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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us June 14, 2006 Essentially Ashland Prodigiously publishing Lance Pugh The dog barked and the neighbors parted curtains as the FedEx delivery truck screeched to a halt. Out bounded a jaunty fellow, clearly dressed to sprint, who seemed to leap the fence and appear on the porch in a poof, there to hand me a package that represented a quantum leap in communication, much like the invention of the printing press. My skin shook with Gutenberg goose bumps. I was going to publish my own book and the requisite software was now in my clutches. As a writer I pretty much e-mail my articles in without a thought as to how they fit into the larger format of a newspaper or magazine. Someone on the other end, known generically as an “editor,” somehow unravels my thoughts, evicts my original spelling and tortured grammar, then attaches it to a page with electronic staples. I suppose they hang it upside down to cure, like the pheasant in James Clavell’s “Shogun,” though none suffer the “heads up” that befell the gardener. In a day or two it’s ready for public consumption. Once inside the house I shredded the package to reveal the latest marvel of Desktop Publishing: InDesign CS2, the most recent iteration of electronic publishing. I read the raves on the box, fired up the software and … came to a screeching halt. What appeared before me was clearly the most complex software ever assembled. When only moments before I had envisioned myself soaring freely in a sky of easily mastered possibilities, I now found myself strapped into the cockpit of an experimental jet fighter with many hundreds of gages and controls, each having the clear capability of corkscrewing me into the ground. Not being one to surrender, I began to wing it. I called the Publishing on Demand (POD) house and soon found out that I should be able to lay out the book myself, send them the finished file and … Presto, printed and bound books are delivered by the same eager fence jumper. I thought of placing photos and artwork exactly where I wanted, using my own captions, sprinkling color here and there while artfully blending the type on my custom pages. POD to porch in two days? We’ll soon see. After a few hours in the cockpit I realized that I had purchased a Maserati to transport compost and potting soil. The program was muscular, graceful, resourceful and refined. Yet all I needed was something to turn a few shovel loads of sod and help crank out a simple paperback, not a tome with a thousand micro footnotes. I found that the only way I could get the software to work was to hogtie it by disabling its features, one by one. The rich array of palettes were gagged and bound, then hauled off screen to sit it out for awhile. I reduced my choice of fonts from near infinite to three, marching the rest off to temporary detention. Colors were downsized from 64 million to one, with the peacock suffering the same fate as the pheasant. It took a full day, but I finally got the cocky, strutting software compliant to my needs and proceeded with bundling my book. I called the POD house again, wanting to send in a sample for them to see. It was then that I was told that they hadn’t yet purchased the Maserati, that it was OK just to send my manuscript in any old word processing format. All the control over the process that I once thought possible was reduced to write, save and send. It was then that my wife, Annette, peered over my shoulder and remarked that my book looked good in Word, suggesting that perhaps I could simply send it in that way, instead of spending a house payment for cutting edge software. I gulped. “I’m way ahead of you on that one,” I sputtered as the disabled features began what turned out to be a prison riot. After the smoke subsided I saved everything to Word and hid the packing slip for my experimental jet fighter. My next challenge is pagination, but the numbers won’t cross the picket lines. DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Ceramic Piggy Banks Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Online Pharmacy Mailing Lists Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Student Loans Hammocks Water Filter Custom Made Computers Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams