Book Publishing: Still an InDesign Print Project?

It’s still a print book world. But, doesn’t that go against the theory that we are digital readers?

Around this time last year, the Pew Research Center was gathering data to determine if our reading drifted from print to digital over the past 4 years. They discovered that 65% of adults in the United States read a printed book. And, what percentage did the same in 2012? 65%. That number is remaining firm. 28% of those surveyed go the ebook route. 14% listen to an audiobook. (Since the numbers don’t add up to 100% there must be some cross-over.)

What about the people who are designing and doing the page layout for those books? It’s no surprise that it’s an Adobe world. Adobe InDesign has been on the market for over 17 years. Aldus PageMaker 1.0 debuted over 32 years ago, a year after the first Mac arrived. In between QuarkXPress (QXP) was a brief key player in the publishing market. (QXP is still around and has even released a new version, but it’s difficult to determine if they have any measurable marketshare.)

Of course, InDesign was not a print-only product since Day 1. Exporting InDesign documents to PDF was a version 1.0 feature. As ebooks became sought after, InDesign added a feature set which allows users to create traditional print books and move them over to ebooks. We know some very clever ebook designers, which take the HTML code that InDesign generates and give it a few touch-ups in Adobe Dreamweaver.

So, if someone says to you, “InDesign? That’s for print?” The answer is, “Yes and No.” But, if you hear, “Print books? They’re over.” That’s a definite. “No.”