Greetings,
Would anyone know (or know where I can find out) how NHQ formats the L2L textbooks (with all the fancy margin blurbs and sidebar items, etc)? Does someone at NHQ do that manually, or do they send it to a printing company who then does all the dirty work? I'm curious because I'm looking to get a CAP for Dummies-type book printed, and I'm a big fan of the formatting in the L2L textbooks. Any help is appreciated.
It was written and formatted in-house using some Mac publishing software. You can do the same things in Word using text boxes and inserting colored shapes. The printing company just printed and bound the books.
Just from looking at the format, you could easily do the same in Microsoft Word. To get it printed you could try using Lulu (which I have heard, but don't know from experience, is extremely easy to use, and they only put their tiny logo on one of the front pages). To use most publishers, you will need to convert the file to PDF, which you can do directly in Microsoft Word for free.
I would try Microsoft Publisher. That would be my first choice.
I agree on Publisher. It is much more versatile than Word when doing complex documents.