on one of the Lulu author specials where they get free shipping at the author buy price and then the author placed the books with the bookshop themselves. The books are selling on the shelf for the same price they're on Lulu, but buying at the shop means they don't pay shipping or have to wait. That author split the mark-up with the bookshop owner, but they had a much bigger profit margin on the books than I do, so it was a good deal for the bookshop, since they only had to pay him after they sold a book.

The sort of novels I sell for $9.95 others sell for $19.95, but I don't have as big a name as they do.

Crumbly, I have inDesign as part of Adobe CS4 (vintage 2007), but I have never used it. I'll give your file a try; I think I can figure out how to convert it. If not, the forum for CS4 still exists and I may be able to get some help there.

I tried, with an earlier version, but you have to import the source document into a particular 'page type', which means you've got to then customize each page individually, or at best, copy the elements into new pages of each page type, which means a shitload of cutting and pasting each time you want to update a new or existing book.

InDesign is just not a satisfactory solution, and thus Ingram-Sparks isn't either. Seriously, who expects authors to write their books using InDesign????

Technically, I image the proper procedure is to define each page style, convert the source material and then copy the text only of each page into the appropriate page type, but that's not a whole shitload better!