![]() Vellum’s layout is automated (that’s why it’s so valuable for independent authors – because it’s quick and easy) and although that technology is very clever, it doesn’t always do what you might expect. Pagination isn’t always predictable: I had a few instances where I wanted to pull a line back onto the previous page to get a heading at the top of the next, and where I expected to achieve this by cutting a couple of words. It’s a last resort, but one of great value to editors and designers. For example, if I really really need to fit one more line of text onto a page so that the next heading comes at the top of the following page, and I can’t find a way to cut a couple of words to achieve this, in InDesign I can very slightly tweak the kerning or tracking – tiny spacing adjustments that readers won’t notice. You can’t control the space between letters or lines (kerning or tracking): Again, this won’t sound too serious to most people, but it was a shock for me. This threw me, because I had no layout landmarks to help me find the bit of text I needed. You edit in the middle panel, which is the text for one chapter in a continuous scroll. Yes, you have a layout preview on the right (see below), but you don’t edit in that window. You edit in continuous text: In InDesign, if I need to make an edit at the end of the last line on page 21, I scroll to page 21 of the layout, find the last line and make the edit. And I immediately discovered that it wasn’t possible to fine-tune things that I’d tweak in InDesign. Having proofread the book on a PDF of the print layout, I needed to make my edits directly in the Vellum file. When it comes to Vellum, this background is a mixed blessing. (Isn’t it always?!) For complex layouts such as magazine pages or step-by-step books, it’s easier to cut text to fit the space directly in the layout software, rather than estimating how much to cut in Word. I’m used to editing in InDesign and even QuarkXPress (remember those days?). These were my impressions of the software from an editor’s perspective. ![]() In this case, I was making edits to a book that had already been laid out. I was recently asked to work in Vellum for the first time. Some actually write in it – here’s a guest blog post from a friend who wrote his latest book directly in Vellum. Both features are reportedly on Vellum’s eventual roadmap, but for now, the program remains medialess.Self-publishing authors love Vellum, a Mac-only app that enables them to produce their own book layouts for both print and ebook editions. This is also likely why you can’t currently embed images or video. To both render previews and export proper files, Vellum needs HTML/CSS-compliant code for each platform, and the easiest way to ensure this is to eliminate user input (at least for version 1.0). The app even offers live preview options for every major ereading device, which is a huge improvement over the “export and guess what it will look like” game most of us in the ebook-publishing industry play nowadays. Vellum is one of the few ebook exporters that lets you create ebooks for iOS devices, the Kindle, and the Nook with one click-no changes necessary. One reason for this is the app’s excellent cross-platform preview and export engine. ![]() That’s not to say there aren’t options for tweaking your book-the app provides an array of beautifully rendered customization options for your book style, headings, the first paragraph of a chapter, block quotes, ornamental breaks, and the paragraph after a break-but you’re currently limited to the styles Vellum offers. The ebook enthusiast who wants to customize everything from link colors to page borders will be sorely disappointed. On the other hand, like the iLife suite, Vellum isn’t designed for customization junkies. Vellum’s controls are both expertly designed and easy to learn, capturing the feel of one of Apple’s iLife apps: There are a bunch of options, hidden away, if you need to apply them to your manuscript, but you can ignore most of those extras in favor of quickly building your book.
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