UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion
This topic is about
The Reluctant Hero
Agony Aunt
>
KDP Paperback Formatting - Advice Sought Please
date
newest »
newest »
Jacquelynn wrote: "It sounds as if you have gone into it very thoroughly, Pam. I have never prepared a book for KDP paperbacks, and my novels have gone into Kindle format as they already are. I'm currently formatting..."Thanks Jackie, that's very helpful. I have some prelim pages but not the author bio you suggest and the forthcoming publications, in my case, are at the back on the last page so maybe I should shift those forward, on the back of the author bio.
Thanks again Jackie. So not much point having a chapter 1, chapter 2 etc contents page you think?My books are all forthcoming I'm afraid, have only published this one, but I did include the short blurb about the next two at the back of my ebook versions so could put at the start on page ii.
Jacquelynn wrote: "Sorry, misread what you said above, Pam. Not sure about putting a blurb about forthcoming ones at the front. I think I would stick to the back."From reading through the link in the Amazon "Kindle Quality Issues Dashboard" thread, putting the blurbs about the forthcoming books ahead of the content is a major no-no.
This would be the paperback - the Kindle has all that stuff well at the back - but OK thanks, have taken the point made by Jackie that they aren't already available and will keep them at the back and just put an author bio on page 1 with a blank page 2.
OK thanks Jackie. Have left them where they are on the last page!
Pam wrote: "I'm currently in the throes of formatting a paperback of my novel in KDP ..."Have you succeeded? I have had problems with the wrap-around cover.
1. The Amazon Cover Creator Tool appears not to work. I uploaded my artwork, stuck it on the appropriate Cover Creator template, pressed 'Preview' and voila, the spine text was shown running down the middle of the back cover on top of the text there.
2. So I downloaded their PDF template, stuck my artwork in it, and re-uploaded it. It all looked fine in the preview tools, I published, but it then went in to the REVIEW state. A day later it went back to DRAFT. Nothing on the KDP web-site, so I resubmitted. Big mistake; they'd sent me an e-Mail saying the cover image was too small, so presumably the REVIEW will fail again, but I can't cancel it. The cover image is of course the size of the template they let me download. I can make it bigger as instructed in the e-Mail, but it is all proving far more difficult that it needs to be.
David wrote: "Pam wrote: "I'm currently in the throes of formatting a paperback of my novel in KDP ..."Have you succeeded? I have had problems with the wrap-around cover.
1. The Amazon Cover Creator Tool appea..."
I'm afraid I've just finished wrestling with the actual paperback layout and uploading my PDF file for the book itself. I have just emailed the artist who did my ebook cover to (I hope) arrange for them to do this one. I had a quick look at Cover Creator and backed away rapidly.
On another page where you can download a template I did go so far as to enter the number of pages now I have that finalised, the type of paper and the trim size and have looked at the resulting template, but am not even sure what software could be used to put the bits in (I don't have Photoshop and although I have Gimp, I only do very simple things in it, not messing about with layers etc). I also found a page on their site which had very complex measurements for working out the size of the spine, most of which went over my head unfortunately. Can't find the page I'm thinking of now but there is this one which talks about how you can generate your own from your own measurements - https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201953020.
Maybe they mean the size of your actual image file that you put into the template? They do have a minimum and maximum I saw - just found the bit I was thinking of on this page - https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201857950#covercalc. That's where they talk about calculating the spine size - don't know why you'd need to do that if you have downloaded their template.
Pam wrote: "Maybe they mean the size of your actual image file that you put into the template? They do have a minimum and maximum I saw"I used GIMP. to generate the cover. It's actually easier if you use layers. I downloaded their template, started GIMP with the PNG they give you, pasted my artwork in as new layers, and scaled the pasted artwork layers to precisely cover the template.
Unfortunately the Amazon Review indicated that the template did not include the bleed border. So I created a new image 75 pixels bigger in each direction , pasted the PNG template into that, then pasted my artwork in as before, filling my new image completely.
Finally I flattened the image and exported it as a PDF to get the file to upload to Amazon.
The font I've used throughout is Garamond and for the main text and most of the front matter I've used 12 point. Justified for main text. Line spacing is 1.5 lines. First para of each scene is blocked, rest have a first line indent of 0.3".
Chapter headings are Garadmond 18 point and have 180 pts before and 12 after, given advice to put chapter headings down the page (think a third).
Margins are 1" top and bottom, 1" inside and outside, and gutter is set to 0.5".
Header and footer are 0.49" from edge. I do have different odd and even but so far have not put any text along the top. I know some books have the author's name on one side and the book title on the other but wasn't sure whether to bother with that as a lot don't seem to have anything along the top now. The numbering uses a Word format where a dash is before and after a number with space between, for example, - 1 -, - 240 - and the number is centred at the bottom.
I did try when I was doing the file for the ebook to experiment with drop caps but was put off because it made the formatting go skew-with. I wondered if it is necessary for the paperback and if so, does anyone have any advice about that?
I also wondered if the pages of the final book have to number a multiple of four? To do with the printing process where I think they print two pages on one side and two on the other? It is at the moment but if I put in drop caps that would presumably change things.
I had some issues getting Word to behave itself with the footer page numbering but last time I looked it still seemed to be OK so I'm wary of changing too much around! Anyway, advice would be gratefully received so I can tell if I'm going about it the right way.