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Book Design Certification
1. Book Design Introduction
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2. File Setup and Text Import
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3. Typesetting and Styling
3.1. How to Edit Existing Paragraph/Character Styles
- Body Copy Font
- Double click to open “Body-Regular” character style.
- In Basic Character Formats, select your font.
- Adobe Garamond Pro is our default body copy font, unless there is another option that is appropriate and matches your book.
- The other body styles (Body-Italic, Body-Bold, etc.) are “based on” Body-Regular, so they will update to the same font you choose for Body-Regular.
- Chapter Titles, Headings,and Subheadings
- Use fonts that are used on the cover for the titles, headings, and subheadings.
- If some text is highlighted in pink, it means those characters are not available in the font selected. Open the style to see if it’s “based on” another character style, and change the font if necessary.
- To unlink a character style from being “based on” another character style, open it up and select “none” under “based on” in the General settings. Hit “Reset to Base” to clear out the formatting and start from scratch.
- Use Paragraph AND Character styles together. Character Styles trump Paragraph Styles.
- To change the space before/after a heading, go to Indents and Spacing in the paragraph style window, and increase/decrease the space before and after.
- Decide the hierarchy of your headings before you start assigning them. Look through the book to determine how many types you’ll need.
- Paragraphs after a heading should always be flush, not indented. Select the Flush paragraph style.
- First Paragraph Special Formatting
- The first paragraph should be flush, not indented, and have space before it to separate it from the chapter titles. It can also have a styled Drop Cap.
- In the Paragraph style dialog box, go to Drop Caps and Nested Styles. Select the number of lines you want your Drop Cap to be. Open the Drop Cap Character style to change the font, size, and color.
- For Drop Caps and Nested Styles to work, the character styles of the paragraph must be set to “none.” The paragraph style will apply the correct font using the nested style we’ve set up. If you have any italic or bold text, you need to make sure to retain those styles.
- When the first paragraph begins with dialog or a quote, delete the quotation mark at the beginning so the Drop Cap highlights the first letter, not the quotation mark.
- Body Paragraphs
- The Regular-Paragraph should be left justified with an indent, and hyphenation turned on. There are specific hyphenation and justification settings we’ve set up to prevent gaps or squished text.
* Our client Exponential prefers not to have justified hyphenated text. So in those books for that client, you’ll need to just have the Regular-Paragraph be left aligned with hyphens turned off.
- The Regular-Paragraph should be left justified with an indent, and hyphenation turned on. There are specific hyphenation and justification settings we’ve set up to prevent gaps or squished text.
3.2. Page-by-Page Design
- Start at the beginning of the book and work through it page by page.
- Assign the parent pages as you go. Front matter like endorsements, copyrights, dedication, and table of contents should have a blank page style with no running headers or page numbers.
- Add the correct page breaks where needed. (Sometimes when you remove extra paragraphs with the Find/Change command we learned earlier, InDesign will remove your page breaks.) Go to Type > Insert Break Character.
- The standard is to have each section or chapter begin on an odd page. You can achieve this by entering an odd page break on the page before. The exception is the Copyrights page which will be on an even page.
- To change the copyrights page text quickly and easily, use find change:
- Select all the Copyrights text and open Find/Change.
- Under the “Search” field, choose “Selection” so InDesign will change only what you’ve selected.
- Under Find Format, search by style. Select Body-Regular.
- Under Change Format, select the Copyrights-Regular style. Hit Change All.
- Repeat this with Body-Italic/Copyrights Italic.
- Select the Copyright-Page paragraph style for all of the copyrights text. However, the first two lines with the book title and © copyright info should not have a space between them. Select the Copyright-No-Space style for this.
- The ISBN numbers should have no space between them as well. Select Copyright-No-Space.
- For the superscript styles that may have come over into the Copyrights page, change those to be Copyright-Regular using Find/Change.
- With all of the text still highlighted, under Find Format select the Superscript character style. Under Change Format choose Copyright Regular. Make sure you still have Selection chosen under the Search field. Hit Change All.
