In InDesign, go to File > Place, find your Word document, and click "show import options" in the import window before you click OK. If you already have styles set up in Word, you can convert them directly to InDesign styles, as long as you define the InDesign styles before you import. However, if you've never designed a book in InDesign, you'll probably want a tutorial of some kind, as you mention. I'm afraid I can't think of any InDesign book design tutorials, though I would certainly recommend Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style as the best basic guide to book design. Incidentally, are you the author or the designer? Or is this a self-published piece? If it's self-published, then go right ahead and design it yourself, but as you probably know, a publisher would just want the Word files so they can have their own designers design your book. Hope this helps.

Josh

New Document, then ctrl+d (or command+d), check "Show Import Options".

You can get a copy of Adobe's "Classroom in a Book" series for InDesign on Amazon. They are excellent tutorials.

Lynda.com has an excellent series of video tutorials on InDesign (and other applications, too).

You have to be a member to view all their tutorials (which I think is well worth the money) but if you Google "lynda.com discount code" you can usually find codes for a one-week free trial.

Also, not to put you down or anything: InDesign is not "a tool to adjust Word documents with". You would be rebuilding the entire document from scratch. All you get to start with is the plain text and most of the formatting.

What is your intent with this book? If you are self-publishing, you'll have to become editor, designer, typesetter (and depending on whether ink on paper or pixel on screen), printing broker.

On the other hand, if you are going to submit the *manuscript* to a traditional publisher, you are far better off to leave it in MS Word.

> Adobe's Help system doesn't seem geared toward importing and typesetting books

Launch InDesign, go to the Help menu and select InDesign Help. That will take you to an index page of help files for that version of InDesign.For example, if you have the CS4 version of InDesign, it will send you here:

Index to InDesign help files (CS4):
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/InDesign/6.0/index.html?trackingid=DYNQB

Importing text:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/indesign/cs/using/WSa285fff53dea4f8617383751...

Creating long documents (books):
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/InDesign/6.0/WSa285fff53dea4f8617383751001ea...

Their help files are useful reference, although I think that good tutorials (like Lynda.com which I mentioned previously) are a great aid.

If this book is your first InDesign project, I'd strongly suggest getting the assistance of someone who is proficient with InDesign to help you set up your files properly and get you started.

InDesign is a complex program used primarily by graphic professionals, and there are many ways you could screw up if you make a rookie mistake. You need to properly set up master pages, auto page numbering, prepare and apply paragraph style sheets throughout & character style sheets, use "space after" settings rather than blank lines to separate paragraphs, need to set hyphenation & justification settings, "keep" options, maybe create a baseline grid, and on and on.

I've used InDesign for years and I still screw up sometimes. Doing a book as your first project is just asking for problems unless you get some assistance.

Thank you for all the helpful comments and suggestions. It looks as though I'd be wise to accept a less elegant PDF created in Word for now and take my time learning inDesign.

Michael

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If you're intending on sending this to agents and editors, definitely don't bother with InDesign. Stick to standard manuscript format (Times or Courier, double spaced, one inch margins, single sided) and you'll be fine. What you might have to worry about are curly quotes, em dashes, and ellipses dropping out. Convert them to straight quotation marks, double hyphens, and three periods, respectively.

What you might have to worry about are curly quotes, em dashes, and ellipses dropping out. Convert them to straight quotation marks, double hyphens, and three periods, respectively.

No publisher I know of would have trouble with these characters. The quote marks are especially best left as U+2018, 2019, 201C and 201D (e.g., "curly" quotes). There is no algorithm that can "restore" them -- try 'Twas the night before Christmas . . . And as long as the text editor at the publisher's office supports Unicode General Punctuation, it will support dashes as well. The ellipses are a different issue, some styles prefer the ellipsis character, others periods with varying spacing in between.

I'd also recommend Adobe's "Classroom in a Book" series. Its a must read.