What I Learned Printing With CreateSpace
I know, I know--I said that I was going to film myself OPENING the package--it was completely by accident that I opened the cardboard box yesterday, expecting it to still be wrapped in some sort of paper--it wasn't. So I'm sorry about that, but I can PROMISE you that I did get a little misty-eyed. When
The Charismatics
arrives in the mail be prepared for a torrential downpour of tears, and that I WILL record.
**YouTube hates me and cut off two minutes of my video. I already spent three hours waiting for it to upload as it is, so I'm just going to give you a run-down here about as well about what I learned from printing my FIRST WORK EVER ON CREATESPACE:
1. I chose the 6x9 size to print it with, and personally I feel that it is WAY too big. Twilight, the book I am basing my own design off of, is smaller--the 5x8 choice that CreateSpace offers. So I would strongly recommend going with the smaller size--6x9 just seems far too big, personally.
2. I chose cream paper for the interior--comparing it to Twilight I can see that it is similar, but definitely more yellow, than Twilight's pages. After I'd done some research I found that cream is the most popular interior color for fiction, due to it's ease on readers' eyes. I plan on keeping the cream color, but do recommend trying out the white if you are curious or averse to yellowish pages.
3. I designed my cover on Canva, and CreateSpace did warn me that the cover wasn't high-enough quality for print. I could see some "graininess" with the lettering and the picture, so I recommend either hiring a cover designer or using CreateSpace's Cover Creator for your own work. I designed a back cover with a short description of Cruel and two reviews from Amazon. This was the style that Ksenia Anske did for the back of her novel, Rosehead.
4. **Cut off in video: I discussed how dealing with the correct page numbers was difficult. If you are converting a Microsoft Word file, it is from an 11x8-sized page. Thus, if you put page numbers on those, when CreateSpace takes your doc. file and converts it to a 6x9 PDF, your pages have changed and the numbers no longer apply. What I ended up having to do was to look at the PDF file once it was converted and write down the page numbers they became, and then change them in the Microsoft Word file. It still messed up Cruel's first page (I have it down as page 8 but it's actually page 6), so I anticipate this being one of the most difficult things about formatting my own manuscript. I'll probably have to figure out how to re-size my Microsoft Word file to a 6x9 page so that I can assign page numbers correctly.
5. **Cut off in video: Connect with/About Ashley R. Carlson pages. I included these at the end of my short story, and suggest you do too. This was discussed in Mark Coker's Smashwords Style Guide, and I think it's useful for print books as well as e-books. These pages introduce me to readers, and Ksenia Anske just wrote a blog post about her theory that readers who feel like they "know" and "like" an author are more inclined to review AND to review a book highly. Makes a lot of sense.
6. I chose Times New Roman for the font, and discuss in the video that I don't really care for it--the lines seem a bit close together and hard to read. This would probably only worsen with a smaller print size. So I will look into fonts to use that don't have a copyright (Times New Roman doesn't) but emulate the one in Twilight that is easier to read.
Please share your own tips and experiences with CreateSpace, especially regarding page numbers if you have mastered that particularly mysterious art.
Perhaps the most exciting part of this whole experience is how EASY it was to do--the book came within four days and it exists. IT EXISTS. A print version of my work. So go on and do it yourself, already.
Until next time, keep writing and keep dreaming!
Like what you read? Subscribe to my blog/newsletter!
**YouTube hates me and cut off two minutes of my video. I already spent three hours waiting for it to upload as it is, so I'm just going to give you a run-down here about as well about what I learned from printing my FIRST WORK EVER ON CREATESPACE:
1. I chose the 6x9 size to print it with, and personally I feel that it is WAY too big. Twilight, the book I am basing my own design off of, is smaller--the 5x8 choice that CreateSpace offers. So I would strongly recommend going with the smaller size--6x9 just seems far too big, personally.
2. I chose cream paper for the interior--comparing it to Twilight I can see that it is similar, but definitely more yellow, than Twilight's pages. After I'd done some research I found that cream is the most popular interior color for fiction, due to it's ease on readers' eyes. I plan on keeping the cream color, but do recommend trying out the white if you are curious or averse to yellowish pages.
3. I designed my cover on Canva, and CreateSpace did warn me that the cover wasn't high-enough quality for print. I could see some "graininess" with the lettering and the picture, so I recommend either hiring a cover designer or using CreateSpace's Cover Creator for your own work. I designed a back cover with a short description of Cruel and two reviews from Amazon. This was the style that Ksenia Anske did for the back of her novel, Rosehead.
4. **Cut off in video: I discussed how dealing with the correct page numbers was difficult. If you are converting a Microsoft Word file, it is from an 11x8-sized page. Thus, if you put page numbers on those, when CreateSpace takes your doc. file and converts it to a 6x9 PDF, your pages have changed and the numbers no longer apply. What I ended up having to do was to look at the PDF file once it was converted and write down the page numbers they became, and then change them in the Microsoft Word file. It still messed up Cruel's first page (I have it down as page 8 but it's actually page 6), so I anticipate this being one of the most difficult things about formatting my own manuscript. I'll probably have to figure out how to re-size my Microsoft Word file to a 6x9 page so that I can assign page numbers correctly.
5. **Cut off in video: Connect with/About Ashley R. Carlson pages. I included these at the end of my short story, and suggest you do too. This was discussed in Mark Coker's Smashwords Style Guide, and I think it's useful for print books as well as e-books. These pages introduce me to readers, and Ksenia Anske just wrote a blog post about her theory that readers who feel like they "know" and "like" an author are more inclined to review AND to review a book highly. Makes a lot of sense.
6. I chose Times New Roman for the font, and discuss in the video that I don't really care for it--the lines seem a bit close together and hard to read. This would probably only worsen with a smaller print size. So I will look into fonts to use that don't have a copyright (Times New Roman doesn't) but emulate the one in Twilight that is easier to read.
Please share your own tips and experiences with CreateSpace, especially regarding page numbers if you have mastered that particularly mysterious art.
Perhaps the most exciting part of this whole experience is how EASY it was to do--the book came within four days and it exists. IT EXISTS. A print version of my work. So go on and do it yourself, already.
Until next time, keep writing and keep dreaming!
Like what you read? Subscribe to my blog/newsletter!
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