- Try to make the copyrights text fit on one page.
- The copyrights page should be aligned to the bottom of the text frame. Go to >Object>Text Frame Options or hit Command + B. Under vertical justification, align bottom.
- Wait until the end to style the Table of Contents, as long as you know how many pages it will be.
- For the chapter titles, assign a “Chapter-Number” style as well as a “Chapter-Title” style wherever applicable.
- To set up a new style for the section numbers and titles, first choose the “Chapter-Number” style for the section number, then create a new style “Based on” Chapter-Number. By default if you have a character or paragraph style selected, and then create a new style, it will be based on whatever style you had selected. Be sure to click “Reset to Base” while doing this step.
3.3. Widows, Orphans, and Runts
- Widow = Last line in a paragraph that breaks at the start of a new column or page.
- Orphan = When one line of the paragraph begins at the end of a page.
- Runt = The last word of a paragraph that ends up on a line by itself.
3.4. Keep Options
- Keep Options in paragraph settings automate “keeping” certain lines together
- Keep with previous = Keeps the first line of the paragraph with the paragraph that precedes it.
- Keep with next = Keeps the paragraph with the paragraph that follows it.
- Keep lines together = Prevents widows and orphans by keeping two or more lines together at the start and end of paragraph.
3.5. No-Break Styles with GREP
- In the paragraph style dialog box, you can set up GREP styles under the GREP tab. GREP is a language that searches for patterns in the text using “expressions.”
Runts
- This expression:
\<(\s?(\S+)){2}$
searches for any two groups of preceding characters separated by a single space at the end of the paragraph. When we apply “No-Break” style to it, it keeps those last two words of the paragraph together to prevent runts. - The No-Break style has the No Break property selected (under Basic Character Formats). All characters next to each other with that property will stay on the same line without breaking.
- If there is a space after the last word in the paragraph, GREP only keeps the last word and the space together, so you need to delete the space.
- Source for the GREP expression here and further explanation: https://nukefactory.com/tutorials/widows-orphans-and-runts/
* TIP: The GREP expression to remove trailing whitespace (a space at the end of the paragraph) is\s+$
. You can copy and paste this into the Find What field, leave the Change To field blank, and hit Change All.
Verse References
(Find Bible verses and apply No-Break style)
- The book names and chapter numbers/verse numbers of Bible verses should stay together without breaking to a new line
- Easily find all Bible verses and apply the No-Break style without having to manually search for them
- These are set up as a GREP style in the Regular-Paragraph style just like the runt-preventer we just went over. There are many variations of verse formats:
- Ephesians 4:2 (normal verse)
- Matt. 23:15 (abbreviated Bible verse)
- Matt. 27:17–26 (abbreviated Bible verse with a range)
- Matthew 11:28–30 (spelled out Bible verse with a range)
- Variations of all the ones above, but beginning with a number, like 1 John 4:19
- The expressions in the GREP styles we’ve created search for all of the above formats. Here they are for reference:
\u\l+[[:punct:]] \d+:\d+\p{dash_punctuation}\d+
\d \u\l+[[:punct:]] \d+:\d+\p{dash_punctuation}\d+
\u\l+ \d+:\d+\p{dash_punctuation}\d+
\d \u\l+ \d+:\d+\p{dash_punctuation}\d+
\u\l+[[:punct:]] \d+:\d+
\d \u\l+[[:punct:]] \d+:\d+
\u\l+ \d+:\d+
\d \u\l+ \d+:\d+
- As an example, the expression
\d \u\l+ \d+:\d+
is searching for a digit (\d
), followed by a capitalized word (\u\l+
), followed by one or more digits (\d+
), followed by a colon (:
) and one or more digits (\d+
).
- To see if your GREP styles are working, you can create your own preview by opening up the No-Break character style and under Basic Character Formats, check the “Underline” box. Now all the last two words of the paragraphs should be underlined as well as the Bible verses.
