Anyone who has had to contend with the learning curve of InDesign and the high cost of it, may find Affinity Publisher to be a great alternative. I have. It integrates with existing photoshop files as well and Affinity Photo is also an excellent alternative to Photoshop.

PS They don’t offer affiliate marketing. I’m just sharing … I discovered the programs when I also found out that Mac OS Systems – Catalina and Big Sur – would not be supporting the old 32-bit software anymore (These are 64-bit and work fine). And if you’re like me, and are budget minded, I didn’t want to pay Adobe high prices to rent their programs; you may want to look at these.

Affinity Publisher Review: An InDesign Alternative

This website post by Bo Bennet, PhD, Founder of eBookit, is an excellent overview of the process I will go through  creating and formatting your manuscript for ePublication when I work with you in building it for distribution.

How To Create an Ebook – A Step-by-Step Guide

First and foremost, it is very important to understand – from an editor’s perspective – that your manuscript has to be totally reformatted. It is also helpful to consider if you are planning on doing an eBook in the beginning in addition to your print version. The reason is that it is less time consuming to set up the eBook from the original manuscript, then to take a version created for print and remake for the eBook.

Here are some things to remember when we work on creating your eBook:

• •  If nothing else, follow the first step in his article in creating a clean, workable manuscript. I can help you with it, but it’s a more cost effective if you follow the suggestions he makes. And remember, Office Word® is very powerful and we can do a lot with it. Mac Pages and Google Docs are alternatives.
  • Images in an eBook CANNOT be placed exactly in the same position as a print version. The reason is the actual number of pages in your book, and how the book flows,  is dependent upon what the reader is using to access your book.  (A cellphone page is a lot smaller than a tablet, for example).
  • As of this date (Feb 2021), KDP (Amazon), for example, doesn’t even allow images. 
  • PAGES (on Mac OS) is excellent in creating an ePub version of your book (I use it almost exclusively). There are other conversion programs but they can get “in the weeds.” None is perfect.
  • Usually there are glitches and tweaks required. It will probably take longer than you think.
  • The eBook cover can be the same as the print version.
  • The final is a pdf.

Blast from the past

Just for fun … many of us still use quite a few of these today. (Slashes, underlines, the Paragraph symbol), the loops. However, you won’t see this too often unless you’re in journalism school or taking writing classes. (Click to enlarge).

But if you ask someone to “proof” your paper, you my see these. How many have you seen before?