Meaker in 2007 | |
Born | May 27, 1927 (age 92) Auburn, New York, US |
---|---|
Pen name |
|
Occupation | Writer |
Nationality | American |
Genre | Mystery fiction, lesbian pulp fiction, young adult fiction |
Subject | Resources for lesbians |
Notable awards | Margaret Edwards Award 1993 |
Website | |
www.mekerr.com |
Marijane Meaker (born May 27, 1927) is an Americannovelist and short storywriter in several genres using different pen names. From 1952 to 1969 she wrote twenty mystery and crime novels as Vin Packer, including Spring Fire, which is credited with launching the genre of lesbian pulp fiction (although few of Packer's books address homosexuality or feature gay characters). Using her own observations of lesbians in the 1950s and 1960s, she wrote a series of nonfiction books about lesbians under the pen name Ann Aldrich from 1955 to 1972. In 1972 she switched genres and pen names once more to begin writing for young adults, and became quite successful as M.E. Kerr, producing over 20 novels and winning multiple awards including the American Library Association's lifetime award for young-adult literature, the ALA Margaret Edwards Award.[1] She was described by The New York Times Book Review as 'one of the grand masters of young adult fiction.'[2] As Mary James, she has written four books for younger children.
Regardless of genre or pen name, Meaker's books have in common complex characters that have difficult relationships and complicated problems, who rail against conformity. Meaker said of this approach, 'I was a bookworm and a poetry lover. When I think of myself and what I would have liked to have found in books those many years ago, I remember being depressed by all the neatly tied-up, happy-ending stories, the abundance of winners, the themes of winning, solving, finding — when around me it didn't seem that easy. So I write with a different feeling when I write for young adults. I guess I write for myself at that age.'[3]
- 2Writing career
- 5Published works
Early life[edit]
Marijane Agnes Meaker was born to Ida T. and Ellis R. Meaker (a mayonnaise manufacturer) in Auburn, New York, where she also spent her childhood. She mentions in an autobiography that Carson McCullers' book Member of the Wedding influenced her. In a 2006 interview, Meaker said of McCullers', 'I was drawn to all McCullers’s books. She was an underdog-lover as I am. She was also this sensitive, intelligent writer whose words were lovely. I felt she was a champion of everyone who felt out-of-step with the world. I still feel that way.'[4] Meaker grew up in a house filled with books and was fascinated by the concept of writing and writers. She was particularly interested in the idea of a pseudonym, that one could invent a new name, and a new personality with each name.
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- Edge: Collected Stories by M. Read online, or download in secure PDF or secure EPUB format. PDF off (no printing) ePub off (no printing) eb20 off (no printing). Questions about God, life, and death in “The Sweet Perfume of Goodbye” to parodying social norms in “Do You Want My Opinion?,” this is a funny, moving, and brave.
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Meaker asked her parents to send her to Stuart Hall School, a boarding school in Staunton, Virginia, when she heard that lesbian activity occurred frequently at boarding schools.[4] Unfortunately, she was kicked out: 'I was an unruly, rebellious child – a troublemaker with low marks. I was suspended in my senior year for throwing darts at a dartboard decorated with the pictures of faculty members cut out of an old yearbook. My mother's pleas to the bishop (it was an Episcopal school) got me reinstated long enough to graduate.'[5] As a high-school junior she began submitting stories to women's magazines under the name 'Eric Rantham McKay' and was soundly rejected.
Title Indian Home Rule, with Preface and Foreword, was published on March 20, 1910. Express my opinion on the Nationalist movement in India, I would even have refrained, for the sake of the struggle, from reducing my views to. Dialogue between the reader and the editor. Gandhi Kildonan Castle November 22nd, 1909. PDF2DTP is an affordable InDesign plugin to move PDF content to an editable format within Adobe InDesign. Once in InDesign, users can edit within a flexible and familiar environment. A single menu selection from within InDesign enables the PDF data conversion. May 10, 2012 “Do you want my opinion?” written by M.E. Kerr satirises society’s rules and norms surrounding promiscuity and the sharing of ideas through absurdism. The text creates a world in which the sharing of ideas is an utmost act of intimacy and promiscuity as a common activity engaged by all.
