BOOK FORMATTERS’ CHEAT SHEET FOR INDESIGN!
My journey as a rank beginner finding out that I CAN use InDesign to format my POD version of King of the Roses. Am I nuts to think this is fun?
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I have been signed up for Indesign for over half a year. I thought I was only signed up on a monthly basis but when I tried to cancel was told there would be a penalty for canceling early. Seemed kinda lame to me.
I have yet to figure out how to do anything with it. I’m sure people brighter than I am can do spectacular stuff with it, but I can’t figure out how to type a word on it.
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Hi! You’re right that the $20/month charge requires a year’s commitment. Have you considered buying a book? I know that’s another financial commitment, but since you’re already in for what you’ve paid, it would seem reasonable, if not perfectly desirable, to see if you can get over the hump. You might look for a used copy of a book that applies to an older version of the program; there are probably enough similarities to get you started.
If you’re familiar with any kind of graphics editing program, like Preview in Mac or Paint on a PC, the processes are really sort of similar. If you’ve never used any of these, I can see that learning the basics in a program like InDesign is tough. In my experience, getting started is sort of like Word: you click “new,” decide how big you want your file to be (in inches), how big you want your margins, and then you insert a text frame that you can adjust by selecting it using the black arrow/selection tool (top item in the Tools menu, which is probably along the left margin). Once you have a text frame, you can type in it using the text tool, which is indicated by the letter T in the Tools menu. If you already have a Word file, you can insert it using “Place” and then edit using the text tool. The selection tool and the text tool are really the only tools you need. I learned these basics from my book, which I argue in the first post in this series is a valuable investment. Good luck!
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