I don't think at this time you can set transparencies for table fills & strokes. The table seems to be handled as any other text inside a frame, while you can, if a single background color is all you're using, fill the frame (rather than the cells) with a color and adjust the opacity of that. It still won't let you set the table's stroke opacity but it's a start.

David Blatner said:

I'm not sure what you mean by the Kindle version being more expensive. Peachpit's kindle version is $3 less. (You could argue that it should be much less as there is no paper and inventory, but that's a different issue.)

I meant that on Amazon.com the printed book ($37.79) is cheaper than its Kindle version ($41.41). But I've taken this off-topic long enough now. Let's get some folks who've read the books to add their reviews and ratings :)

jrcreative said:

.. well … it's as straightforward as in InDesign. Select text; select “stroke” rather than “fill”, then change the color …

ha… thanks for your kindness on the issue of adding a stroke to text (not laughing me out of the forum). I was actually speaking specifically of the OUTER text stroke in “Illy” (hope you don't mind of I borrow that phrase :)). There's a grayed out option in the stroke window, which is available for other shapes, but not for text. It's also not available if I choose a dashed line with the option where the corner is even all the way around (not sure if there's a special name for that setting, it's the one on the right). I'm using CS5 on a Mac. Maybe other versions are different. Anyways, InDesign seems to make the stroke on the outside, center or inside of text just fine.

Three words: Illustrator Appearance panel

As far as I'm aware there is indeed no way to apply an outer stroke to text objects in Illustrator, but you can move the stroke down in the stacking order and fake an outer stroke if you're using the Appearance panel, or even stack multiple strokes and/or fills that way.

Maybe you can use the Flippingbook Photographer as a temporary work-around solution until they've added a Mac version for the regular Flippingbook software? It'll probably give less ideal results, but it's relatively cheap and could be enough for what you need done for now.

I have an Iiyama ProLite E2407HDSD as my secondary screen. It's a 24″ widescreen (16:9 ratio) 1920 x 1080p monitor, with DVI and VGA inputs and speakers (haven't tried those). It's a great monitor at less than €200 currently, and it looks great with quite a small bezel compared to some other monitors I've seen.
I bought mine in a hurry, knowing Iiyama hadn't failed me yet, and this one's perfect for me. The 27″ was a bit too expensive for me, and this one hardly fits my desk as it is (I like my desk cluttered, makes it look like I'm working on a lot of stuff :P)

The cover is most likely a different paper kind than the inside. So you could offer a “plain” version to be used inside, and a more flashy one on the cover. It's not the most usual way to do it, but it could work depending on the logo and its treatment on other (printed) materials.

Edit: It's not a tough message to convey, really. The client will end up paying, and it's up to them to decide whether or not it's worth paying the extra money for the cool looking logo.