She later attended Vermont Junior College in 1945 and the University of Missouri from 1946 to 1949, where she was a member of Alpha Delta Pisorority. She wasn't interested in conforming to the rules of a sorority, though; she preferred to seek friends who were also writers. She made frequent submissions to literary magazines and collected many rejection slips.
Meaker sold her first story to Ladies' Home Journal under the name Laura Winston for $750.
Writing career[edit]
Vin Packer[edit]
Cover of Spring Fire - Vin Packer Marijane Meaker 1952
Upon graduation, she worked as a file clerk with Dutton Publishing, then as a proofreader with Gold Medal Books, and began writing mostly mystery novels as Vin Packer. According to her autobiographical young adult book ME ME ME ME: Not a Novel (1984), Meaker began her professional writing career by posing as a literary agent, whose 'clients' consisted of her own pen names. As Packer, Meaker wrote 20 books in all, including The Evil Friendship from 1958, an account of the Parker–Hulme murder case in New Zealand. Two books by Packer were loosely based on the Emmett Till murder and the aftermath of the investigation: 3-Day Terror and Dark Don't Catch Me. Unlike other popular crime writers in the pulp market, Packer's books were less based on action (such as Mickey Spillane's books), and more 'psychologically dense' and 'insidious'.[6] One mystery critic said of Packer's books, 'Her probing accounts of the roots of crime are richly detailed snapshots of their times, unconventional, intensely readable, and devoid of heroes, villains, or pat solutions.'[7]
As Vin Packer, Meaker wrote the groundbreaking romance novel Spring Fire, published in 1952, which is now credited with launching the genre of lesbian 'pulp' fiction. Spring Fire was a response to the immense success of a previous Gold Medal Books publication named Women's Barracks, that sold 4.5 million copies. Eager to continue their financial success, editor Dick Carroll asked Meaker to write a book with a lesbian theme. Her original story idea involved a romance between two students of a boarding school, but editor Dick Carroll asked her to change it to sorority sisters because the boarding school setting was too risky. 'He said, 'Well, it has to be a sorority, because a boarding school is too young.' He added, 'Make sure that these girls turn away from homosexuality because it is immoral, don't just have them talk about it being a hard life. We have to pass postal inspection.'[8] Writer Ann Bannon has credited her beginnings as an author of lesbian fiction to discovering the Vin Packer novels in the 1950s.[9] The response to Spring Fire was beyond all Meaker's and Gold Medal Books' expectations. Meaker states she got 'boxes of mail' from women who were thrilled to see a book that addressed a lesbian relationship; gay audiences weren't considered a market at this time.
Paperback novels were rarely reviewed by mainstream literary reviews, but a Packer novel titled, Come Destroy Me was noticed by The New York Times crime-fiction reviewer Anthony Boucher. Meaker said, 'I decided then and there that I would never write an ordinary story again; that if I was writing for paperback, I would write suspense because I wanted the reviews.'[8] Soon after editor Dick Carroll from Gold Medal Books died, Meaker stopped writing as Vin Packer.
Ann Aldrich[edit]
Cover of We Walk Alone
Meaker used the pseudonym Ann Aldrich for a series of five books published as paperback originals, but which were in fact nonfiction works. She read Donald Webster Cory's book The Homosexual in America, which was a nonfiction book about gay men. Noticing there was nothing similar for lesbians, Meaker used her own observations of lesbians and the lives of lesbians that included We Walk Alone in 1955, We, Too, Must Love in 1958, Carol in a Thousand Cities in 1960, We Two Won't Last in 1963, and Take A Lesbian To Lunch in 1972. The Feminist Press re-released We Walk Alone and We, Too, Must Love in 2007. Meaker said of this series, 'The Aldrich books were more like resource books. A lot of the mail I got was from people wanting to know where the bars were in New York, where they could live, where I had lived. You know, they wanted to know how to get to New York and how to get to these bars.'[8]
Cover of 'We, Too, Must Love' by Ann Aldrich (Marijane Meaker). Illustration by John J. Floherty Jr.
