“Electronic books may transform publishing industry” read the title on MarketWatch.com and the tag-line was, “Executives discuss impact of e-books at Frankfurt Books Fair.”

By Polya Lesova, MarketWatch

FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) — Electronic books may transform not only the publishing industry, but the very definition of what constitutes a book. E-books — whether read on an iPhone, a Kindle or a laptop — are a hot topic at this week’s Frankfurt Book Fair.

“Books are just devices. Wikipedia is the new Britannica,” said Ronald Schild, managing director of Germany-based MVB Marketing- und Verlagsservice des Buchhandels GmbH.

“Digital content is superior in many ways,” Schild said Thursday at a panel discussion on electronic books at the fair. “Reading today is solitary process, but there are many other ways of reading. [In the future,] it may become more of a conversation.”

While electronic books still account for only a small part of global publishing, their popularity is growing. Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN ) , which sells the electronic-book reader Kindle, is facing growing competition from other e-reader producers. In addition, many users are reading electronic content on their laptops, PCs and multi-functional mobile devices such as Apple Inc.’s (AAPL 189.91, -1.39, -0.72%) iPhone.  Read more... (692 words, estimated 2:46 mins reading time)

Last week we went over “Preflighting 101 – Part 2; Common Issues- images“.  Those of you who know how to design layout already know that various layout problems can occur.  How many times has someone asked you, “Please design my layout,” after they encountered typical layout problems with their initial efforts to design a layout or a problem with layout elements? Today we will delve into another very important and often over-looked area of document quality control – that of the design layout itself.

II d. Layout Problems

Color Usage
There are a few layouts problems in which there are situations where colors should be analyzed during preflighting. The first issue is the use of too many colors (common with designers who design own layout creations). If you have a document that uses both process color and spot colors and want to avoid a print layout problem, you need to make sure your print vendor can print the number of colors used. A good rule is to limit yourself to a total of six colors. This means that if you have process CMYK elements in your document, you will only want to use two additional spot colors. This is assuming that your print vendor can run six different colors. Again, this is the reason it is necessary to check with your printer and find out how many different colors can be printed during a single press fun. Also, normally you will have been quoted for a “2-colour” job or a “4-color” job, which you should adhere to.  Read more... (1268 words, estimated 5:04 mins reading time)