Choosing The Right Book Publishing Software -- A Guide For The Self-Published Author
In times past, book publishing -- the actual layout, typesetting, printing and binding of the book -- was a formidable task best left to professionals. However, many authors today are discovering that book publishing software can now allow them to publish a book whose printing quality rivals that of traditional book publishing companies. What Kind of Book Publishing Software Is Available -- What Are My Options? If you desire to become a self-published author, you have a number of very good options to choose from in selecting book publishing software. A very inexpensive way to go is to simply utilize the formatting capabilities of the good word processing application. The difficulty here is that while many people use a word processor for the input of their document, not all writers are skilled enough with the software to be able to use it to actually publish their books. Better word processing applications do allow some options for document layout and formatting, as well as the construction of such things as a table of contents, footnotes and endnotes, indexes, etc. If you wish to take a step up from word processing applications, and especially if the book you are creating contains not only text but also graphics and photographs, then you should look into the purchase of more advanced book publishing software. Software is available from companies such as Adobe (the makers of Adobe Acrobat), and Microsoft -- developers of the Microsoft Publisher application. Additional book publishing software would be Apple Pages, QuarkXpress, and the free software application Scribus. What to Look for When Selecting Your Book Publishing Software What should you look for when selecting software for your book publishing? One very important consideration is the type of printed work you will be producing: will your book be primarily text information -- or will it include other visual elements such as photographs, drawings, charts, etc.? If you will be producing a text-only book, then any simple word processing application may meet your needs. However if your book will also incorporate these other elements, you need to make sure that your book publishing software is equipped to handle the formatting and layout of these types of documents. For most self-published authors, the best type of book publishing software to purchase is software that gives you an on-screen editing capability. You need to make sure that your book publishing software offers you a true WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") experience. If you will need to make use of a printing press service to actually print and bind your books for you, then you will need to give them a file (or files) of your book in an electronic format -- so check carefully with the printing services that you are going to be using, and make sure that your book publishing software is capable of producing a file in the format that they need. One final thought and recommendation: Before you purchase and install any book publishing software, make careful note of the software and hardware requirements. If you are using an older model of computers, you may experience difficulty in installing and using your book publishing software. One helpful strategy would be to contact other self-published authors whom you know to find out what kinds of book publishing software they are using. Other authors can be a great source of information and recommendations -- and save you lots of time and money. |
