Authoring with Adobe
I was recently asked (for the millionth time! 😀 ) what software I use for my authorship / client projects.
So here’s a post all about the software we use here at Writerwerx University.
Why should I use Adobe’s software?
You don’t have to, of course. There are people in the world who opt to use free software that can get you by, though they might not be as powerful as Adobe’s programs. If you’re in a tough spot financially, or you don’t plan on making writing your career, or you only publish one or two books per year, paying for a couple of their apps each month might not make sense for you financially.
Becoming an Adobe subscriber is an investment in your writing as a business, not a hobby or a one-off task. If you don’t plan on treating writing like your main source of revenue (with the goal of making it be so), I wouldn’t recommend laying down the cash that I and some other professional authors have.
I’ve been using the Adobe suite of products for nearly two decades, and there’s good reason for that. If you’ve been looking for sophisticated software to help you with your paperback books, your cover design, your audiobook production, and your digital and print promotions, consider joining me as a long-time customer of Adobe’s fleet of products.
I say “consider” because I understand that they are pricey compared to other software. However, I think they strike a nice balance between having a relatively low learning curve and generating solid results in a quick and easy manner. Of course, because clients pay us to help with their books, I have a special need for a strong collection of programs that seamlessly communicate with one another so that I can take projects through the book development process without having to repeatedly convert files or juggle several different apps.
If you aren’t a career author, some Adobe firepower can still be helpful. But instead of subscribing to the entire group of apps, you might want to pick a single one, or maybe two, to focus on using.
An added benefit is that Adobe products are generally what’s used in the upper echelons of each type of service. For instance, designing the layout of a magazine or book is generally done in InDesign by people publishing books and magazines at billion-dollar companies that are reaching millions of people all over the world. Adobe Premiere is in the same camp as Final Cut and Avid Media Composer when it comes to creating multi-million-dollar films.
This means that, when collaboration with other professionals needs to happen on a project, there’s about a 99% chance that they already have and use an Adobe product for their projects. There’s nothing to teach, nothing for them to buy, no file conversions for us to do, etc. We can hit the ground running because we both use and understand the same software.
Can I develop a book with Adobe’s software?
Absolutely!
You can collaborate with writing professionals or volunteers through Adobe InCopy, you can format the book in Adobe InDesign, you can create promotional videos and moving book cover GIFs in Adobe Photoshop, you can illustrate your own characters or promotional art in Adobe Illustrator, you can record audio for radio spots or podcasts or audiobooks in Adobe Audition, you can grab ready-to-post promotional photos and video from Adobe Stock, you can find the best typeface for your book in Adobe Fonts, and more!
Adobe really is a powerhouse when it comes to publishing. That’s why Writerwerx University uses it on client projects. Why settle for less when you can have the best, after all? 😀
That’s a lot of software! What does each Adobe product do?
I feel like you can do almost anything with the tools that Adobe has available, but here are the apps I use the most, just to give you an idea what’s on the menu over at Adobe.
Adobe Creative Cloud: This is an umbrella that encompasses all of the Adobe products you could possibly want. It’s subscription based, so you can either pay annually or monthly in order to get access to a customized set of products or all of them.
Adobe Acrobat: For editing, signing, and sharing documents such as service contracts in PDF format. For instance, clients have sent me NDAs to sign through Acrobat or Adobe Sign.
Adobe Audition: This is audio recording and editing software used by professionals in various industries, such as film or music. I edited the premium version of In Helping Hands using Adobe Audition.
Adobe Premiere: Editing video recordings and webinars for social media followers or Apprentices is made fast and easy with this software. Just about any video you see on my author platforms or WU platforms that’s more than a minute long has likely been edited to some extent using Premiere.
Adobe Photoshop: Ditto above, but with images! This is also where I create both static and animated book covers for myself and WU clients.
Adobe Express: Because I have such great wifi and CPUs now (making the heavy hitters like Photoshop load in seconds and operate at lightning fast speeds), I don’t need to use this much. But Adobe Express is essentially the Adobe version of Canva. You can hop into Adobe Express and create a quick animated announcement or social media post. You can even post directly from Adobe Express instead of having to download the file and then upload it to a particular platform. Even if you didn’t purchase a Creative Cloud subscription, the free version of AE is powerful, and even the paid version is significantly cheaper than Canva, so it’s worth looking into!
