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• • January 28, 2011 at 7:56 am #58542
    nijoelizna

    Member

    Hello – I hope someone can advise me!

    I need to create a ~115 page book again, and wondered if InDesign's book feature is the way to do it?

    Last year I made it as a long doc with master pages, but found the minute I had to tweak something particular and turn off that page's master page, the entire document's uniformity (via master page) went out the window, and I kept revising and revising individual pages…

    I should add, my “chapters” aren't really chapters, but stand-alone, single pages that need to be in a particular order.

    I watched a couple of the tutorials here, and vaguely thought a book created from template-driven, individual .indd's would be the way to go this time?

    I'd appreciate any insight! Thank you!

    
    

    
    

  • January 31, 2011 at 5:36 pm #58572
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I don't see any compelling reason to use the book feature (the book panel) with 115 pages. I'd just do it in a single document.

    Instead of turning off the master page, you might have just overridden the master page object(s) by command/ctrl-shift-clicking on them. Or creating a different master page and applying that one instead.

  • February 1, 2011 at 5:20 am #58579
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Any document that I do that has more than 1 chapter is made into a book file. I just find it far easier to deal with chapter by chapter basis than dealing with master pages.

  • February 2, 2011 at 2:31 am #58604
    Tim Hughes

    Member

    I do like to use Book with long docs, although if you have one page chapters I would probably split the doc into larger parts, my approach to building a document is not solely reliant on master pages for all features although using multiple master pages for different pages is good, I do also like to heavily use snippets of entire pages to build it keeping consistency with Object styles as well as Text styles.

  • February 2, 2011 at 6:36 am #58610
    nijoelizna

    Member

    Let's see…there are indeed sections to these 1-page “chapters”, so perhaps I could try creating books from each section.

    David's point about overriding objects, and yours about object styles, are good points though. I'm realizing there's plenty of room for improving my workflow. Last year it ended up being rather hodge-podge…

    This time around I thought to work from a text file first, then plan on flowing that into each page after the text is finalized and corrected. (Last year I worked on the text right away in InDesign, which proved a bit problematic when text ran long.)

    All probably basic stuff that hopefully I'll do right this time around.

    If anyone thinks of any other nuggets of wisdom, I'd appreciate it. Thanks for all the advice!

  • February 7, 2011 at 12:10 pm #58674
    Richard Sohanchyk

    Member

    I prefer snippets to master pages because I always make a mess of overriding this, overriding that or masters based on other masters. Then I delete one and the chain becomes an unworkable mess. I usually have a master for page one, TOC and back page if it's a newsletter with a mailing panel.

  • February 9, 2011 at 4:39 am #58683
    Tim Hughes

    Member

    Absolutely agree @OnPoint it's a shift away from the way master pages were used in Quark (which is still hung onto by some users).

    I tend to always use master pages for folios and page 'furniture' that is constant aside from that I find using snippets far more flexible.

    Alot does depend on workflow of course.

  • February 10, 2011 at 12:55 pm #58694
    nijoelizna

    Member

    Thanks – I didn't know about snippets…will investigate further. to be continued…

  • February 12, 2011 at 5:17 pm #58715
    Alan Gilbertson

    Participant

    I did a book as a long doc once. Never again. Assuming that you want all chapters to start on a recto, in the usual way, then using the book panel will save a boatload of production time if the document is still “live” when you're typesetting it (i.e., there will be edits, adds, deletions). Paragraph, Character and Object styles all sync across book documents, cross-references work fine, etc., and it's massively easier to switch out a single chapter, or rearrange the sequence of chapters, if you have a book vs. a single long document.

    The only caveat is that synching master pages (in a Windows version of CS4 or CS5) is currently broken. No indication from Adobe of when that will be fixed. Attempting to sync across multiple files with Master Pages selected will crash ID if there are margin changes.

    For ePub, cross-references that connect across documents don't currently work in CS5, but are fine for PDF output. I'm not sure about CS4.

    Depending on your project, another possible gotcha is that odd bits like Footnote settings (Type > Document Footnote Options) and baseline grids (document grids, not text frame grids, which can be locked in an Object Style) have to be set chapter by chapter unless you work from a template file. These won't be an issue if you don't use or don't need to change them.

  • February 25, 2011 at 5:48 am #58802
    Hopsa Rijnen

    Member

    @Nijoelizna

    i've made a few Thesis books (usually no more than 150-180 pages), and i prefer to use the book function.

    Be sure to build a template, with all paragraphstyles etcetera allready made.

    It saves tons of annoying textreflows that otherwise would stretch out in your entire longdocument.

    When i make a magazine (with the help of colleages) we all have our own copy of a basic document (made up with the proper styles and ofcourse master-pages.) Lots of single pages even cluttered together!

    When everything is complete, then i move the pages from one document to a entirely new copy of the basic document created in the beginning. Thus getting an endresult which i send out to the printer.

    Important!

    Remember to update all your styles in one document to the other. (in the book function it's a feature, when using just different copy's import styles via the fly-out menu in the specific panel)

    Lots of things you just can't predict during the build of your first basic document so being precise with styles is very important.

    Good luck!

  • April 4, 2011 at 12:34 pm #59169
    nijoelizna

    Member

    Thanks for the great advice everyone. The book went off without a hitch.

    @Onpoint331 — Thanks a lot for the snippet suggestion. It made my life so much easier.

    In case my work flow can help any other newbie out there…here it is:

    I worked within a long doc, not a book. I created one master for the left page, one for the right. I saved this two page spread as a template. I then created 2 different snippet styles to work with (that's all my design needed). I opened the template I made earlier and placed a snippet into each page as I worked, then saved it as an .indd file. I placed my images with object styles (thanks @DavidBlatner!), and copied and pasted text (from a rich text file) with paragraph and character styles — all of whose style names were identical, and were dictated by the original template I created.

    I ultimately worked within 4 large .indd files, which comprised the 4 main sections of my book. Then I then merged the entire long doc together by moving one .indd file into the following one.

    It was easy as pie! Again, snippets saved my life and were so easy to work with. As well as styles! Towards the end, when I wanted to change the justification in all 4 .indd files, it was so easy to find the identically named paragraph style within each .indd, and changed it from left to left-justified.

    Thanks again everyone!

  • January 9, 2012 at 1:34 pm #61380
    LauraDyga

    Member

    Will there be more than one person working on this project? I have found the book feature is the best if you are having more than one person do the work–as more than one user may have the book open but only one user is able to open / edit / make changes at a time.

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