Book Design
The export view is a layout desk. Choose a look, then change anything in it — and watch the pages, not a settings list.
Updated
A preset is a finished book, not a starting point: pick one and you have a designed manuscript straight away. Nothing is locked afterwards. Every part of the page can be changed, and when you have it the way you want it you can save that as a preset of your own. The designed PDF preview uses the same layout engine as the exported PDF. Editable formats are interpreted by the app that opens them: RTF and ODT previews read the generated document in a continuous view, while final pagination belongs to your word processor.
- 1Open Export and choose your book.
- 2Open Preset and pick a look — Sabon classic, Modern trade, Large print, Submission, and more.
- 3Change anything you like from the drawers along the bar.
- 4Save it as your own preset when it reads the way you want.
The Drawers
- Preset — one look for the whole book, and a place to save your own
- Paragraphs — first-line indent, space between paragraphs, how a scene break is marked, and whether the first line after one is indented
- And these sections — when your book has a prologue, an interlude or an epilogue, each kind can start its own page or run straight on. Each begins the way your chapters do until you change it, and only the kinds your book actually has appear
- Contents — which chapters go in the file, and any words that should read differently in it than they do in your draft
- Page — trim size, margins, and how much the inside margin grows as the book thickens
- Type — the face, its size, the leading, chapter title size, and how far down the page a chapter opens
- Page furniture — running heads, where the page number sits, and line numbers
- Publication — publisher, ISBNs, series, edition, keywords and rights
- Submission — the contact block, typeface, how emphasis is marked, and the slug line agents look for
- Ebook — language, where the book falls open, what the contents lists, and the accessibility declaration
Typesetting
- Drop caps and small caps to open a chapter
- Justified text with hyphenation — and a limit on how many lines in a row may end in a hyphen, because a stack of them is a fault
- Widow and orphan control: the number of lines that may not be left on their own
- Punctuation that hangs into the margin, so a line opening on a quotation stops looking dented
- Ligatures, which join fi, fl and ffi the way a book face intends — and move the page count, so the preview shows you
- Chapters that always open on a right-hand page, the way a bound book reads
Artwork on the Page
- Ornaments in eight families — a mark above the title, a banner across the top, or artwork behind the title
- Your own pictures too, per chapter or across every chapter
- Drop a picture from Artwork or your computer anywhere on a page, including over its text; it belongs to the chapter on that page, including no chapter for generated front matter. An unreadable image or failed placement shows an error so you can try again
- Drop a gallery picture onto a chapter in the outline to use it as that chapter’s opening artwork
- Text can wrap around a picture, sit above and below it, or run behind or in front of it
- Wrapping continues across paragraphs until the text clears the picture, with space between the words and the artwork. If a picture leaves too little room for readable text, the text flows below it
- Drag wrapped artwork to another paragraph or the other side of the text; the picture follows your pointer and the text reflows when you release. Moving onto another page with prose keeps the wrapping
- Align it, fit it to the text column, or let it fill the whole page and bleed off the edge
Working On It
- Drag the rulers on the page to set margins and where chapters start — no numbers to guess at
- Change one chapter without changing the rest, or make every chapter match
- Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z undo and redo the whole desk, and a preset counts as one change
- Everything you set is remembered per book, so you can come back to it
The look and the printer's numbers are kept apart on purpose. A preset owns how the book reads — the type, the openings, the ornaments — and never touches trim size, bleed, crop marks or margins, so trying a different look cannot quietly change the size of the book you are about to order.