Adobe InDesign: When it comes time to design your ebook or print book interiors (typeface, leading, margins, gutter, font, etc.), this is the place to be!
How much does Adobe cost?
Using any one of Adobe’s pieces of software ranges from free to around $100 per month, depending upon what you’re trying to accomplish. Some peripheral apps, like Adobe Stock or Adobe Fonts are technically free to access, but actually downloading any of those assets means paying a licensing fee for each image, font, etc.
If you have everything you need in hand and are just looking for something quick and easy for things like social media posts, go for the free version of Adobe Express and call it a day!
If you just want help with designing the interior of your book using the same tools that major publishing houses do, consider only purchasing InDesign.
For those of you who think you need three apps or more (for instance, InDesign for the book interior, Photoshop for the illustrations / cover, and Audition for creating professional-sounding audiobooks), it’s probably going to be cheaper for you to just get the entire suite of apps.
As of this writing, each major app (such as Premier or Photoshop) is about $36 per month to use. So, by the time you select three to subscribe to, that’s $108 per month. But, if you just get the “All Apps” subscription, you’ll get access to all the apps (there are over twenty of them), for just $85 per month.
Budget Wisely
For any authors who are not making at least three times what it costs to subscribe to these apps each month, consider taking advantage of the free or lower-cost options that Adobe has available. Once you start making a lot more than these apps cost per month, it will likely make more sense to subscribe. For instance, if you are doing a lot of your own design, videography, and image manipulation to promote and publish at least three books per year, subscribing to get all the Adobe apps could mean huge savings.
As an example, let’s say you promote and publish three children’s books per year. For each book you need 25 illustrations (Adobe Illustrator) for each book, and a cover (Adobe Photoshop), the interior formatted (Adobe InDesign), and promotional animations (Adobe Animate) made.
That’s 75 illustrations at a minimum $100 a piece = $7,500 per year.
Covers would be a minimum of $100 each = $300 per year.
Book design for 84 pages of content at $5 per page = $420 per year.
Promotional animations (GIFS or short videos) at three per book for $100 each = $900 per year.
In total, that would cost you $9,120 or more.
Meanwhile, if you paid for a year of Adobe Creative Cloud, you’d be looking at a single bill of $1,020, saving you $8,100.
The tradeoff, of course, would be the elbow grease you would have to put in to draw your own illustrations and make your own animations and covers. But most savvy authors understand that time and effort are much closer to being easily renewable resources than money. You go to sleep and wake up and have energy to put effort into something. This happens every day, whether you want it to or not. You don’t have to ask anyone for it, you don’t have to pay anything for it. Just go to bed! The same goes for time. Every day you wake up, you have another 16-ish waking hours during which you can spend some time working on your project. Again, this is nothing you have to fight for, pay for, or ask permission to get.
Whereas, with money, you need to complete tasks for someone else in order to get that money, and even that isn’t always guaranteed if you get scammed or taken of advantage of by an employer. Doing some of these steps on your own also means you get greater control over the finished product, which is often what makes people consider indie authorship over traditional publishing in the first place.
Otherwise, of course, you can always hire out. You can also do that on Adobe by reviewing the artists on Behance who specialize in things like book design and illustration. Many are available for commissions, so you can check out their work and contact them if you think you’ve found an animator / illustrator / designer you think is a good fit for your kinds of projects.
Adobe provides a sophisticated, powerful group of products that can level up an author’s book development strategies. But make sure that it makes sense for you on a financially level right now. Without consistent use, the amount of money you end up paying may be more of a drain than a boost for you. But don’t forget that you can subscript to a single app if you think that’s all you’ll need. For example, paying $36 monthly for InDesign may give you everything you’re missing in your book development process. Do what makes sense for you, your authorship, and your budget. There’s no shame in cobbling together the free services available in the world like Adobe Express or GIMP.
But if you’re looking for a comprehensive set of high-end software for your creative needs, look no further than Adobe!
