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Rating: 
Summary: Great book for self-publishers
Review: I just finished self-publishing my first book (ISBN 0974953652) and this ebook was really helpful. I originally bought it thinking it would teach me all about typesetting and Word. However, since it is only 15 pages it really just focuses on Word. After reading it I still didn't know anything about typesetting. In the book, he recommends reading "The Complete Manual of Typography" by James Felici. I bought that book and learned everything about typography that I needed. Then I went back and read Mr. Shepard's ebook and everything clicked. Once I understood typography, this ebook showed my the tricks I needed to know for doing it with Microsoft Word. It was a really helpful book. I wrote my entire 525 page book with Word and never once touched PageMaker or QuarkExpress. This book saved me a lot of hours of headaches. I gave my printing company the final PDF file and they said it was perfect. That was great news!The one thing I wish the book would have covered is where to get fonts. I thought that Word has PS1 fonts installed by default and it doesn't. Then I tried to find some fonts online and they are very expensive. After much searching I found out that Adobe sells a beginning set of PS1 fonts for not much money. This has everything you need to print a standard book. I wish Mr. Shepard's book would have discussed that and saved me hours of searching the internet for information. But now that you know this tip, buy his book and you will have everything you need to be a self-publisher.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for self-publishers
Review: I just finished self-publishing my first book (ISBN 0974953652) and this ebook was really helpful. I originally bought it thinking it would teach me all about typesetting and Word. However, since it is only 15 pages it really just focuses on Word. After reading it I still didn't know anything about typesetting. In the book, he recommends reading "The Complete Manual of Typography" by James Felici. I bought that book and learned everything about typography that I needed. Then I went back and read Mr. Shepard's ebook and everything clicked. Once I understood typography, this ebook showed my the tricks I needed to know for doing it with Microsoft Word. It was a really helpful book. I wrote my entire 525 page book with Word and never once touched PageMaker or QuarkExpress. This book saved me a lot of hours of headaches. I gave my printing company the final PDF file and they said it was perfect. That was great news! The one thing I wish the book would have covered is where to get fonts. I thought that Word has PS1 fonts installed by default and it doesn't. Then I tried to find some fonts online and they are very expensive. After much searching I found out that Adobe sells a beginning set of PS1 fonts for not much money. This has everything you need to print a standard book. I wish Mr. Shepard's book would have discussed that and saved me hours of searching the internet for information. But now that you know this tip, buy his book and you will have everything you need to be a self-publisher.
Rating:
Summary: Practical, useful and to the point!
Review: If you are an author or would-be self publisher and words like typeface, linespacing, em dashes, kerning, CMYK, RGB, distiller, widows and orphans sound like a foreign language you need Aaron's book. If you are just a Microsoft Word user and want to make your documents look better and easier to read you also need Aaron's book. It's short, to the point and loaded with practical tips. I highly recommend it!
Rating: 
Summary: It's not worth $6.
Review: It's only 19 pages. I expected a lot more pages for that price. If it were $2-3 it would be better priced.
I think that Amazon should list the number of pages in this type of publication in their product details area.
Rating:
Summary: First-rate guide, well worth the price
Review: Spread the Word--with the help of this guide, you can make Word perform like the higher-priced spread and make your book, newsletter, resume, or even your business letters look a thousand times better without investing in expensive page-layout software. Tells you everything that distinguishes professionally typeset text from generic, untweaked Word documents, and how to adjust Word's settings to get the best-looking results. It covers all recent versions of Word for both PC and Mac, and it's clearly and concisely written. You won't get the lengthy digressions on the history of type and printing that pad out some other books and jack up the price--they're interesting, sure, but they don't help get the job done when you've got a manuscript you want to turn onto a great-looking book.
As other reviewers have pointed out, the book itself is beautifully designed and typeset, and it was all done In Word. It's particularly useful for academic typesetting -- producing a scholarly book or journal -- because Word is the only program (besides the very expensive FrameMaker) that will automatically place footnotes at the bottom of the page. If you're a scholar and your publisher has asked you to produce camera-ready copy or PDF files for your book, you will die without this guide. But I recommend it for anyone who's self-publishing a book or doing any kind of desktop publishing.
One last piece of semi-disinterested advice: buy this book and, with the money you've saved on expensive software, hire a professional copyeditor to go over your manuscript before you typeset it. You will not regret it -- a copyeditor will find and fix hundreds of problems and inconsistencies that you probably weren't even aware existed. THEN use this guide to make your book a thing of beauty.
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