USB Flash Disks– no good for transferring files

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We’ll this is a bit of an unusual review as usually I review a product I like and endorse but today I am actually going to review a product I don’t like and don’t endorse. Let me clarify what I mean by that as obviously all products were created for a reason and have their place so I am not insulting the core of the product itself I just want to write a review based on the current misuse of it.

Imagine this... you work hard on designing your book yourself and then you realise you have out so many high quality images in it (as are required for print) that it won’t fit on a disc to send to your publisher. “No worries”, you think as you copy the files to your trusty USB flash drive and stick it in an express post envelope, “I have a way around that”.

Well they may have more space that a CD but I would strongly recommend burning a DVD instead of putting your files on a temporary storage device. “I am sorry”, your publisher says, “the files seem to have corrupted in transit can you please resend them”. So you do exactly the same thing again and you get the exact same response, “I am sorry the files seem to have corrupted in transit can you please resend them”.

Why would you do the exact same thing again if it didn’t work the first time. Did you know that a USB flash drive no matter how well packaged can get very hot while in transit. You don’t know where it’s been left or for how long or what the temperature it reached. What I do know is a temporary storage device such as flash disk can get corrupted cells when it gets too hot and data in plain English simply gets destroyed.

A DVD may cost a lot more than a CD but you know you will only be burning the disc once as being a permanent storage device the only way that data can be changed is if the disc is physically damaged which is obviously much less likely to happen.

Adobe InDesign - Find out why InDesign is the publishing industry standard design software

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So you want to design your book yourself? Well I say good on you. But what happens when you go to send your book to print and find out your printer won't accept what you have done or wants to charge you in order to fix it. How were you to know you designed the book in the wrong software?

We'll simply put you weren't but what if you knew more about the right software so you didn't need the stress of having to repair damage you accidently caused as you didn't know what you didn't know or the additional financial burden or paying someone else to do it. Imagine if you could get your own book ready for print at the click of a button.

Well that is why I recommend Adobe Indesign. Apart from being the industry standard you can simply and easily get a book print ready in a click of a button. Better yet if you click that button and discover something isn't print ready (eg. your images are in the wrong colour mode or aren't high enough quality) you are notified immediatly and can make the necesarry adjusments yourself instead of waiting for your printer to tell you (or worse not tell you and your books arrive back from print with pixelated images.

The problem with using home based software like Microsoft Word or Publisher is they are designed for home or small business use and as such are not designed to print on professional machines. Your image quality is destroyed the moment you place an image into either of these pieces of software which is almost guarenteeing you are going to have print issues from using word. Once again Indesign comes to the rescue with all images stored external to your document as links allowing you to quickly and easily change your image mode, save and relink you image without making any changes at all to your main document.

Better yet when it comes to designing your books contents you can once again change the order of your chapters or which side of the page a chapter starts on at the click of a button. And if you want your book in an animated ebook format once again it is a click of a button to get those animated pages.

I swear by them but don't take my word for it, try them out for yourself - publishing a book has never been so easy!

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=indesign