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Which Software for My Book Project

Many people have asked and argued with me about what software to use for book design. I’ll give my recommendations here but instructions on how to use the applications are way beyond this article. There is no shortage of manuals, however if you have a specific problem e-mail me and I will give you my thoughts.

I use InDesign for page layout, Photoshop for pictures and Illustrator for vector art.
Although I’m no longer a fan of Quark, it will do the page layout job OK. Quark does not handle long documents as well as InDesign. For long text heavy documents it’s hard to beat FrameMaker particularly if you’re working with XML text mark-up. This is also an Adobe product and they continue to support it separate from InDesign. If you’re building a thousand page computer manual FrameMaker might be the best tool. However if your project is a full colour text book with lots of graphics then InDesign is the way to go.

In the past I’ve used Corel extensively for vector art. It’s a good application and always worked fine for me. I switched to Illustrator because of its integration with the other Adobe applications. The latest X3 version of Corel gets good reviews.

Photoshop is the top of the heap of photo manipulation applications, by a wide margin.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of applications and I can hear TeX users fuming. TeX page layout software is capable of excellent typography and excels at mathematical equations. It’s also true that InDesign uses the same or similar text formatting kernel. TeX however does not have a good graphic user model so you don’t see the typographic result until the page is printed. I haven’t used it extensively but I’ve seen it used to good effect. It’s not for me, and I won’t recommend it to a new user, but the final result can be very professional with an operator who knows what he/she is doing. The big things going for this software are that it is free, and there are a large group of TeX users and forums that can provide help!

Don’t use Microsoft Word to layout your book! This includes any other word processor that you happen to be using. There is a great deal of information available about how to use these applications for books but the results just don’t measure up. I’m writing this in Word because it is the best tool I have for putting my ideas into words. But Word’s ability to handle text for print does not compare with any of the page layout applications and it shows in the final product. Given two pages, one laid out in Word and the other in InDesign, the type structure will be different, text lines will not be as even and word spacing will not compare. If you want your book to look professional you need to use professional tools.

If you have decided to self-publish your book you have an up-hill battle. The book marketing process can be daunting enough without a prospective distributor opening your book and thinking ‘amateur’. Some might not notice the quality of your book design and typesetting, but many people in the industry will. Do you really want to put your project at that kind of disadvantage? Either hire a professional to lay out your book or buy the software and learn how to do it correctly yourself.

About the Author

Michael Dyer has been a full time graphic designer for over 15 years. He has designed all manner of communication but his first love is a good book finely bound. Michael Dyer Graphic Designer http://www.mocabookdesign.com/

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