Product Description

Nowadays, new technologies and services have made it easier than ever to publish your book. But if you mean to design it yourself, you may face an important question: Do I need an expensive page layout program like Adobe InDesign, Adobe PageMaker, or QuarkXPress? Or can I instead use a word processor like Microsoft Word? If you know the basic principles of typography and book design -- as well as the capabilities of your program -- there's no reason a book done in Word should look less than professional. With this book as guide, you'll soon produce pages no reviewer will scoff at.

Topics in this book include speeding up Word, avoiding file corruption, optimizing Word for print, handling custom page sizes, structuring your book with Word sections, using templates, using styles, using print vs. typewriter typography, choosing fonts, formatting your text, setting up hyphenation, smoothing your paragraphs, controlling page endings, evening your pages, preparing and placing graphics, inserting text boxes, adding borders and backgrounds, using alignment aids, producing printouts for scanning, preparing PDF files, converting color for print, placing crop marks, creating a simple book cover, and many more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63616 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 158 pages

Morris Rosenthal, author, Print-on-Demand Book Publishing
Excellent both as a guide to using Word to design books and as a concise guide to book design.

James Felici, author, The Complete Manual of Typography
On target . . . . Concisely addresses a lot of topics that Word
users need to know about.

About the Author
Aaron Shepard has been making his living from self publishing for years and loving it. On the side, he is an award-winning children's author with numerous picture books from major publishers.

Customer Reviews

Phenomenal Book for Using MS Word in Desktop Publishing
Aaron Shepard's "Perfect Pages" is the best book (if not the only book) that teaches the reader the many pitfalls of desktop publishing. I published my first two books with a self-publishing company. If I had "Perfect Pages" first, I wouldn't have. I would've published them myself. Luckily, I can publish more books in the future without having to pay someone to do it for me.

I didn't actually need every bit of information that this book explains. Shepard discusses the differences between MS Word for Windows and Macs, etc. But the information I needed was well worth the money. For example, I didn't know how to resize the document to make it acceptable as a print-ready PDF file.

Shepard also explains how to create book covers in Word, something that I thought was impossible. Although he suggests setting up a document as two columns, I thought of my own way. After a little practice, I learned how to created covers in Word and PowerPoint. After creating them in PowerPoint, they can be transferred over to Word.

If you use Word 2007, you may experience trouble. Shepard explains how to use older versions of Word (which are easier to use). He recommends Word 2000 and 2003. I agree. Those are the easiest to work with, and they don't differ too much. Word 2007 looks COMPLETELY different. However, "Perfect Pages" can still help you. You will only need to do some sleuthing.

Brandon Simpson

THE essential starting point for all Print On Demand authors
This was the first book I bought to assist me in publishing my 'Virtual Trilogy' on Amazon and one that I would highly recommend to anyone thinking of publisheing their own work on a POD service provider.

The instructions are clear enough to follow as a DIY manual (although you will have to take it slow and easy to get it right first time) and they style is easy to read. While setting up a book for POD using MS Word is a complex enough operation and will require a great deal of patience and concentration, this is THE best book on the market right now (perhaps the ONLY one) that comes close to guiding you through the process in a step-by-step fashion.

Congratulations Mr Shepard, and many thanks - not just from me but (I suspect) from many hundreds of authors who would have found Print On Demand too technical and inaccessible until your book came along.

First Self-Published Book After One Week!
I've been writing poetry and short stories for a long time and always thought it would be good to put them together into small collections - I'd never thought about 'self-publishing' just wanted to do it as nice thing to do for my own satisfaction and maybe give to family and friends.

I'd started a few times but was always disappointed with the results and didn't really want to go out and buy and learn a new piece of software.

And that's when I came across Aaron Shepards book - Perfect Pages.

I received it last week and started to put into practice on a short collection of poems. Last night I finished it and am very pleased with the results.

The book is clearly written, jargon-free and put together in logical steps by someone who clearly practices what he preaches. I have been using Word for years now and yet within an hour or so I had learned a number of useful features that I didn't even know existed.

I also bought the companion book, 'Aiming At Amazon' which takes it to the next step in actually selling your self-published book through Amazon and that will be a new project this year.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in writing and small press publishing.