In an interview with the Lambda Book Report in 2005, Meaker reflected on the impact of her books as Ann Aldrich, saying, 'I honestly never thought about anything except people like me buying the book. I never thought of us having any entitlement or any importance; it just never dawned upon me. If somebody had showed me the [gay couples in the] wedding pages of The New York Times, which was awaiting us in the future, I wouldn't have believed it. I thought books were important, but these were paperbacks and so I didn't think they would last any longer than the paper that they were printed on.'[8]These books proved to be controversial when released. Books by Ann Aldrich were not overly sympathetic toward lesbians as a group, and they caused some consternation when being discussed by the Daughters of Bilitis. Ann Aldrich and the contributors to The Ladder took potshots at each other in print, once a contributor to The Ladder accusing Aldrich of being Ann Bannon, but always stating she expressed self-loathing in her writings.[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] In 1970, Gene Damon of The Ladder referred to Meaker as 'the evil genius' for her excellent writing about unpleasant and unsatisfactory lesbian themes.[17]
M. E. Kerr[edit]
Do You Want My Opinion By Me Kerr Pdf Editor
Meaker was persuaded to try young adult fiction at the suggestion of author Louise Fitzhugh (Harriet the Spy), and chose to do so after reading Paul Zindel's The Pigman. She chose the pen name M. E. Kerr, as a phonetic play on her last name. Although the audience was different from Vin Packer's, Kerr's approach to her stories and characters seemed to vary little. She still addressed topics not usually covered by children's books: racism, AIDS, homosexuality, absent parents, social class differences, and her characters still had problems that had no easy solutions. She said of this direction, 'I tend to write about people who struggle, who try to overcome obstacles, who usually do, but sometimes not. People who have all the answers and few problems have never interested me, not to write about, not to befriend.'[3] Kerr's books addressed functions and dysfunctions in relationships between parents and children, teachers and students, friends, and she often wrote about first loves.
Kerr's first attempt was extremely successful. Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! was published in 1972 and was about an overweight girl whose mother is so preoccupied with assisting people addicted to drugs that she virtually ignores her own daughter. It was listed by the School Library Journal's 20th century 100 most significant books for children and young adults. The story was inspired by a class Meaker taught by going into high schools and talking to students about writing. One overweight girl wrote stories Meaker characterized as 'really grotesque'; when her mother, a local do-gooder, found out Meaker was encouraging her, she complained that Meaker was trying to get her daughter to 'write weird.'[2] The novel would later be turned into an ABC Afterschool Special (as 'Dinky Hocker)' in 1979 with Wendie Jo Sperber in the title role.
Is That You, Miss Blue?, published in 1975, involves a girl in a Virginia Episcopal boarding school who develops a crush on her religiously devout teacher. Kerr modeled the story on her own experiences in boarding school when she developed a crush on one of her own teachers.
1978's Gentlehands is about a young man who becomes involved with a young woman from a much wealthier family. When he tries to get to know his estranged grandfather, he learns that the man was a Nazi who killed Jews at Auschwitz. The premise for the book, stated Kerr, was, 'I wanted to provoke the idea of what if you meet a nice guy, a really nice man, and what if you find out that in his past he wasn't such a nice man? How would you feel?'[2]
In 1994's Deliver Us From Evie, 16-year-old Parr tells the story of his 18-year-old sister Evie's relationship with another girl and also of his own interest in a girl whose family rejects homosexuality as immoral. Kerr again addressed homosexuality in 1997's 'Hello,' I Lied, about a young man who finds himself pulled in multiple directions.
Mary James[edit]
In the 1990s, Meaker added the pen name Mary James for a series of novels aimed at readers younger than the Kerr readership; it was not until 1994, after the publication of the third Mary James novel, that the covers indicated that the author was also known as M. E. Kerr.[18] Mary James books include Shoebag, The Shuteyes, Frankenlouse and Shoebag Returns.
