Word for book writing?

[Pam Ammond Pierce]

Has anyone tried using Word for book writing? Anything I should know about
that would make it NOT a good solution? From what I read it exports to PDF
fine, any problems you ran into? How do you handle multiple "templates" for
different types of pages... Do you copy and paste documents in or merge
documents? Any other comments on using Word for book writing?

Thanks,
Pam Pierce

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Word is NOT a good solution if you are doing a coffee-table style book
with lots of carefully placed images. For that, you want a page layout
application--Publisher, InDesign, others.

See here, a collection of links on using Word for books, dissertations,
manuals, and other long documents.
http://daiya.mvps.org/bookword.htm

Read the intro text, follow the links. Just browsing the headings will
give you a sense of the issues. The principles will all apply to Word
2007, although many menu commands have changed.

Multiple "templates" for different types of pages--depends on what you
mean by different types.

I don't use copy and paste to merge documents, but rather Insert | File,
usually into a new document based on the proper template.

Daiya

 

[Poprivet]

Has anyone tried using Word for book writing? Anything I should know
about that would make it NOT a good solution? From what I read it
exports to PDF fine, any problems you ran into? How do you handle
multiple "templates" for different types of pages... Do you copy and
paste documents in or merge documents? Any other comments on using
Word for book writing?

Thanks,
Pam Pierce

Yes I have, and although there are more dedicated options, they are
expensive. Word will do a respectable job for books but a higher than
average expertise level will help you a lot.
Avoid Master Document mode for anything but print-times, use Outline View
and headers to see an overall view of the book, and keep picture anchors
visible so you know what paragraph they're attached to.
At a hundred pages or so, depending on your computer, things will start
to slow down, so use Normal View as much as possible for speed. If you're
going to go much over a hundred pages, then it's better to separate it out
into separate files for chapters, whatever.
Check at MVP.org; there are some good papers there as I recall which are
pretty useful.
If it's going to a known publisher, be sure they can handle a Word doc;
they might insist on a different format. There's more to it, but ...

Pop`

 

[Pam Ammond Pierce]

Thanks everyone! I'm still not sure about this. I looked at your
http://daiya.mvps.org/bookword.htm article but the copyright indicates it's
talking about the old version of word.

However, Word 2007 is using a totally different file structure than the old
Word, so I'm not convinced that Word 2007 won't handle it. I still need more
info. Does Word 2007 still have the same issues of slowness for large docs
and corrupted files that the previous version had?

Do you know anyone that has tried using Word Version 2007 for professional
books and either failed or succeeded? Do Microsoft Press authors use Word
2007 or do they not support it?

Thanks,
Pam Pierce

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Hi, Sam,

I wrote my most recent book using Word 2007. Even though most of the time I
was using the beta version of Word 2007, I experienced no serious problems.
Mind you... while I and the editors used Word (and some of them used Word
2007), Wiley uses something else for the actual publishing process. I have
no idea what they use now. For what I sent Wiley, it was all in .doc format
(compatibility mode).

Most technical books (and I've written all or part of over 30) are broken
into chapter files. So, "large documents" are seldom an issue for me. All
the same, I wanted a complete pdf version of my book, so I stuck everything
together in the new .docx format -- over 10 MB including figures -- and had
no trouble creating a 950+ page .pdf version, which I now use as my own
fully-searchable reference. Otherwise, my desk copy would quickly get worn
out.

Using the .doc format, the file was over 20MB, and there were lots of
problems with it... which was a powerful incentive for switching to the new
format.

In over a year of working with Word 2007 -- even the betas -- I've yet to
encounter any corrupt .docx files (with one exception--see my note about
master documents). Not only that, but, when I've encountered corrupt .doc
files when working in Word 2003, I find that Word 2007 seems to have a
newfound ability to rescue such documents at a much better rate than Word
2003 and earlier.

While others might caution against doing a picture-heavy book with Word, I
have to say that the idea of using Publisher to write a book of any size
sends shivers up my spine. Not to have Word's writing tools available sounds
like a nightmare to me. This presumes that you're not doing a lot of fancy
layout, or that you're 100% aware of how Word anchors graphics.

