Preparing my book for print – a whole new world of pain!

28 Feb 2012 2 Comments

by mashadutoit in 2 Work in progress Tags:

I’ve been setting up my book for the print edition – I’m planning to make it available on Createspace, which is Amazon’s “print on demand” service.

Creating the print edition is a lot trickier than the e-book version.  Here is the print version of my book, open in Indesign, the program I’m using to do the layout:

I have to learn about trim sizes, font families, font sizes, line-spacing, layout problems like widows and orphans, how exactly to do page numbering and headers…the list goes on.  Funny how I can spend most of my life reading print books and never notice the layout conventions.  Should a new chapter always start on an odd page number, for example?  Where exactly does the acknowledgement, dedication, copyright information and so on go?

Then there are print specific problems like “show through” , colour conversions,  “rich black” and so on, and on.  Luckily the people on the Createspace forum have been very helpful.  It’s all a bit stressful, but if it works out, it will be worth the trouble.