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Automated ePUB Conversions . . . Not as Easy as You Might Think!

By Jennifer Hastings, PPS Project Manager You’ve just completed your book. The hard part is done, right? Well, maybe not. Have you given any thought to how your work will be distributed to your readers? Traditionally, books are printed in set quantities. Selling enough books will cover printing costs and hopefully make a profit. To achieve this, a writer must…

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Alt-Textually Speaking: What Is Alt Text and Why Do We Need It?

Article by David Bailey Alt text, short for “alternative text,” started because of a requirement in the Section 508 Amendment to the United States Workforce Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that requires all federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. Alt text is used to describe images in a document for users with a…

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Keyboard Shortcuts for Microsoft Word, Excel, and Adobe Acrobat

By Rachel Guise, PPS Editor What is a keyboard shortcut? Keyboard shortcuts are combinations of keys that initiate a command in the program that you’re using. The following lists are key combinations that can be used in Microsoft programs as well as most search engines. TurboFuture provides lists of the most used keyboard shortcuts as well as some that are…

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Publishing Services Vendors—The Multifunction Tool Anyone Can Use

By Dave Bailey, PPS Production Editor Publishing has moved beyond printing a book and calling that the finish line. Publishing is now a multiservice industry. Suppose your company wants to publish a How-To Guide for App development using Python. Not only do you need to write the guide, you need to create, find, and organize images for the guide; edit…

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Gender Neutrality in Publishing

By Rachel Guise, PPS Editor What is gender neutrality? Gender neutrality is the belief that language and other social foundations should avoid categorization according to a person’s gender or sex. This includes suggesting that certain societal roles belong to either a male or female. Before gender neutrality was defined, writers and editors made attempts to be inclusive with the use…

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Project Management: Guiding Your Project from Start to Finish

By Marsha Hall, PPS Project Manager At Progressive Publishing Services, our project managers nurture your project from concept to completion. Whether you’re interested in full-service publishing, book publishing services, publishing project management, or e-book publishing, our professional staff focus on your project, working one-on-one with you, your authors, editors, art departments, publishers, indexers, composition groups, and printers. It’s our task…

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Fooling with Fonts . . . Take the Hum-Drum Out of Your Emails

By Marsha Hall, PPS Project Manager In metal typesetting, a font was a size, weight and style of a typeface. In modern usage, digital typography is often synonymous with “typeface.” In the beginning, also known as 1931, The Times of London, a British newspaper, hired Stan­ley Mori­son, artistic director at Monotype, to cre­ate a text font. Mori­son led the project,…

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The Agenda-Driven Project Post-Mortem

By Dave Bailey, PPS Editor Whew, you finally got that big project done! During the weeks or months of a project’s life span, a lot of work gets done and a lot of decisions get made that not only affect that project, but may have implications for how similar projects are handled in the future. These project decisions could have…

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Can Technology Replace an Editor?

Technological advancement is a double-edged sword: Whereas it can bring prosperity and enhance life, technology replaces humans and tasks they’ve been doing for centuries. Research suggests technology could replace human resource departments, teachers, real estate agents, and even police officers and doctors. For example, robotics and automation have been linked to lost manufacturing jobs, but debate continues about how fast and…

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Digital Content Accessibility: Opening the Digital World to Everyone

According to the Department of Health & Human Services, 285 million people in the United States live with some sort of visual impairment and 275 million people live with moderate-to-profound hearing impairment. This doesn’t account for the millions more who live with physical, speech, cognitive, or neurological disabilities or a limited understanding of English. Assistive technology and accessibility features such…

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