Meaker gave advice in an interview for any aspiring writer, from her own experience: 'I would tell aspiring writers to read. Read, read, read, read .. Read the kind of books you'd like to write. Study your competition, see how they do it. Go away to college, or to work or whatever. See some of the world away from where you live. Try to join or start a writers' group where everyone shares what they're working on.'[3]
Personal life[edit]
In her early life, Meaker admits to dating men because it was expected of her. She said of meeting the expectations of her family and friends despite knowing she was a lesbian: 'I dealt with it by playing the game: dating, going steady with a serviceman I really liked, but not 'that way' and in general coping as we all had to do by behaving like everyone else.'[4]
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Meaker was involved romantically with author Patricia Highsmith for two years. She wrote about this relationship in the 2003 nonfiction memoir, Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s,[19] and discussed it and her own pulp fiction novels in interviews around the time of the book's release. Meaker explained her reasons behind writing about their relationship: 'I knew Pat when she was young and not yet so jaded and bigoted. The internet is filled with stories of her meanness, and prejudice, and also of her introversion, of her being a loner. I met that Pat many years after we broke up.'[7]
As of 2006, Meaker was living in East Hampton, New York, where she taught writing classes at the Ashawagh Hall Writers' Workshop. Her workshop experiences led to the nonfiction instructional book, Blood on the Forehead: What I Know About Writing (1998).
Awards[edit]
The Golden Crown Literary Society awards a Trailblazer Award each year to one author for groundbreaking works in the field of lesbian literature. Meaker won the award in 2013 and joined the likes of Ann Bannon, Sarah Aldridge, Jane Rule, Ellen Hart, and many others as guiding lights of lesbian literature.
The ALA Margaret A. Edwards Award recognizes one writer and a particular body of work for 'significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature'. Meaker won the annual award in 1993 as M.E. Kerr, citing four books published from 1972 to 1986: Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! (Kerr's debut novel), Gentlehands, Me Me Me Me Me: Not a Novel, and Night Kites(‡). The young-adult librarians called her 'a pioneer in realistic fiction for teenagers. Her characters and plots often deal with ordinary teenagers who, faced with extraordinary situations and events, must make tough choices.'[1]
She received other lifetime achievement awards from Publishing Triangle in 1998 (Bill Whitehead Award), the New York State Library Association in 1999 (Knickerbocker Award) and the Assembly on Literature in 2000 (Adolescents Award).
Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! (1972) ‡
- Selected one of the School Library Journal 20th-century 100 most significant books for children and young adults
- Maxi Award, Media and Methods magazine, 1974
- Best of the Best Books (Young Adult) 1970–1983, American Library Association
- Best Children's Books of 1972, School Library Journal
- ALA Notable Children's Books of 1972
If I Love You, Am I Trapped Forever?
- Children's Spring Book Festival honor book
- Washington Post Book World
- Children's Book of the Year designation, Child Study Association, 1973
Gentlehands (1978) ‡
- Christopher Award, 1978
- Book of the Year Award, School Library Journal, 1978
- Named one of the Best Books for the Teen Age, New York Public Library, 1980 and 1981
Little Little
- Golden Kite Award, Society of Children's Book Writers, 1981
Me Me Me Me Me: Not a Novel (1983) ‡
Him She Loves?
