InDesign Question

[j tanner]

I tried to fix a typo and Amazon decided that my .75 margins aren't .75 enough on roughly 1/10th of the pages for their liking even though they state the minimum is .75. And whatever change they made is retroactive back to the version that's currently live -- that won't reupload.

In short, I gotta change the interior margin across the whole book to be a little above the minimum because I can't bring myself to just bump the individual problem pages an imperceptible amount. I'd still know... can't do it.

The surprising thing I found is that if I adjust the margins on the master page, it's adjusted everywhere BUT the reflowing text boxes that align to those margins DON'T move with them. I couldn't find any way to select text boxes on multiple pages either. Multi-select seems limited to a single spread.

So, is there an easy way to select/adjust them all (or just all recto, and separate all verso) that I'm missing?

[Gessert Books]

If the entire book is one continuous threaded sequence of frames (Story), you can try deleting every page after the first (causing overset text), and add one new empty page after it. Then you can reflow the whole book over again via shift-clicking that overset content into the new blank page.

[j tanner]

If the entire book is one continuous threaded sequence of frames (Story), you can try deleting every page after the first (causing overset text), and add one new empty page after it. Then you can reflow the whole book over again via shift-clicking that overset content into the new blank page.

Thanks. That's how I start, but doing from here would mean all the individual adjustments I've done for print (orphan/widow/letterspacing for line length/etc) would need to be redone from scratch wouldn't it? Or would it all fall back exactly into the same space?

(The fear of messing that stuff up makes me lean toward bumping 500 text frames if necessary.  )

[Gessert Books]

Those sorts of little local overrides will remain, the problem is that there may be a couple places where you’d rather they didn’t (because the reflow fixed the problem that needed solving before, making your prior fix unnecessary). A micro adjustment like this probably wouldn’t have a whole lot of that sort of thing, but it’s be worth giving it a skim.

Edit: assuming this is all in the gutter, you could reduce your outer margin by whatever amount you increase the inner, then do the reflow. That effectively just nudges the whole block over and all your line endings, etc. should land exactly where you had em. Incidentally, there’s a good chance those pages have a dangling serif that’s causing the problem. I believe e.g. italicized lowercase Fs in Garamond trip this up fairly often.

[j tanner]

Edit: assuming this is all in the gutter, you could reduce your outer margin by whatever amount you increase the inner, then do the reflow. That effectively just nudges the whole block over and all your line endings, etc. should land exactly where you had em. Incidentally, there’s a good chance those pages have a dangling serif that’s causing the problem. I believe e.g. italicized lowercase Fs in Garamond trip this up fairly often.

Yes, it's something like that though I didn't track down the exact letter. Like I mentioned before, this is a change from Amazon in the last 2 weeks because I've used Garamond forever and done 3-4 typo updates on this exact book without issue. Plus, failing my sanity check of uploading a file that passed previously. Anyway, like you guessed, I have space to bump the whole column a little to the outside of the page, so I may give a shot to the reflow from p1. Thanks for the suggestion. And next time I'll just adjust my templates to give a sixteenth from their supposed minimum.

[RPatton]

Aww man, those adjustments are painful when you have to make them. They always end with me debating whether I really need to fix that typo or can I just live with it, then eventually giving up and grumbling while I try to come up with the best fix that causes the least amount of pear-shaped potential.

I second the losing a bit of the outside margin and just slipping the column over. But if you lose too much outside margin, you can also try to select the master page and then go to the edit page and adjust the margin (make sure you check the box that says adjust the flow or something similar), InDesign will shift everything for you without you having to fix wayward text boxes.

This is how I've made changes when I need to make a fix to my margins and for the most part (especially if the nudge is small), I think I might have one or two faults that need fixing.

POD printers tend to bind tight, so I like to add some extra wiggle room with my inside margin, more than their minimum requirement. Then if I need to keep my page count down, I'll drop the font size by half a point (usually not noticeable, depending on the typeface).

[j tanner]

My proofreader likes to read on paper, so I print one and give it to her. I can see the margins are totally fine at .75 but I won't believe their recommendations ever again. I'll always give myself some padding based on what GessertBooks said about a wayward serif having the potential to trip it up and no option to override it.