- You can save GREP searches in the Find/Change box by going to the GREP tab, typing in your expression in the Find What field, and hitting the Save Query button at the top of the box.
- If InDesign lags, you may need to use Find/Change to change all of your Bible verses instead of having the GREP style do the work in the paragraph style. Doing so allows you to change it all at once instead of InDesign constantly searching for these expressions.
- Open Find/Change (command + F) and go to the GREP tab.
- Use the expressions I listed above. Paste one in the Find What field.
- Under Change Format, go to Basic Character formats, check the No-Break box, click okay, and Change All.
- Repeat with the rest of the expressions listed.
- Make sure to go back and delete those GREP styles in the paragraph style (leaving the one for runts there). Otherwise InDesign will continue to search for those expressions.
3.6. Batch Edit Subheadings
- Open Find/Change and go to Find Format.
- Select the Body-Bold character style.
- Go to Indents and Spacing and under Alignment select Left Justify. Now click Find Next.
- Under Change To, select the Subheading Character style as well as the Paragraph style.
- Hit Find Next. If it is a subheading, click Change. Then we want to change the paragraph style below it to be flush left. Select the Flush Paragraph style. Or hit Command + Enter and type in Flush. (Select your paragraph style and hit enter.)
- Go through the rest of the headings one by one.
3.7. Bullets and Numbers
Bullets
- Assign Bullet-First for the first item, and Bullet-Last to the last item. All the rest should just be the Bullet paragraph style. This adds space before and after the bullets.
- Use a negative first line indent for bullets, so the bullet sits on the outside of the paragraph. In the Paragraph Style > Tabs settings, drag the triangles on the ruler to move the indent and bullet alignment.
- The whole list text should be aligned with the regular paragraph indents (not the bullets, but the text).
Numbers
- Assign Number-First for the first number, and Number-Last to the last number. The Number-First style resets the first number in the list at one.
- Number lists have a negative first line indent as well, but we also want to keep the whole list as far left as possible. (It won’t be indented like bullets).
- For longer number lists, keep the list aligned to the right side of the numbers so that all the paragraph text stays in one nice, neat straight line. To do this, in Paragraph Style under Bullets and Numbering and Position, change the alignment to right. Go to Tabs and adjust the triangles on the ruler until the text is aligned again.
3.8. Block Quotes
- Like bullets and numbering, we have a First and a Last style, and also a Single style for block quotes that are just one paragraph.
- You need to manually apply the styles for block quotes. (There is not a concise way to find these with Find/Change.)
- These paragraphs should be indented and offset from the text.
3.9.Ellipses
- Search for ellipses using Find/Change: first search for
. . .
(space, dot, space, dot, space, dot, space). - Under Change To, type in
^S.^S.^S.space
. (Caret symbol, which is Shift + 6, capital S, period, caret symbol, capital S, period, caret symbol, capital S, period, space—just a regular space with the space bar.) - Hit Find and look at each instance before you hit Change.
- Next search for
…
(three dots with no space between). - Hit Find and look at each instance before you hit Change.
- Search for the ellipses glyph. (
^e
) - Hit Find and look at each instance before you hit Change.
3.10. Hyperlinks
- Open the hyperlink panel by going to Window > Interactive > Hyperlinks.
- In the panel, select each of your links and change them to be formatted with the hyperlink character style.
*Hyperlinks in print books do not need underlines, but you can still apply the style and change the style to be normal and not underlined. - Convert URLs to live hyperlinks by going to the side menu and selecting Convert URLs to Hyperlinks.
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4. Design Elements
4.1 Creating a Reflowable Layout with Anchored Objects
- Insert the images within the text as anchored objects by copying the image, inserting the cursor in the paragraph, and hitting paste.
- Apply either an inline or wrapped object style to the image by selecting the style.
4.2. Object Styles
Apply object styles to all the graphics in your book in order to make easier global changes.
