I wanted my book to look like proper, published book. Some published books have the title of the chapter on each page, and I find this quite useful.
It was rewarding but a royal pain to attain this with OpenOffice, then LibreOffice. I am not sure I will [even try to] achieve that for my next book (yes, there is another one), but here are some of the steps I followed.
One big challenge I have found in the process of using only free software but at the same time engaging with people in the printing industry is how to create files in the formats and modes they require.
OpenOffice (now LibreOffice) kind of does the job for text. All I needed to do was to make sure that the fonts were embedded so instead of using the shortcut icon, I did File-Export as PDF and in the field PDF producer:
PDF/X-1a:2001.
Graphics are a different matter.
Continue reading