I picked this up along with the author's Aiming At Amazon since the small press I work with is POD and uses Word and Lightning Source (as does Shepherd) so I figured this would be an excellent educational tool for the basics of layout.

This really is an excellent introduction to the basics laying out a book in Microsoft Word (2003 and older--the 2007 update hasn't appeared yet, but it's on my want list!). Everything from properly sizing pages to tweaking text to make it look nicer is covered. The author's writing style is clear without being loaded with jargon, and he manages to describe visuals without pictures quite effectively.

There are a few things missing that I would have like to have seen covered. For example, he doesn't explain how to deal with the invisible, nonembeddable fonts that can make Lightning Source send your manuscript back to you for reformatting, nor does he explain the various formatting marks that you may have to go through if something doesn't turn out right. Additionally, his main focus seems to be the bare-bones approach to layout, rather than covering the little details that can make POD look just as good, if not better, than traditionally printed books.

However, I have found this to be an absolutely invaluable guide to basic layout. Shepherd is an expert at POD, and this is a definite plus for any POD publisher or self-publisher's bookshelf.

Four out of five.

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