- Inline images: Are usually the width of the text frame and sit between two paragraphs with space on top and bottom.
- Wrapped images: Smaller images that are flush left or flush right on the page and the text flows around them.
- Callouts: Text frame object that contains callout text styled in an artistic way.
- Full Image: Fills the whole trim size of the page.
4.3. Images and Graphics Standards
- All images should be 300dpi.
- For black and white interiors, images should be set in grayscale.
- For color interiors, images should be CMYK.
- To edit your images in Photoshop, first be sure your image is not embedded in the links panel. To unembed, right click on the link and select Unembed Image. Click “No” and select where you want your linked file to go. Now you should be able to select Edit Original.
- When it opens in Photoshop, go to Image> Mode> Grayscale.
- To change the image resolution, go to Image> Image Size. Uncheck Resample and set the resolution to 300.
4.4. Paragraph Shading/Borders
Shading
- To add shading to a paragraph, create a new style. Double click to open it and change the name. Select Reset to Base.
- Under Paragraph Shading, check the box to turn it on
- Adjust the tint to your liking, and under Offsets increase the offset.
- Under width you can select Column or Text. Column brings the shading all the way to the edge of the text frame, while Text shades only the width of the text. But for a whole paragraph, select Column.
Border
- Go to Paragraph Border and turn it on.
- Click the link button to link or unlink the settings from being the same on every side (if you only want a border on certain sides).
- To match the edge of the shading, adjust the offset until it lines up.
- Check “Display Border if Paragraph Splits Across Frames/Columns”if you want the border to show when the paragraph goes to a new page.
- Check “Merge Consecutive Borders and Shading with Same Settings” if you have two different paragraph styles right next to each other with the same border and shading settings, and you want them not to be separated by the border.
- With paragraph borders and shading, you may also need to add more space before or after so the shading doesn’t get too close to the other paragraphs.
4.5. Inline and Text-Wrapped Callouts
- Inline Callouts: A paragraph within the body text that is styled specially, and not repeated.
- Text-wrapped callouts: A sentence or phrase that is repeated inside a special text box and offset next to the paragraph with the text wrapped around it.
- The text-wrapped callout text frames need to have object styles.
- Create a new object style and open it up to adjust all the following options.
- For the Anchored Object Options, the position should be Custom. You can set the positioning to be relative to the spine so that it’s always on the outside of the page (the left on the left side and right on the right side).
- The Reference Points tell InDesign what point on the text box to use as the reference point for positioning. (The right corner of the text box, the center, or the left.)
- Adjust the X and Y offset it if you want it to be further out into the margin or further down the paragraph.
- Text wrapping is only activated if the object comes before the line of text. If you want the whole paragraph to wrap around the object, you need to place the anchor in the paragraph directly before.
- Under Text Wrap and Other, you can adjust the amount of space around the box. You need at least ⅛” of space around it minimum.
4.6. Tables
- Make columns in a table equally spaced by going to Table> Distribute Columns Evenly.
- Go to Table> Cell Options > Text to change cell insets (padding), text alignment, and more. Go to > Keep Options to keep all the rows together on the page.
- Go to Table >Table Options> Setup to adjust the spacing before and after the table as well as other table settings.
- Adjust the table borders and shading by using the Table Setup dialog box (above), or by using the Stroke palette and Color palette. When using the Stroke palette, use the highlighted grid lines shown in the palette to select which lines you’d like to apply the stroke to.
4.7. Creating the Title Page
- Open the original color cover in Photoshop. (It should already be the trim size of the book.)
- Change the background to white or add a white background. Delete any imagery so the title page is just text.
- Change all text to be a dark shade of gray (not completely black).
- Be sure everything fits within the page margins by selecting all of the layers and reducing the size until it’s far enough from all four edges.
- Make the image color space grayscale. Go to Image> Mode and select grayscale. Choose “Don’t flatten” and “Don’t rasterize.” Discard color information.
- Save your image as a new file. (Don’t save over your original cover.)