- Emphasis on Reading Award, 1985
Fell Back
- Edgar Allan Poe Award finalist, 1990
Night Kites (1986) ‡
- California Young Reader Medal, 1992
Deliver Us from Evie
- National Council of Teachers of English Best Young Adult Novels of the '90s pick
- Best Book Honor award, Michigan Library Association, 1994
- Horn Book Fanfare Honor book, 1995
Slap Your Sides
- New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age listee, 2002
- Oklahoma Library Association Young Adult Book Award nominee
Published works[edit]
As Vin Packer[edit]
As Ann Aldrich[edit]
As M. J. Meaker[edit]
As Marijane Meaker[edit]
| As M.E. Kerr[edit]
(‡) The young-adult librarians cited four novels when Kerr won the 1993 Edwards Award.[1] As Mary James[edit]
|
Short stories[edit]
- 'Devotedly, Patrick Henry Casebolt' 1951 as Laura Winston in Ladies' Home Journal
- 'Hot Snow' by Vin Packer in the January 1956 issue of Justice Magazine
- 'Only the Guilty Run' by Vin Packer in Some Things Weird and Wicked, edited by Joan Kahn and published by Pantheon in 1976
- 'Jimmy from Another World' by Vin Packer in Cosmopolitan's Winds of Love, published by Cosmopolitan Books in 1975
- 'Do You Want My Opinion?' 1984 in Sixteen: Short Stories by Outstanding Writers for Young Adults
- 'The Sweet Perfume of Good-bye' 1988 in Visions: Nineteen Short Stories by Outstanding Writers for Young Adults
- 'Sunny Days and Sunny Nights' 1989 in Connections: Short Stories by Outstanding Writers for Young Adults
- 'Son of One Eye' 1989 in Scope
- 'The Author' 1992 in Funny You Should Ask: The Delacorte Book of Original Humorous Short Stories
- 'We Might as Well All Be Strangers' 1994 in Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence
- 'The Green Killer' 1995 in Bad Behavior
- 'Like Father, Like Son' 1995 in Scope
- Foreword 1997 in Hearing Us Out : Voices from the Gay and Lesbian Community by Roger Sutton
- 'I Will Not Think of Maine' 1998 in Dirty Laundry: Stories About Family Secrets
- 'Guess Who's Back in Town, Dear?' 1999 in Stay True : Short Stories for Strong Girls
- 'Grace' 2000 in I Believe in Water: Twelve Brushes With Religion
- Contributor to 33 Things Every Girl Should Know : Stories, Songs, Poems and Smart Talk by 33 Extraordinary Women
- 'Great Expectations' 2001 in On the Fringe
- 'Hearing Flower' 2004 in Face Relations: Eleven Stories about Seeing Beyond Color
Further reading[edit]
- Gross, Terry. 'Interview with Marijane Meaker.' Fresh Air, June 19, 2003.
- Parks, Joy. 'The Book That Sparked the Fire.' Review of the new edition of Spring Fire, a 1952 novel by Marijane Meaker, writing as Vin Packer.
- Meeker, Martin. Contacts Desired: Gay and Lesbian Communications and Community, 1940s–1970s. University of Chicago Press, 2006.
- Meaker, Marijane. Introduction. Spring Fire. Written by Vin Packer. Cleis Press, 2004.
- Breen, Jon L.: The Novels of Vin Packer, in: Murder Off the Rack: Critical Studies of Ten Paperback Masters, ed. by Jon L. Breen and Martin Harry Greenberg, Metuchen, N.J., London 1989, pp. 55–69.
- Day, Frances Ann (2000). Lesbian and Gay Voices: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide to Literature for Children and Young Adults. Greenwood Press. pp. 201–205. ISBN0-313-31162-5.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ abc'1993 Margaret A. Edwards Award Winner'Archived 2013-10-21 at the Wayback Machine. Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). American Library Association (ALA).
'Edwards Award'. YALSA. ALA. Retrieved 2013-10-13. - ^ abc'Marijane (Agnes) Meaker (1927–) '. Brief Biographies (biography.jrank.org).
- ^ abcDanielson, Audrey. 'M. E. Kerr'. The Book Report Network: teenreads (teenreads.com).
- ^ abc'Words on HomoWords: Marijane Meaker Lesbian Writer With Many-A-Name and Even More Books' In Queerfeed: The Gay News Wire October 10, 2006.
- ^Quoting her autobiographical sketch under unknown name, attributed to Fourth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators.
