4 ms·

Now I'm curious about what software is used in actual ink-on-dead-trees book publishing.

commandlinefan 5y ago
I submitted everything to them in Word documents (one document per chapter). They converted those to PDFs after having applied a lot of formatting and illustrating and sent me back the PDFs to review. If I found any mistakes, I marked up the PDF and sent it back to be updated and re-reviewed. So probably a lot of Adobe software?
openknot 5y ago
I assume it's Adobe InDesign, from working at a couple student-run publications in college (allows more precise control over how to format text) and one in high school. I hope an industry expert in publishing can chime in, but in the meantime, it looks like professional users in graphic design subreddits mostly use InDesign, followed by Microsoft Publisher [0][1]. Outside of Reddit sources, Creative Bloq also suggests Affinity Publisher and QuarkXPress, but I can't immediately tell if the rankings are paid for or influenced by advertisers [2]. [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/Affinity/comments/gdqrux/thinking_of_switching_from_indesign_to_publisher/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Affinity/comments/gdqrux/thinking_o... [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/7p9s8q/should_i_be_using_publisher_or_word/ https://old.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/7p9s8q/shou... [2] https://www.creativebloq.com/buying-guides/best-desktop-publishing-software https://www.creativebloq.com/buying-guides/best-desktop-publ...
- bambax 5y ago
  Quark XPress used to be the best publishing software; then their CEO made a number of very bad decisions and they almost disappeared from the scene. The standard is now InDesign. It's very good but very expensive. Affinity Publisher is ok, lacks some advanced features, but is so cheap compared to InDesign it may as well be free. MS Publisher, I'm not sure. Never really heard about it in good or bad.
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    QuarkXpress was not able to preview images on the page for an embarrassingly long time. You would draw a box and import an image to it and it would just keep a box with an x in it to indicate that a picture will be there. You had to render a print preview to see the images.
malodyets 5y ago
I have worked in ink-on-dead-trees book publishing for over 20 years. The vast majority of print-interior typesetting is being done with Adobe InDesign. Some publishers (still) have their own system that does not use Word styles - usually using ASCII tags inserted into the content. These are often legacy approaches dating from the 1980s, but if it works why change it? A few have begun to use Markdown-based systems, but this is very rare in commercial publishing. The vast majority of author-to-editor-preproduction workflows are done in Microsoft Word. Some publishers (including the one I worked for, and the ones I work with now) use Word styles for all content formatting. Part of the editorial "pre-production" task is to take what authors give us (font formatting with bold / italic, paragraph formatting with returns and tabs) and convert it to styles.

I submitted everything to them in Word documents (one document per chapter). They converted those to PDFs after having applied a lot of formatting and illustrating and sent me back the PDFs to review. If I found any mistakes, I marked up the PDF and sent it back to be updated and re-reviewed. So probably a lot of Adobe software?

openknot 5y ago

I assume it's Adobe InDesign, from working at a couple student-run publications in college (allows more precise control over how to format text) and one in high school. I hope an industry expert in publishing can chime in, but in the meantime, it looks like professional users in graphic design subreddits mostly use InDesign, followed by Microsoft Publisher [0][1]. Outside of Reddit sources, Creative Bloq also suggests Affinity Publisher and QuarkXPress, but I can't immediately tell if the rankings are paid for or influenced by advertisers [2]. [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/Affinity/comments/gdqrux/thinking_of_switching_from_indesign_to_publisher/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Affinity/comments/gdqrux/thinking_o... [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/7p9s8q/should_i_be_using_publisher_or_word/ https://old.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/7p9s8q/shou... [2] https://www.creativebloq.com/buying-guides/best-desktop-publishing-software https://www.creativebloq.com/buying-guides/best-desktop-publ...

bambax 5y ago
Quark XPress used to be the best publishing software; then their CEO made a number of very bad decisions and they almost disappeared from the scene. The standard is now InDesign. It's very good but very expensive. Affinity Publisher is ok, lacks some advanced features, but is so cheap compared to InDesign it may as well be free. MS Publisher, I'm not sure. Never really heard about it in good or bad.
- jjeaff 5y ago
  QuarkXpress was not able to preview images on the page for an embarrassingly long time. You would draw a box and import an image to it and it would just keep a box with an x in it to indicate that a picture will be there. You had to render a print preview to see the images.

malodyets 5y ago

I have worked in ink-on-dead-trees book publishing for over 20 years. The vast majority of print-interior typesetting is being done with Adobe InDesign. Some publishers (still) have their own system that does not use Word styles - usually using ASCII tags inserted into the content. These are often legacy approaches dating from the 1980s, but if it works why change it? A few have begun to use Markdown-based systems, but this is very rare in commercial publishing. The vast majority of author-to-editor-preproduction workflows are done in Microsoft Word. Some publishers (including the one I worked for, and the ones I work with now) use Word styles for all content formatting. Part of the editorial "pre-production" task is to take what authors give us (font formatting with bold / italic, paragraph formatting with returns and tabs) and convert it to styles.