Publishing a self written book with Xara Pro X

[Choctaw]

I don't post much at this forum, and hope I am not off topic or in the wrong area. I am wanting info on how Designer can be use to publish a book.
Thank you

[gwpriester]

First off, I moved you out of the web design and into the graphics chat.

Probably your best bet is to create your book and then export it as a PDF document.

Then find a publishing or self publishing house that can work from PDF.

[mwenz]

All POD publishing is done via PDF, so you are good there.

Using XDP for a full book can be done, but there are better alternatives in my view. It depends on the book--most/many Adobe manuals were created in Illustrator (for whatever reason) and I would use XDP before I used Illustrator for a book.

I would figure out who is publishing the book before I spent the time laying it out.

Mike

[Big Frank]

if you've ever used the concept of master pages , page number changes, and its something you really appreciate then i dont think pld is for you
i would recommend designr for brochures and leaflets wher it excels but i think self publishers might be frusrated by the lack of pro features
i would certainly not recommend them to illustrator
thats simply something promoted on printers by adobe i think but its rubbish
once again i would say quark xpress is the standard by which to guage what you want
illustrator as a book pulishing medium? good god, let me have whatever hes smoking

[Albacore]

Mike and I would nearly always recommend to you Serif's Page Plus if you are going to be doing more than a couple of manuals or books although with the recent improvements it should be easy enough to do in PLD. Try downloading the trial version and have a go then you can see if it is worth the money over the extra £30 for PP. The trouble with Serif's PP that they are no trials of the full version you have to buy first then if you don't like it within 30 days all you have to do is to send it back and your money is returned. Big plus for Xara is that it has great illustration features along with the DTP where Serif's illustration is limited.

[mwenz]

Serif products. It is while true they do not have trial applications of their latest software. They do have completely free versions that are based on a few versions back and have certain features disabled. While I think they ought to have trials, this is the method they have chosen. The free versions should at least allow a flavor of how Serif do things.

An advantage of the free versions is also one of the disadvantages. They have a screen that pops up when you exit offering the current version. The offer is generally with a discount.

Also, you can generally ring Serif and get the previous version for less. In this case, PagePlus X6 would be the previous version. Amazon (don't use eBay) often has previous versions for sale as well.

Mike