Do It Yourself Book Publishing

Many open textbooks are published through print-on-demand companies such as Lulu Links to an external site. and Amazon Kindle Digital Publishing Links to an external site.. Textbook authors submit a PDF of a book to be listed on these websites. Teachers and students can then order a copy of the book at a price set by the author, and the book is printed and sent to them by the print-on-demand company. The textbook author receives part of the profits. 

For textbook authors working independently, the author must supply to the print-on-demand company a formatted PDF that is ready to print. Here are some tips on creating a book PDF using Microsoft Word or InDesign.

 

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word (or similar text editor) can be chosen if chapters don't exceed 30 pages, chapters have 10 or less images of small size, and book sections do not include complicated tables or formatting. We recommend using Microsoft Word as a first option for most textbook authors. 

  • If possible use a style guide to format content
  • Create the first page different than rest of document (Word Menu->Format->Document)
  • Header:
    • Chapter in resp. language + Chapter number
  • Footer:
    • Left: Organization/Author - Department - Language Program
    • Right: Creative Commons or Copyright symbol - Year - University Name
    • Middle: Insert Page numbers
  • Templates for margins (not recommended: Word Menu->Format->Document)
  • Number your exercises (difficult to maintain in Word if your textbook has too many exercises)
  • Make sure the images in the main content are JPEGs and approx. >200dpi.
  • Export from Word to PDF
  • Photoshop or Indesign front and back cover (get help from a Designer or use an image that exists and is 8.5x11in/>200dpi)

 

Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign is a powerful layout tool that can import content from a variety of places. We recommend this for people who have experience with the Adobe suite and are prepared to take the time to learn new software. 

  • The following created elements could be useful in InDesign:
    • .indt template file (COERLL has a template we can share: Click here Links to an external site.)
    • paragraph styles (important for xml import)
    • master pages for different sections (single not spreads if you want left/right margins and duplicate sections):
      • Title page
      • Vocabulary section
      • Phonetics section
      • Exercise section
  • How to import Word Docs into InDesign
    • Select element (right/ctrl click) place or menu > document > place and select the word file to import (check import options on bottom of browse dialog window)
    • InDesign will import your word styles.
  • How to import Website content (o.a.) from XML file into InDesign
    • Export the content of a website or a document into XML (see next section for how to export from drupal).
    • The XML file needs to be placed in a file system that can be accessed by you (such as your local computer).
    • If you are creating content with a non-english language, you might need to include dtd entities for accents or Umlaute in the XML file (COERLL can provide this dtd file for you).
    • Open tag pallet. Select text element on page and assign any tag. Right click (right/ctrl click) select "select in structure". The indesign workspace will display the structure of the main area on the left. Select the root in the structure and (right/ctrl click) select "Import from XML. This will automatically import everything that is in the XML and create tags that match the XML elements.
    • You can automatically style the text elements by creating Paragraph styles that have the same names as the xml elements.

 

 

 

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