What software is available for publishing books?

More specifically, what is the prefered software out there to set-up a book's layout? Can I use Adobe or is there something out there better?

What software is available for publishing books?
Adobe PDF is an output file format...you publish to a PDF not layout or design a publication in it. (You could...but it would be like writing your research paper in MS Excel or PowerPoint instead of using MS Word.)


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I depends on how complex your publication is.





If it's mostly text, not much text layout and formatting, not too many pages (%26lt;50), then MS Word or any Word processor is fine. Although, I've seen a document of 300 pages laid out using MS Word, title page, table of content, index and all...what a bear!





If you will be laying it out in chapters, with chapter headings, page footers, table of content, then consider QuarkXpress or Adobe InDesign.





The reason to use one of these and avoid MS Word, is that Word is always second guessing what you want done. It thinks it knows when you want to indent, how much to indent, capitalization, spelling, punctuation, bulleting and bulleting format, line spacing, margins, paragraph formatting, etc. Those features work for a short document, but when you want to control EXACTLY where text starts or wrap, they become hinderances instead of useful tools





Also, you'll want to check with the printshop or publisher what files they'll work with.





I like and have been using QuarkXpress for the past 5 years but will be learning InDesign because it comes with the Adobe suite of applications I purchased (need Illustrator and Photoshop). As well, the printshop I use works mostly with InDesign but will accept Quark files down-saved to an older version...getting tired of having to doublecheck down-saved versions of files for loss of layout and formatting due to that process.
Reply:I've heard Adobe pdf is good - has some built-in safeguards that help prevent unlimited downloading and ripping off of your work. I'd be interested in hearing of others as well.