Fact is, building an appropriate template does take some work; providing a good template would be part of my value-add.

maybe i read more typographers than you. :+)

seriously, though, where i hear that most
is from the self-publishing “experts” who
are constantly “advising” newcomers that
they shouldn’t use ms-word for their book,
because it “doesn’t look professional enough”.

bad carpenters always blame their tools…

-bowerbird

I thought you might find this link interesting, in relation to the topic.

And, indeed, Word2007 sets type a little tighter and more cleanly than Word2000/2003–when you change a long document from .doc to .docx, there’s a noticeable change. (Which is why a few early-2008 Cites & Insights issues are a little short: I converted them to .docx in the process of converting from the Microsoft downloadable PDF generator back to Acrobat, since Acrobat generates much smaller PDFs.)

(Oddly, my wife’s the one who’s really pushing Word2007′s capabilities–the genealogy books she’s working on have loads of photos with captions, which at some points in a very large document make Word grumpy. “Very large”=34MB at this point. But then, the situations are ones that any layout software would find difficult…)

your sense is perfectly correct;
ms-word is extremely popular.

and i don’t agree with people
who say ms-word is incapable
of creating a nice-looking book;
one just has to learn how to do it.

so if you can teach people, great!

-bowerbird

My sense is that Word is pretty nearly ubiquitous (particularly if you include direct competitors designed to use Word templates)–that most people likely to write books are also likely to already know Word. My intent is to describe how to do it easily, with no new tools.

My sense may be wrong–frequently is.

there is a need for this…
a big one, i’d like to think.

because i’ve spent much
time and energy to fulfill it.

freeing up creative spunk
in the public at large is a
thing that needs to be done,
if our species is to survive –
and that ain’t overstatement –
so it has been a goal of mine…

my tack differs from yours.

i’m not sure yours will work,
but it’s not for me to decide.

but perhaps you’d like to
hear about my approach?

i have been programming
an authoring-tool that will
facilitate self-publishing by
making it simple for people.

created in this authoring-tool,
one file (using “zen” markup)
can output your book to a .pdf
(for offline reading) and a site
(for online social interaction).

and of course, the .pdf can be
used for print-on-demand too.

the app does copy-fitting and
takes care of sundry details –
such as automatic hot-links –
so the user can concentrate on
writing their story.

to the extent that my program
does what it’s supposed to do,
people won’t need a workshop.
they won’t need to know word,
or learn how to use a template.

> It seemed promising at the time.
> It happened twice, and
> was pretty much a disaster
> (partly because I wasn’t a great
> workshop presenter, mostly because
> very few people ever signed up).

as you say, thousands of libraries
– and tens of thousands of people –
could use this information. could…

but i’ve been coding authoring-tools
for literally _decades,_ now, waiting
for there to be a vast public upswing
in the inclination to become creative.

nobody ever seemed to be interested.
not just in my tools, but _any_ tools.
(for instance, bob stein created some
neat authoring-tools that languished.)

our culture has trained people to be
passive “consumers” of culture, and
not active _creators_ of it, regrettably.

so i definitely feel what you’re saying.

on the other hand, the big explosion
of blogging has been a wake-up call.
and the photo-sharing sites like flickr
and photobucket are witness to a big
new flood of interest in photography.
and youtube. my goodness. look at it.

so it might be time to stir stuff up…

if you wanna play with my tool, i’ll be
releasing a version of it very soon…

either way, good luck with your stuff.

-bowerbird

John: Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.