Tamora Francis; et al. 'Learning About M. E. Kerr'. Kay E. Vandergrift's Special Interest Page. Rutgers School of Communication and Information. Retrieved 2011-05-26. - ^Server, Lee. 'Vin Packer.' Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers: The Essential Guide to More than 200 Pulp Pioneers and Mass-Market Masters; Checkmark Books, 2002.
- ^ abLovisi, Gary. The Return of Vin Packer: Marijane Meaker Resurrects a Pen Name from the Glory Days of Pulp Fiction.' Mystery Scene: Issue 100, Summer 2007, pp. 36–38.
- ^ abcdMeeker, Martin. 'Pulp Legacy'. Lambda Book Report 13:6–8 (Jan–Mar 2005), p. 9.
- ^'Writer Ann Bannon' (audio). Interview by NPR Fresh Air. Broadcast December 8, 1999; again August 25, 2003 in tandem with Meaker interview.
- ^Unknown. Ladder 1:9 (Jun 1957), p. 15.
- ^Unknown. Ladder 1:9 (Jun 1957), pp. 16–19.
- ^B. G. Ladder 2:4 (Jan 1958), p. 12.
- ^Martin, Del. Ladder 2:7 (Apr 1958), pp. 4–6.
- ^Damon, Gene. Ladder 4:11 (Aug 1960), pp. 6–7.
- ^Foster, Jeannette H. Ladder 4:11 (Aug 1960), pp. 7–9.
- ^Damon, Gene. Ladder 8:1 (Oct 1963), pp. 18–20.
- ^Damon, Gene. 'Lesbiana.' The Ladder 14:11/12 (Aug/Sep 1970), pp. 38–42.
- ^'M.E. Kerr (aka Mary James & Vin Packer)'. Authors and Artists Available for Appearances. Balkin Buddies.
- ^Meaker, Marijane (2003). Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s (1st ed.). Cleis Press. ISBN1573441716.
External links[edit]
- M. E. Kerr at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Marijane Meaker at Library of Congress Authorities, with 8 catalog records
- Aldrich[permanent dead link], James[permanent dead link], Kerr[permanent dead link], and Packer[permanent dead link] at LC Authorities with 2, 4, 30, and 5 records
- Works by or about Ann Aldrich in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Works by or about Marijane Meaker in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Works by or about Mary James in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Works by or about M. E. Kerr in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Works by or about Vin Packer in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marijane_Meaker&oldid=908362895'
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Apr 24, 2018
Perfect Conversion may not be attainable, but this is a close second
With so many source programs creating PDFs, each with their own method and coding for their layouts, it's not surprising that some conversions are a bit awkward to work with. We purchased with the intent of converting PDFs from our website where real estate investors choose a design and add body copy of their own. There is always information that will be swapped out by us for data merge, both text and images. We were hoping for native InDesign files from the web programmers, since that is where our data merge software operates. PDF2DTP bridges the gap for us and allows us to easily add the bleeds that the PDFs don't have as well as swap out address information and photos during merge. Text boxes are often unthreaded, but without knowing how the web form is coded, I can't be sure where the fault lies. Even so, PDF2DTP saves us quite a bit of time and is far superior to opening the file in Illustrator and dealing with its conversion shortcomings and lackluster paragraph handling.
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Documentation
FAQ
At this time the PDF2DTP plugin is macOS only. We do offer a DTP Conversion Service, which can convert your files for you.
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Nov 19, 2018
PDF2DTP is a life saver
Due to financial disaster after a stroke I had to let my license lapse on this so it's been a while since I last used it, and boy has the Markzware guys been busy, they have made this product a must-have in my opinion! the conversions are blisteringly fast and incredibly good, it's clear that Markzware talks to designers, this plugin is awesomely good, I'm not easily impressed but this new version has knocked my socks off!
On my list of essential software for designers!
On my list of essential software for designers!
