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How To Produce Your Book With Scribus.: Make The Front Matter

The document provides instructions for producing a book with Scribus in 3 main steps: 1. Make each chapter and the front matter as separate PDF files. This is done to avoid Scribus slowing down with large book files. 2. Adjust the front matter file to include the starting page numbers of each chapter. 3. Use a tool like pdftk to stitch all the individual PDF files together into a single book PDF. Some final touches like fixing widows and orphans may also be needed.

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sudy
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96 views

How To Produce Your Book With Scribus.: Make The Front Matter

The document provides instructions for producing a book with Scribus in 3 main steps: 1. Make each chapter and the front matter as separate PDF files. This is done to avoid Scribus slowing down with large book files. 2. Adjust the front matter file to include the starting page numbers of each chapter. 3. Use a tool like pdftk to stitch all the individual PDF files together into a single book PDF. Some final touches like fixing widows and orphans may also be needed.

Uploaded by

sudy
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How to produce your book with Scribus.

Scribus has a bad tendency to slow to a crawl when operating with book-sized files. The way to get
around this is to make each chapter (and the front matter) as separate PDFs then put the PDFs together
for the final book.

Make the front matter


• Make two copies of basic_novel_template_front_matter.sla.
• Rename one front_matter.sla.
• Open it in Scribus.
• Delete pages 1 & 2. Menu-Page-Delete. I'm not going to have blurbs or other books by Herman
Melville.
• Type or paste the Moby Dick text into the front matter template.
• It is easier to do this in the story editor. Select the frame you want to edit, then Cntl-T or Menu-
Edit-Edit text. I'll wait...
• Save your work.
• Export the PDF file. Menu-File-Export-Save as PDF,,, (the default settings seem to work fine).
• Open the PDF and admire your handiwork.
• Note that the last page is blank. This is the facing page for the first chapter.

Make Chapter One


• Make two copies of basic_novel_chapter_template.sla.
• Rename one chapter_01.sla.
• Open it in scribus.
• Select Menu-Edit-Master Pages...-Normal Left - Replace "Volomire Nobakeoff" with "Herman
Melville".
• Select Edit-Master Pages-Normal Right - Replace "Lollipop" with "Moby Dick".
• Close the Edit Master Pages window.
• Save your work. Make a of copy of this file and name it chapter_02.sla.
• Open chapter_01.sla again.
• Here's a trick to insert and format the chapter that will save you a lot of time:
◦ Click in the text frame of the chapter. Cntl-A to sellect all. Backspace to remove all the text.
◦ Paste your text into the empty text frame.
◦ Select all.
◦ Right click the text frame and open the "Properties" window (or use F2).
◦ Select Text then Style Settings.
◦ Select Paragraph Indent. This formats all the paragraphs at once.
◦ Use the story editor (Cntrl t) to set the first paragraph style to "Paragraph Drop Caps" style.
If you don't want drop caps, then use the "Paragraph No Indent" style.
◦ Now the whole chapter is formatted nicely!
• For this example the first chapter ran 6 pages. Delete pages 7-10.
• Export chapter_01.pdf
• Close Chapter One.
Make Chapter Two
• Open chapter_02.sla.
• Since chapter one ended on page six, we have to start chapter two on page 7.
◦ File-Document Setup-Sections. Change the Start Page to 7.
• Add the titles and chapter number.
• Use the “Properties” window to add and apply styles to the paragraphs as above.
• Note that chapter 2 ends on page 10. Chapter 3 will start on page 11.
• Delete pages 12-16 which will be 6 to 10 in the window at the bottom of the page.
• Save your work.
• Export chapter_02.pdf.

Make Chapter Three


• As above.
• At this point you should repeat the process with however many chapters you have until you
have a PDF for each.
• For chapter three I had to add six pages. Page-Insert.
• I cut and pasted the text frame from the even pages and then the odd pages. They should line up
precisely. If not: Windows-Align and Distrubute. This opens a window. Choose "Relative to
margins", then align center and bottom.
• Save each chapter.
• Export each chapter chapter_XX.pdf.

Adjust the front matter.


• Note the starting page numbers of your chapters, go back to the front matter and put them into
the index.
• Save the file.
• Export the .pdf.

Stitch the .pdfs together.


• Put all the .pdfs (front matter and chapters) into a folder.
• You can use a number of tools to put the PDFs together. I used pdftk.
• Open a terminal window and navigate to the folder that contains your .PDFs.
• Type the following into the command line: pdftk front_matter.pdf chapter_*.pdf output
Moby_Dick.pdf.
• Hit “return” and out pops Moby_Dick.pdf.
• -There are other free programs in Linux you can use.
• -Windows and Mac: There are a lot of free web- and desktop-based tools. You can find them
with simple searches.
Are we done?
• Well, no. The book needs some cleaning up to be ready for publication.
• You have to take care of widows and orphans.
• The Chicago Manual of Style defines widows as single lines left from the previous paragraph
that appear at the top of a page. Similarly, oprhans are the single line of the first sentence of a
paragraph or a very short line (for instance, one word) left at the bottom of a page.
• I did not fix widows and orphans in Moby_Dick.pdf. Your text will be different so you will get
different widows and orphans.
• You can see widows on pages 15, 17 and 26.
• You can see orphans on pages 1, 13, 16, and 20.
• How to fix these.
◦ One method is to vary the number of lines on the page by shortening or lengthening the text
frames at the bottom of the pages. This should be done so that the facing pages are the same
length, either short or long. This is a common technique. You can see it applied in many
commercial books.
◦ If you are producing your own book, you can add or subtract a few words of text to remove
the widow or orphan. This can have the happy effect of allowing you to keep the pages the
same length.
◦ You can change the leading by tiny amounts. The novel template has 33 lines per page with
a 16 point leading. So a line is basically 16 points high. If you make the leading 16.5
points, you will get 32 lines on the page and the block of text on the page will be the same
size. Do this on the page across, too. You have to make a special paragraph style to make
this work.
◦ You can also very slightly change the spacing between the words and get the desired effect.
◦ Of these methods, I favor the first and second.
• There are other things you can fix. (There is no substitute for learning about book design.)
◦ Sometimes, the drop caps feature gives you a gap between the top of the dropped letter and
the rest of the word. You can close these gaps or make them larger.
◦ Sometimes, you can see rivers of white space running through the text. If these offend you,
you can change the word spacing until the rivers go away.
◦ There are others, the more you learn, the more you want to diddle with your file!
◦ Enjoy!

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