Not sure what you mean about multiple templates. With Word, in any given
file, you can have exactly ONE template associated with that file. If you
have multiple related files, things generally work/flow best if they all use
the identical template.

I will, however, rush to agree about the master document admonition. Alas,
this feature is still horribly broken in Word 2007. It's become a solid
tradition you can count on. The only time I encountered document corruption
in working with Word 2007 (the released version... not just beta) was when
working with master documents. Whatever it's doing to screw up and corrupt
documents seems unrelated to file format. Word 2007 seems to be as adept at
screwing up .docx master documents as it was in screwing up .doc master
documents. It's reassuring to know that some things never change. :-\

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Dealing with long documents in Word is not really about speed when
handling a document that is large in size. Rather, it's about setting up
the templates and styles to minimize the manual labor you have to do,
and that's what most of those links concentrate on. I'm not sure
*that's* much different in Word 2007--that is, the menu commands are
different but I think the principles are the same, even though the file
format has changed.

 

[Pam Ammond Pierce]

Herb (and anyone else who has suggestions),

Thank you so very much for your response. I especially appreciate the
warning against using master pages, and the detailed information on file
sizes.

Yes, I agree with you that Publisher wouldn't be appropriate. I absolutely
love it for brochures, and recommended to a client again today, but not for a
large book.

I have your Word 2007 Bible, and love it. I didn't see anchor concerns in
it. I did see your table about the various ways to anchor text around the
picture. Is there more that I need to understand?

I understand what you are doing, writing chapters in Word and sending them
in to the publisher. That's what I did for my recent book. But it's not
what I want to do. I want to fully design the complete book, layout and
graphics and figures included.

My books are extremely graphic intensive, both background art for pages, and
inline Figures. One of the things that appealed to me is that it seems Word
is now using vector graphics for Smart Art and Shapes. Can you tell me a
little more about this? Can I create a graphic in Word and then export the
graphic in a vector format to work on it more in Adobe Illustrator or
Microsoft Expression Design? Is there any way you know of to create my own
completely-from-scratch SmartArt? Is there a way to import vector graphics
into Word? I see bitmap but not vector importing capabilities.

Previously, I created Illustrator pictures and moved them in to InDesign.
For the pictures which will be Figures - am I creating them directly in Word,
or perhaps Expression Blend, or still in Illustrator? And then will Word
understand the Adobe vector format if I need to use that? If I could create
SmartArt totally from scratch, I would love to be able to use all the
modification tools in it to modify my own vector art work, similar to how I
add Effects to artwork in Photoshop. Possible?

For background pictures that are the same for each odd or even page in a
section, I would assume I am probably starting with Word's shapes as the
layer farthest back, and layering text and other shapes and possibly WordArt?


I'm still not completely clear on how background art is best applied to
specific pages. It seems to me I would create a separate document (I'll call
it a background document) for each type of page background art that I have
(similar to a template but not saved at a template). And then when I want to
add a new page into a chapter in the main book, I would copy the background
document's page into the book, and then add the text and specifics to the new
page. Is this the best way?

Basically, it feels like Word holds so much promise with the vector
graphics, but hasn't fully implemented it yet. Wrong? Seems like I would
have to use Expression Design or Illustrator, then convert to bitmap and
import a Picture as a layer into my document. Perhaps this is the best way
since some publishers only take specific format and dpi bitmap images
(usually .tiff)?

Word 2007 is so exciting, easy and innovative. I'd really like to move away
from InDesign to Word 2007. It sure would save a lot of time and allow me to
be more creative. But I'm still not sure whether Word 2007 can handle what I
need with the graphics.

Thanks a zillion for all your answers!!!
Pam Pierce

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'll address just one small part of what you've mentioned here: background
images for pages. Word pages don't have layers or master pages in the same
sense as true page layout software. What Word does have is "watermarks,"
which are just graphics anchored to the header. Given that you can have
different headers for odd and even pages (and these can vary by section),
you do have some flexibility here. For more on these subjects, see these
articles:

Making the most of headers and footers
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/HeaderFooter.htm

How to put a header anywhere on a page
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/AnchorToHeader.htm