Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Grossman
Hi Jabby, I'm a fellow author too and beginning to do conversions for other authors. You get a much better looking ebook using Indesign than, for example, converting from Word or a PDF file. Indesign offers greater graphic control. Many of the ebooks I see look amateurish, whereas my latest book, as an example, which I did in Indesign, allowed me to create the subtitles I felt I needed, while a flat conversion from Word does not offer. If anyone thinks otherwise, please let me know as I'd love to hear anything to the contrary. Thanks - Michael
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Michael:
Without trying to be rude: horsepucky. XHTML is XHTML, and you can manipulate it from Word, from html, from NoteTab Pro, from WordPerfect or from OO or from Atlantis WP or from Bob's Word Processor. What it takes to get a good looking book
is WORK on the part of the designer, not the program used. InDesign is merely a tool, and if people get "flat" conversions from Word, it's because they didn't feel that they needed something more, or don't know it looked amateurish, or don't know how. (Amazing how Amanda Hocking's books looked like crap, and still sold how many million copies?)
Saying that InDesign makes the difference between a professional-looking book over Word is like saying that whether someone is hosted on Blogger or WordPress or Bob's Blogging Platform makes the content better. Being on Blogger or WordPress or having your own site doesn't make the
writing any different; using InDesign versus Word versus Bob's Word Processor doesn't make the ebook
layout any better, all of which has to be actively tweaked
in the code.
In fact, it's easier to make beautiful books in a text-editor like NT Pro than it is in ID because NTPro is platform-neutral, which ID certainly is not.
Frankly, one of the things I like about ebooks and ebook-readers is that they are, pure and simple,
content-delivery platforms, not
foof-delivery platforms. I like a beautifully-made book (digital or otherwise) as much as the next guy...but there are a lot of books out there that are just padded with
crap graphics, and I like the fact that ebooks are, in many ways, purer, because so much of that garbage graphic padding is not doable, practically speaking, in ebookery.
Mostly, let's face it:
this ain't rocket science. It's repetitive, tedious, detail-oriented and pointy-end work, with everyone changing their platforms every 5 minutes. But it ain't JPL, and you don't need InDesign to do it well.
As a friend of mine says, "a map is not the territory," and that program isn't a magic wand. It's what gets put in the CODE that makes the book beautiful...not the road you took to get it there.
Just my $.02,
Hitch