That's how much money I paid in 2010 for a copy of Adobe Creative
Suite 5 (CS5). Working as a production editor at a book publishing company,
I'd used the software, particularly InDesign, on occasion, and it had long
been my intention to gain more experience with this industry-standard tool.
As it was, I spent many hours marking up page proofs to indicate text
corrections and identify page-layout problems, but I had no idea what my
colleagues in the design and composition departments did after I returned
the proofs to them. How was a book designed using InDesign? How did a
compositor input my corrections into a file, and how did he or she ensure
that such corrections caused no further errors? In short, what did the book
publishing workflow look like beyond my little production-editorial corner
of the cycle?
As I said, I'd intended for some time to get to grips with InDesign to
answer these questions, but it took some vanilla extract for me to decide
finally to step into the ring. My partner had just brewed up a homemade
batch, and we'd decided to sell it and give it as gifts over the holidays.
Of course, we needed labels for the bottles. My attempts at designing them
using the software available to me were lacking; clearly, a more
professional tool was needed. This seemed like the perfect excuse to
purchase a copy of CS5: I could write it off as a business expense, and I'd
begin the process of learning a complicated piece of software used daily in
my industry.
So, I did it. I took the plunge, and made the single biggest purchase thus
far on my credit card for a full-price version of the software. I brought
home manuals from work, and began my study. I'm pretty pleased with the
labels I eventually designed, which captured the intended retro-apothecary
feel better than anything I'd managed to create previously. And I
certainly learned a lot, too, with help along the way from my father, a
retired prepress operator and graphic designer.
But, as with so many other things, the good intentions with which I'd began
the project gave way to the exigencies of life. I made some preliminary,
fumbling attempts at book design, but in the absence of a formal tutorial
or program of study, I never really got anywhere. Life, work, politics, all
intervened. No worries, I thought: I'd paid for the software, and it was
mine now. There was no time limit on this thing; it was a life skill I'd
invested in, and, if I couldn't get to it immediately, I'd get there
someday.
Fast-forward to 2014, when I'd resigned my in-house position to go
freelance following the birth of my first son. At some point in that year,
I found myself thinking about resuming my study of InDesign. In part, I was
motivated by a desire to expand my business. I imagined being able to offer
my services as a copyeditor, proofreader, designer, and compositor. But (so
I thought) I'd never be able to add those last two items to my business
card if I didn't understand the industry-standard software used to
accomplish those tasks. So I logged into my new iMac and got out the CS5
installation disks I'd paid over a grand for four years earlier.
What happened next involved a cycle of emotions, beginning with surprise,
followed by shock, then cynicism. The operating system on my new Mac---a
machine only {\it four years} younger than my previous one---was
incompatible with the version of InDesign I owned. I could either downgrade
the OS on my Mac to be able to run the software---unfeasible for a number
of reasons---or upgrade my version of Creative Suite at a significant cost.
At the time, Adobe had just begun pushing subscription services for its
software; under this arrangement, the end user doesn't actually own the
ones and zeros that constitute a particular tool, but rather rents them from
a company on an annual basis. Bullshit, I thought. Fucking bullshit.
There has to be a better way.
