I’m back to working ungodly amounts of overtime again – enough I’m exhausted and making stupid mistakes at work. It’s aggravating. If I survive, I’ll have a few nice paychecks.
Starting 4 years ago, the spousal unit and I invested in a subscription to Photoshop. Until then we’d been using a copy the husband bought circa 2007-ish. I’ve used Photoshop since ~2001 and have barely cracked the surface of what it can do. With tax, the subscription comes out to about $11 US monthly, just over $130 a year. But we use it to make money, so considered it a necessary evil.
Meanwhile I’ve been hobbling along doing my print book interior (text) layouts in Microsoft Word, because I couldn’t justify the Adobe Holy Trinity – Photoshop, Publisher, and Illustrator. There are a lot of reasons to want them. The one for NOT getting them is all three jumps the monthly subscription over $62, more than $740 per year (before taxes). That’s a whole lotta budgetary nope. The only other real option for pro-quality book interiors was a Mac-only program. $5K for a Mac computer and another $250 for the software? Moi? Uh, also no.
Also during the last 4 years or so, I’ve schmoozed with pros in the publishing industry. A few of them were kind enough to steer me in a different direction. They recommended a lesser-known company: Affinity, which doesn’t require a subscription and offers virtually identical functionality to Adobe’s lineup. It’s a $50 one-time payment for each of the Affinity programs: $150 flat for their trilogy corresponding to Adobe’s. Yeah – $150 one-time vs $740 a year ongoing (or even $130 a year ongoing). Math wizard not required to figure that one out. I started pushing for the move a few months ago.
The spousal unit wouldn’t budge.
Then the price on these suckers went to half price. $25 apiece. I scooped up the Affinity Photo program on Black Friday, figuring that’s all I’d actually use. Never installed it, incidentally – just hedged my bets against having to sacrifice Photoshop somewhere down the line even if the spousal unit didn’t want to give it up.
Except – a while back I got handed an even dozen books to format for print, most of them hitting my inbox the same day.
Simultaneously, MS Word threw down a gauntlet. Nothing worked. I’d get one proverbial fire put out and a dozen more would open up. Spacing hosed up. Page numbers hosed up. Page headers hosed up. Chapter headers hosed up. Pages lost. And so on and so forth, blahty-blah. All the fixes MS swore would fix the issues… didn’t. I used every trick I knew, did a shit-ton of research, started over several times, no dice. It’s a “known (Microsoft) issue”, as if that were helpful.
A white flag unfurled over my computer a couple of weeks ago. I bit the bullet, especially since Affinity had another 50% off sale. I bought their desktop publishing program.
And, because as soon as it was installed I realized how clueless I was, I also splashed out $50 for the handbook. Don’t look at me cross-eyed. It’s a college-level hardback over 500 pages, plus pull-out cheat sheets. Part of expertise is knowing where to look for help. (YouTube failed me on this one, by the way.) I also – while I could get it for the price – bought the last of the three programs, their Illustrator counterpart. It’s at the bottom of my list of priorities for now. Still not passing it up.
Don’t be fooled by the “desktop publishing” line, by the way. This is professional publishing software. So far, I’ve learned this will do everything I need and countless things I didn’t know I needed. I haven’t figured out how to do the vast majority of them. But I will.
The spousal unit has also seen the light math. My man may be stubborn but we share a brain when it comes to money. He’s building his new ‘puter tomorrow. (Finally.) I think he’s going to do a trial run of the Photo program and see how it goes. My guess is he’ll be lost until I install it on my laptop and suss out the basics to show him. I’m okay with that, because in the end we’ll still end up with the smarter solution.
One parting shot. It’s supposed to reach the upper 70s here tomorrow. I think we can safely get rid of our snow shovel.
I hope the new programs you purchased are the best ever. I was really disappointed when Createspace went bonkers. I certainly do not have your skills and never will. Of course, I also haven’t written a book in two years so there’s that! Mostly because of Createspace, I have to admit.
Hope the computer building goes well for both of you.
Next time you write a book, talk to me. I’ll help you get ‘er done. I agree – the new system sucks.