As I slink, little by little, more toward commercial publishing (still on a very small scale and with risk-limiting options), I find expenses growing. Office space, for one, of course, so I'm not trying to do everything from my home. But also . . .
- A block of ISBNs from Bowker (they are not cheap)
- Photoshop CS5 (the full Photoshop, which does things that have been omitted from the much less expensive Photoshop Elements -- notably the ability to use the CYMK color scheme, as opposed to RGB, in order to meet the requirements of Lightning Source and commercial printers.
- Adobe Acrobat X Pro (in order to write the specific PDF format required by Lightning Source)
Lulu.com has been entirely satisfied -- or apparently so -- with the PDFs I have been producing, and with RGB color scheme for covers. Lightning Source says NO WAY, though -- quite emphatically -- mandating the new software if I am going to be able to use LS's services.
So . . . after putting off those software purchases for years, getting by with low-end products (including a $9.95 PDF generator and Photoshop Elements) it was time to get out the business credit card and bite the bullet.
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