Laying out a book in InDesign... Where to begin?

[ka jowct]

Check out "Book Design and Production, A guide for Authors and Publishers" by Pete Masterson. Amazon should have it.

There is some good info in there, although the guy did not follow some of his own advice: For example, he clearly did not hire a good designer to do his cover.

[Paul F.]

ArtP;

The import from Word should be just fine...
I've done a good job training my mom to keep the formatting SIMPLE, and BASIC... with no fancy stuff.
Earlier, I imported the first chapter to InDesign with no trouble. Well, nothing beyond not having the tabs set properly before importing...


Ka Jowct;

I'll check that out!
Thanks!

[ArtP]

[quote ka jowct]Check out "Book Design and Production, A guide for Authors and Publishers" by Pete Masterson. Amazon should have it.

There is some good info in there, although the guy did not follow some of his own advice: For example, he clearly did not hire a good designer to do his cover.
LOL, you know I had to look at the cover. That was another problem with my friend, she didn't "trust me" to design her a good cover and hired someone else to do it. He did a GREAT JOB, but that was more money (but money well spent -IMHO). She hired a guy who does Covers for Fiction Novels:



(Funny side story, he had a severe Mac crash and ended up calling me for Tech support, was down for about 2 weeks dead in the water, no backups).

Like many of you, I am from the DealMac train of thought (SAVE MONEY), so I try and help her with ideas but she ignores them and decides to spend money with very little gain. She blew $1200 on a book release party and only a few "press" people showed (but friends and family showed & supported - turned into a $60/pp appetizer gathering, but she sold 4 books -LOL) . I told her to wait and do some grass roots promotion on the book, but she had her own agenda.