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5. Endnotes and Footnotes
- To insert a note, place your cursor in the body text where you want the superscript number to appear. Go to >Type> Insert Endnote (or Footnote).
- InDesign places a number automatically in your text and takes you to the endnote/footnote area to add the note.
- To remove a note, delete the superscript number in the body text. It will automatically remove the note and renumber the remainder of the notes.
- Right click on the note text to take you to the reference marker (the superscript number) and vice versa.
5.1. Endnotes
- Do not manually edit the endnotes formatting, such as removing the tab after the number and space or adding a period after the number manually, as it can yield unexpected results
- Create a new paragraph style for the endnotes that is “based on” Regular-Paragraph. Open up the style, rename it and hit Reset to Base.
- Under GREP Style, delete the first line that was set up to prevent runts. This should prevent you from having overset text due to long URLs that are taking on the “no-break” characteristic.
- To change the endnotes formatting, go to >Type >Document Endnote Options. Use this box to edit the title, numbering style, and more.
- To edit what comes between the endnote number and the text, use the Separator field in this box under Endnote Formatting. By default it has ^t (tab) as the separator. Instead, make sure the endnotes are formatted with a period after the number and a space. You can type that in this field. You may not need to add a space if there is already a space in your text.
- The endnotes should come before the “About the Authors” section in your book, but by default InDesign tries to place the endnotes at the very end of the book. In order to make these items in the proper order, copy and paste any text that should come after the endnotes into the endnotes story, at the end. After the very last note, insert an odd page break. Then paste the text on the new page.
- To separate endnotes by chapter: Go to >Type >Document Endnote Options. Select “Restart Every Story.”
- Then break your book into separate stories by chapter using a story splitter script: StorySplitter is linked in this article.
- Access your Script panel by going to >Window >Utilities >Scripts. Under User you can see your custom scripts you’ve installed. To install a new script, right click on “User” to open the folder in Finder and drag your script to that folder.
- With the first text frame of the chapter highlighted, double click on the script to run it. Choose “Split Before Selected Frame.” Go to >View >Extras >Show Text Threads to see how the text frames are no longer linked. Go through each chapter and split the story at the start of every chapter.
* I highly recommend if your book requires this step that you wait until the very end to break your book into separate stories. It’s much easier to edit one long continuous story, and then you don’t have to worry about pages shifting and having overset text.
5.2. Footnotes
- Go to >Type >Document Footnote Options to view the options for footnotes. Footnotes have the capability to restart the numbering for every page, spread, or section, which is different from Endnotes.
- Go to the layout section to control how the footnotes are placed at the bottom of the page.
- When using footnotes, be sure to uncheck “Allow Split footnotes” because we want the entire footnote text to stay on the same page. You can also control the spacing before the footnotes and the formatting of the rule or line above the footnotes.
- Footnotes should be at least 2pt smaller than the body copy font.
5.3. Converting Endnotes and Footnotes
- Go to >Type >Convert Endnotes and Footnotes and select which ones you want to convert.
5.4. Wrapping Up Page-by-Page Design
- Continue designing your book page by page to the end of the book using the principles you’ve learned.
- When you’re done, come back to the videos to go over the remaining training sections: Creating the Table of Contents, Proofreading and Editing Process, and Exporting and Submitting Files
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6. Creating the Table of Contents
6.1. Automated vs. Manual Table of Contents
- Do NOT use InDesign’s native table of contents feature
- DO use cross-references.
6.2. Cross-References
- Select all the table of contents text and apply the Contents-Text paragraph style. (This style has a right-aligned tab set up with a leader of a dot.)
- Add in a tab after the text to see the leader dots.
- Add in the page number by inserting a cross-reference. Go to Type> Hyperlinks and Cross-References > Insert Cross-Reference.
- Select All Paragraphs and type in your chapter. E.g. “Acknowledgements.” Two will likely appear, because “Acknowledgements” is listed in the table of contents page. Be sure to pick the correct one (usually the second one). You can verify by looking at the page number and double checking that it’s correct.
