Personally, I figure that if I can do it in Word, maybe taking two hours total to prepare the C&I .dot file, a publisher should sure be able to do it for Quark or whatever. (Yes, I do have it set so that when I’m working on an essay and create a heading/subheading, the next paragraph is automatically a “first”–no indent–rather than a “normal”–indented.)

OK, so those two hours came after a somewhat longer time setting up Ventura Publisher templates for books and later C&I–but it was a whole lot easier and quicker in Word. And when/if I do PoD books (using Word), I figure an hour at most to develop the 6×9 single-column wider-margin maybe-bigger-type template based on the C&I template.

It isn’t just indentation after headings, either. Not to pick on Rachel Singer Gordon, but her Next-Gen Librarian’s Survival Guide is set in sans-serif. SANS-SERIF. Hello? Is anybody home at Info Today?

It doesn’t cost much to get a few decent house stylesheets designed and encoded for whatever typesetting system they use. It’s a travesty that Info Today doesn’t invest that piddling amount of cash to make their books look as professional as the writing usually is.

Keep on ‘em, Walt.