Oct 16, 2018
Almost perfect, and way, way better than the alternative
I am working on a catalog project. The initial design and art production work was done in Asia and instead of using InDesign for this 40-page catalog, they used Illustrator. Don't ask me why, but I am assuming it is because many Chinese printers seem to prefer Illustrator. In any case, I am faced with converting an A4 sized catalog to 8.5'x11', converting all units to US standard and making many other changes to match the US model line up. PDF2DTP has been a god-send. It has allowed me to quickly convert each spread from Illustrator to InDesign. The converted files are all pretty good and I'm making progress. Some problems I've encountered: not all fonts copy, especially if there are fonts in the original doc that I don't have in my system. When vector illustrations are converted I have a long, long list of paths in my Links folder, vs. a collected .ai file, and images are not titled in the Links folder beyond 'Image 2', Image 3' etc. But these are relatively minor issues. I'm very pleased with the performance of the software - and very relieved to have found such a solution to my daunting problem. Thanks!
Oct 16, 2018
PDF2DTP for InDesign Mac
It's a fantastic product. The results of the conversion are almost perfect. Fast and easy to access and use. However for the price it would of been good to have the same as the adobe license, automatically for two machines.
Oct 15, 2018
This extension for indesign works really well, it’s not perfection but close to it. The only negative point is the fact that we get only one license per computer regarding the price. Comparing to a full adobe CS subscription that automatically works on two machines maximum on a single licence and cost approx 800/900 USD a year
Sep 17, 2018
Very simple to use; there isn't a version for Win
A very good product, it really works with a 'click'! Unluckily there isn't a version for Win (I've had to ask a friend to use her Mac) and th installer does't run automatically on old Macs. Support service is fast and precise.
Aug 14, 2018
So far so good..
Converted 265 page PDF and the results where good, only issue was a few text boxes on some forms moved and tables did not import any tabs but saved me hours of time if I'd had to recreate. See how it copes with the next job.
Jun 20, 2018
Brilliant product
We bought this product many years ago and it is brilliant, on 90% of jobs it really does a great job, on another 5% good enough to more than use the InDesign file and the last 5% sometimes it just struggles ! But have more than got our monies worth from it. Can well recommend it.
May 9, 2018
THANK THE GODS of Markzware
when the client only has a PDF of an old directory they want to be recreated and you want to pull your hair out .. MY HAIR THANKS THE GODS of Markzware for saving me the hours of tedious work. What would have been an entire day of recon became minutes with this handy plug in. I really appreciate it.. as does my hair! Bald never really looked good on me.
May 9, 2018
Surprisingly great!
I have just converted a 5-page PDF document in a very short time and I have to say, I am very impressed.
I didn’t have huge expectations as my document had a lot of shape vectors and different text formats - which I assumed wouldn’t convert well.
But I actually needed to do very little adjusting after it converted.
I´m assuming the better you layout your original document in InDesign (following styles etc.) the better it is.
But I actually needed to do very little adjusting after it converted.
I´m assuming the better you layout your original document in InDesign (following styles etc.) the better it is.
The only reason I didn't give 5 stars is because I had to manually install after it failed to install directly from the download. And, it doesn't convert perfectly (but you won't find a product that will!)
Great work and I think probably the best in the market!
Apr 24, 2018
Perfect Conversion may not be attainable, but this is a close second
With so many source programs creating PDFs, each with their own method and coding for their layouts, it's not surprising that some conversions are a bit awkward to work with. We purchased with the intent of converting PDFs from our website where real estate investors choose a design and add body copy of their own. There is always information that will be swapped out by us for data merge, both text and images. We were hoping for native InDesign files from the web programmers, since that is where our data merge software operates. PDF2DTP bridges the gap for us and allows us to easily add the bleeds that the PDFs don't have as well as swap out address information and photos during merge. Text boxes are often unthreaded, but without knowing how the web form is coded, I can't be sure where the fault lies. Even so, PDF2DTP saves us quite a bit of time and is far superior to opening the file in Illustrator and dealing with its conversion shortcomings and lackluster paragraph handling.
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Documentation
Manuals
Notes
Videos
System Requirements
- macOS 10.6.8 or higher
- A valid license for Adobe InDesign
- Internet connection to Activate and Register
- Adobe recommended hardware requirements to run your version of InDesign