Digital book dummy question
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Hello all, I have been away from the forum for almost two months. I have the opportunity to submit a story to an art director I met at my local SCBWI conference, so I have been working steadily on that. I would like to submit the dummy electronically, and I believe there is a way to do that as a multiple page PDF, but I'm just throwing it out there in case any of you have a better way to do it, or any tips you'd like to share on creating this. Thanks in advance, I hope to back on here posting and commenting come January.
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If you are on Adobe CC, you can generate a link out of InDesign that creates a flipbook - that way you can share simply a link and it feels like an e-book.
Here is a link to one of my digital dummies as flipbook (secret: do not share!! ;-))
Otherwise, you can of course create a multiple page pdf also from word or powerpoint or any other software that handles text and images. They can get very big, though (especially if you have high resolution images), and can be difficult to share via e-mail.
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@smceccarelli Great advice! I really appreciate the flipbook link it is a wonderful concept, great art and characters. I will look for more of your work on line, thanks for posting!
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@smceccarelli I work with Photoshop CS5, will it work for that? I'll have to look into it.
Thank you for sharing your work, it is safe with me. And oh, gosh - I love it!!www.rhirschillustration.com
https://www.facebook.com/rhirschillus
Instagram: rhirschillus -
@rhirsch Aha, thank you! It's nice to get some positivity: my agent does not like it that much
I think you need CC to be able to publish flipbooks online - because you need access to the Adobe cloud...but I may be wrong: it's worth googling it. -
@smceccarelli I will. And I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with your agent. The illustrations are fun, the flow is good from page to page. But then, I am as of yet unpublished so I can just give you my opinion, one artist to another. I think it has good energy.
www.rhirschillustration.com
https://www.facebook.com/rhirschillus
Instagram: rhirschillus -
@rhirsch Thank you! To be correct, she thinks it has „potential“ but needs more work with pacing and story point (which I agree). For the time being, she suggests working on something else that hinges more on character, so I am looking into other things.
Maybe it’s interesting to share that having a literary agent does not mean that he/she will happily go and try to sell everything you make... -
@smceccarelli that looks amazing. I guess I need to do a refresher for InDesign I haven't used it since I worked at the news paper about million years ago. I opened it up a few months back and just thought "this doesn't look anything like I remember" then promptly decided it wasn't worth the hassle to relearn.....
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@evilrobot Ah ah, that was exactly my reaction the first time I opened it! But I have the great luck of spending some of my day hours with friends/colleagues who are fabulous designers.
They do not let me slack on anything.
So when they discovered that I had no clue how to use InDesign, they gave me a crash course and then they heaped a bunch of layout projects on me - simple super-boring stuff like trifold brochures, table tents and flyers. I could only get rid of the trainee stuff after I could demonstrate at least a basic competence
It comes in very useful to layout business cards, tear sheets and book dummies... -
@smceccarelli Maybe she wants a problem/ resolution sort of thing. Like maybe the ball pops?
Your illustration style is enviable. I shall try not to turn several shades of green over here.www.rhirschillustration.com
https://www.facebook.com/rhirschillus
Instagram: rhirschillus -
@rhirsch Yes, she suggests inserting a story arch/problem and she thinks the ending is unclear (which, after a few weeks in the drawer, I had to completely agree with). She also mentioned several times that concept books (alphabet, numbers or word-based, like this one) are really really difficult to sell.
I have thought of an alternative story arch that uses at least half of the illustrations already done, but after discussing with her, we agreed to explore some character-based manuscripts instead. -
Well, for those who are interested it is possible to make a digital book dummy in Photoshop CS5 using the Bridge. Here's a link to the page I found explaining how, it went together quite smoothly: http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1661131
