Why It’s a Mistake to Use Microsoft Word for Book Design

It was never conceived as a design program.
Apr | 26 | 2016

Many self-published authors don’t know what they don’t know. In the case of book design, a shocking number rely upon Microsoft Word for book design and their books suffer for it.

Here’s one book for which proper interior design was clearly an afterthought:

I dare you to find a proper non-fiction book from an established publisher with five to seven words on a normal line. And where’s the hyphenation?

Books such as these are easy to produce, but there’s no way that a Barnes & Noble will stock them. Even worse, try getting a book reviewer for a high-profile media outlet to consider it. These folks receive upwards of 20 to 50 books per week. They need to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Proper galleys take time and money to produce. What’s more, skilled designers use specifically designed programs such as Adobe InDesign to create truly beautiful books. Simply creating a PDF from Microsoft Word is simple and cheap, but the results pale in comparison to those done by professionals with first-rate tools.

Fast, cheap, and good. Pick any two of the three.

Brass Tacks

Fast, cheap, and good. Pick any two of the three.

Make no mistake: Design matters.

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