I’m thrilled to be posting my newly designed edition of the 1897 Bram Stoker classic, Dracula, now available here for free download. This is the first book of what I hope will be a long line of redesigned works of classic literature published under the imprint Reider Books. Hope you enjoy reading Dracula as much as I do!
Select the Dracula link below to begin the free download.
I’m often hired by publishers to work on (fix) the InDesign or Quark files of books that have been typeset by authors. Book design and typesetting may not be rocket science, but there are a lot of things you have to do right and many pitfalls to avoid to produce a great or even good book.
Many hours and/or days of hard work can be eliminated with a well designed and executed book design template. InDesign and Quark are loaded with potential time-saving and design-enhancing features. I’ve been working on my book design and typesetting process for a long time, and I still do my best to learn something new that I can use (almost) every day.
I’ve seen just about everything that could go wrong in a book at some point over the past 30 years. The big issues to watch out for are correct font and color usage and the proper resolution (dpi) of images, but even the best of us can get the trim size wrong sometimes.
Book design and typesetting have become more important than ever to publishers as they attempt to sell printed books and compete in this era of constantly evolving and improving e-books. Some of my book publisher clients have turned to overseas typesetters to produce their books, but they all still come back to me to design templates for the book interiors.
I charge the same rate per page for typesetting as most of the Chinese and Indian book composition firms. Technology has enabled me to become increasingly faster and more productive, and the competition from overseas keeps me focused on saving my clients time and money. I’m designing and typesetting more books than ever, but I’ll never take the flow of work for granted.
Most of the now-defunct big U.S. typesetting firms were overcharging for their services when the overseas competition put them out of business in the 1990s. The U.S. firms had been charging publishers three or four times more per page/job than was reasonable and the quality of their work was inconsistent and never as good as it should have been.
I can’t claim that any of the books I worked on became bestsellers due to my design and typesetting skills alone, but I do know that the publishers would never keep coming back to me if I wasn’t either saving them money or helping them to sell more books.
I’m always on the lookout for new books to design or typeset. Feel free to contact me any time to discuss your project.
Here’s a relatively simple and effective method to convert mathematical equations and other hard-to-duplicate formatting from Microsoft Word to EPS files or other formats that can be placed in InDesign or Quark:
1. Go to the Print dialog box and select “Save to Postscript” from the PDF menu at the bottom left of the screen. (The files won’t convert properly if you save directly to PDF at this stage.)
2. You can convert the postcript files to PDF using Adobe Acrobat’s Distiller program, and then open and edit the files in Adobe Illustrator or another graphics program. You can skip the Distiller step and simply open the postscript file in Adobe Illustrator, where it will be completely editable.
Don’t forget to convert the EPS files to grayscale, or they will be saved as RGB.
The new 2012 Monthly To-Do List PDFs are now available for free download. Choose “2012 Calendar” from the menu bar above to view all of the new forms and calendar designs available for download.
The 2012 Weekly Planner PDFs are now available for download free-of-charge. You can find the links below the image of each month’s calendar by selecting “2012 Calendar” from the menu bar above.
Each PDF file has 4 or 5 pages, depending on how many weeks there are in the month. Here are a few sample pages:
Your comments and critiques are always welcome. Hope you’re enjoying the new designs!
I’m very pleased to announce the launch of my newly designed 2012 calendar. You can view, print, and download each month by selecting “2012 Calendar” from the menu bar above.
I will be releasing a collection of useful forms and organizational tools as PDF files that will be available for download on my web site free-of-charge.
I would love to hear from you if you find any of my designs to be helpful, or have suggestions to improve them!
Andrea
PDFs of the latest additions to my 2012 Calendar are now available for download free of charge. Choose “2012 Calendar” from the menu bar above to view the entire 2012 Calendar. I’ll be adding the rest of the months soon. January and February are available for download below. Hope you enjoy them!
