Damon...
Adobe Acrobat comes bundled with Pagemaker because Pagemaker is an Adobe product. But you can buy Acrobat separately, although it runs around $199.
The stand-alone Acrobat product not only includes a copy of the Reader which you can distribute with your products, but includes Distiller which is the main engine that turns text/graphics, etc. into a pdf file and it also includes Exchange which allows you to take existing pdf files and add hyperlinks, join pdf files together, create a master page with hyperlinked chapter files, add video and audio links, etc. It's well worth the $199 that it costs.
But here is a way that you can get the product for less... way less. Most software manufacturers have several different price points - main retail and academic are two of them. In main retail you pay the full manufacturers retail price, and Adobe is one of those that rarely discounts or offers competitive upgrade offers. With academic pricing the product is the same (in fact the packaging is teh same too) but the price is highly discounted. The only way you can usually get academic priced software is to: A) Be a teaching/learning institution (school, college, etc.), B) Be an instructor, professor or teacher; or C) be a student.
Egghead.com is one of the software retailers that offers academic priced software (especially Adobe)... I got mine from them, using academic pricing for only $35! That's a major savings!! And it was the exact same software and packaging that sells for $199.
If you are going to school or teach at a school you can order the software at a dramatic savings. But if you aren't, check to see if a relative or friend is either going to school or has someone in their family that is going that would be willing to order the software for you. All they need to do is show proof of attending an accredited school and they qualify for the reduced pricing...
Hope this helps...
Success!!!
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