- Under Cross-Reference Format, click the edit icon, and select Page Number. Under the definition, it shows a preview of what will appear. Be sure that it only has the page number, and delete any other text there. Click okay.
- Your number should be inserted, and when you have hidden characters turned on, there will be a light blue box around the number denoting that it is a cross-reference.
- Repeat for the rest of the chapters
- You can also use the shortcut of Command + Enter and type in Cross-Reference, to pull up the options quickly.
- Both the number and the tab should be formatted in Body-Regular.
- When using cross-references, the page numbers will be accurate to where these chapters are located in the book, since it’s anchored to the specific lines of text. If the chapters move and shift pages, the page numbers will update.
- Be sure the table of contents are spaced out and divided properly by referring back to the original Word document
- To add space before a section, create a new paragraph style, called Contents-Space (you can name it however you want) and add some space before it. Apply this to the first line in each section.
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7. The Proofreading and Editing Process
7.1. Exporting a Proof
- Export the book to a PDF and look through the PDF page by page to see if you catch any errors in the page running headers or page numbers. Doing this last quality check will help you to correct any errors.
- Once you have checked over your book, submit it as a PDF to the project manager for it to be proofread. (Use the default export settings, since this is just a proof. You don’t need to have bleeds or other printer’s marks turned on.)
7.2. Applying Edits
- Typically any edits are received in a marked-up PDF. The editor or proofreader takes your PDF proof and uses Adobe Acrobat to make comments and markup changes.
- Apply edits in order from beginning to end. Take your time and don’t rush. And always be sure you are saving a new version of your InDesign document, in case you need to refer back to an older version before edits were made.
7.3. Troubleshooting Shifting Pages
- When more pages are added and the content shifts forward, manually add the number of pages that InDesign added in the correct location:
- In the pages panel, right click on the page location where you need to add the pages (generally the last page of the chapter), and go to Insert Pages.
- Select the number of pages needed, and if you want them to appear before or after the page. Select which parent page to apply. Click okay.
- You should have an empty page(s) with no content. Click the outport on the previous text frame (the play-like icon) and click into the first new text frame. Now it’s linked this text frame into the main story.
- Continue this with any of the additional blank pages.
- At the last new text frame, click the outport and click to the text frame on the next page to ensure all the text frames are linked up. Turn on your text threads to check this (> View> Extras >Show Text Threads).
- Adding these pages manually makes it to where you don’t have to reassign all the parent pages in the rest of the book.
- When content is removed or condensed and the number of pages is reduced, manually remove those pages in the correct location:
- In your pages panel, find the pages you want to delete, select those two pages, and click the trash can icon.
- The rest of your content should be on the correct parent pages after deleting these extra pages.
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8. File Submission
Exporting Files for Print
- The final print file should always be in the form of a PDF and the file name should have _FNL at the end to denote this is the final file for print. The current standard for HIM are the following export settings:
- This is for KDP or general books when the specific printer is unknown:
- PDF X-1A: 2001 and choose Acrobat 6.
- Be sure All Pages is selected
- If your file has a bleed, under Marks and Bleeds select Use Document Bleed Settings
- If it does not have a bleed, just leave it as is. Our book and the way we styled it does not have a bleed. If you have any images or full page styles that go to the edge of the page, you need a bleed.
- Click Export.
- When we are printing with other printers like Sheridan, for example, they have specific PDF export instructions:
- (On this page, select “Exporting PDF from Adobe InDesign Creative Cloud). Their directions are very detailed so you should be able to follow that to export your document properly.
Submitting Files and Communication
- When you send your final PDF to the project manager, be sure to include any necessary instructions, like if the file has a bleed or not.
- Always over-explain, not under-explain.
Exporting InDesign Package
- After saving your file, go to >File >Package. Include fonts and linked graphics. Click Package.
- Send this packaged folder as a zipped file.