After all, you’re already familiar with the program and that should save you a ton of time. It’s pretty seductive to use your word processor for putting your book together. Any program that provides a clean word processing environment as well as the ability to combine text, graphics and output to reproduction devices might fall into this category. Now Pages offers EPUB output, as does Storyist. This category is showing the most growth in recent months, with more programs coming onto the market that attempt to be “all things to all people.” Likewise, Apple’s Pages is really a hybrid and can be used either as a word processor or as a layout engine, depending on the type of document you create. For instance, Microsoft Publisher is popular for flyers, business brochures and similar projects, and there are a lot of templates available to make creating jobs easier.
Other choices in this range include Apple’s Pages Storyist and Scrivener, word processors that are also story development tools Word Perfect, the old PC warhorse still in production, and a host of others. Most people use Word, and we also have the useful open source Open Office that reads and writes Word files, too. And don’t forget all those PCs that came with MS Office pre-installed on them. Word processors- Microsoft Word has long had a chokehold on the word processing market due to its complete domination of the corporate environment.
There are three levels of software generally available to you if you decide to go the do-it-yourself (DIY) route: Guide to Book Design & Page Layout Software Here’s a guide to help you get oriented to this task if you decide to do it yourself. For most people trying to create a truly professional-looking book, the best solution will be to simply hire a professional.īut there’s no reason you can’t produce a reasonable-looking book if you’re willing to put in the time and educate yourself about books, and about the software you’ll use to create your book. The indie spirit in self-publishing leads lots of authors to want to take ownership of the entire process of book making, not just the writing. After all, the juice seems to be flowing toward self-publishers, more authors are rethinking their approach to publishing, and new opportunities seem to be opening up to self-publishers every day. You’re an author, and you want to self-publish.