Indie and Self-Pub Book Corner discussion
Who is printing your books?
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Definitely don't go with something like iUniverse. :( What didn't you like about the quality of CreateSpace? They're not perfect, but A LOT is dependent on what you upload to them. A lot of CreateSpace books are not-so-fabulous, but it's because the people who wrote them uploaded junky covers and interior files.Formatting a book that will come out looking nice is A.LOT. of work. There is a reason people who do these things professionally are expensive. (I would never pay CreateSpace to "design" it, though).
There is also lulu.com and Lightning Source. Even some bigger publishers use Lightning Source (although they have both on-demand and offset printing, so there's a quality difference there, I'm sure), but I'm also sure the quality there is very dependent on having a well-designed cover and interior files, as well.
I work with Lulu. Granted I did pay someone to do the formatting and am very happy with it. (My print book prefaced the eversion.) I have also been very happy with the quality of my books from Lulu. This may be as much about formatting as with Lulu. I've never had them print anything that wasn't professionally formatted, so I wouldn't know about that.As an aside, I might be wrong but I think the actual physical printing from Lulu actually comes from Lighting source anyway. I emailed them once and the response I received came from a Lulu rep who said the question had been forward to them.
Does anyone have some pictures of the printed versions of their books they can share?
Sadie -- It probably does. I read something from Lightning Source that made me believe that even some of the printed stuff from CreateSpace -- not all, but the bigger, outside orders -- comes from LS as well.
Laekan wrote: "Does anyone have some pictures of the printed versions of their books they can share?"I took a picture of mine when I got the proof in the mail, http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zFCylp4-4SI...
I get my books printed through Createspace, and have been very happy with the quality and customer service. I did do all the formatting myself, which was rather easy. I think one of the biggest differences with cover quality has to do with the quality of the image itself, and people who use a small image and stretch it to fit. In those cases, I'll agree that the covers look less than stellar. But I've had many compliments for mine, even from local book stores. I'd be happy to take some close up pictures if you'd like, just PM me about it!
Darian
Darian wrote: "Laekan wrote: "Does anyone have some pictures of the printed versions of their books they can share?"I took a picture of mine when I got the proof in the mail, http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zFCylp4-4..."
Thanks for the picture! Your cover and everything does look great. What size is that exactly? And it would be really hepful if you added some close-up pictures of the binding and things like that!
Laekan wrote: "Darian wrote: "Laekan wrote: "Does anyone have some pictures of the printed versions of their books they can share?"I took a picture of mine when I got the proof in the mail, http://1.bp.blogspot..."
I snapped some with my phone real quick, so they're not the best quality (battery is dead on my camera - oops), but it should be easier to judge the quality of the book. I just tossed them up on my website, http://darianwilk.weebly.com/pictures...
I went with 5.5 x 8.5, which I believe is trade paperback size. My only complaint, which is a strange one, is the paper quality. It's too nice. Which seems to be with every POD I check into. I wanted something a bit more, well, flimsy, like traditional paperback paper - but it seems POD only use the good stuff!
Darian wrote: "Laekan wrote: "Darian wrote: "Laekan wrote: "Does anyone have some pictures of the printed versions of their books they can share?"I took a picture of mine when I got the proof in the mail, http:..."
Thanks so much!!!! Those pictures were really helpful.
Wow, Darian, saw your pictures and your book looks a lot better than what I saw, which had all of the pages in the right hand corner, regardless of which side of the book it was on. (Although maybe that was the fault of the formatting.)You said you did your own formatting? That sounds a little scary to me. I'm a real techno dummy.
Sadie - do you mind me asking who did your formatting?
Marsha wrote: "Wow, Darian, saw your pictures and your book looks a lot better than what I saw, which had all of the pages in the right hand corner, regardless of which side of the book it was on. (Although maybe..."Thank you Marsha. Aside from the paper weight issue, I wanted it to look as much like a traditionally published book as possible, and was very picky in the process. So I'm happy with the results. And I'm guessing too that the book you mentioned was a formatting issue.
Formatting did sound scary to me as well, I'm somewhat tech savvy, but I thought it would be a lot to take on. But Createspace now has formatted templates for every trim size. It was literally just copy/paste my text into it after editing.
Okay, I'll check it out. By the way, did you set your own price on your book, or did CreateSpace?
Marsha wrote: "Okay, I'll check it out. By the way, did you set your own price on your book, or did CreateSpace?"
Yes I set my own price, and can change it as often as I like. Sometimes it takes a day or two to catch up on Amazon though.
Marsha wrote: "Wow, Darian, saw your pictures and your book looks a lot better than what I saw, which had all of the pages in the right hand corner, regardless of which side of the book it was on. (Although maybe..."The formatting isn't all that bad. I just put my first novella-length print book on sale thanks to CreateSpace.
If you've got some patience and know how to format, say, term papers with Word, then you should be able to sort out how to format a .doc file to upload to CreateSpace. If you've got access to Word/Office 2003, though, instead of Word 2010, I'd suggest using the former over the latter. The built-in style sheets in Word 2010 gave me fits!
The hardest part of the whole enterprise was actually getting some pages to be completely blank (instead of having headers and footers on those pages)--section breaks were a little tricky.
Marsha wrote: "Wow, Darian, saw your pictures and your book looks a lot better than what I saw, which had all of the pages in the right hand corner, regardless of which side of the book it was on. (Although maybe..."Duh!! Just re-read this. The page NUMBERS were all in the right-hand corner. So half of them ended up in the gutter. Looked really bad.
I use Lulu for my printing. Generally, I've been happy with the service. The support is only okay, some of my questions have gone unanswered, but I haven't had any huge problems yet.
Tony wrote: "I started with Lulu, and they do good quality, but if you want to do anything more than buy the book yourself the costs build quickly. I'm working through Createspace now. The quality is excellent..."Hey, Tony. I am a real techno dummy, so I'm going to ask you a couple questions that I should already know.
It sounds like what you are saying is that Createspace wants a PDF version of my book? (It was typed in Word.)
Are there any preliminary things I should do with my document before trying to convert? (I know about not doing any hard returns or tab indents. I let the program do those automatically, right?)
What about the header and page number? Take them out or leave?
And yes, Tony. If you think I should just pay someone to do this for me, you can just tell me. *^_^*
Thanks for the information!
I used 48hrbooks.com. It's quick and pretty darn cheap. They make you do pretty much all of the work yourself, but they have intstructions for every step. I liked them because, once I sent the files, I had the copies in less than a week.
Are you getting books printed? Who is doing it? I started with iUniverse, but we parted company pretty quickly. I've seen two examples of books from Create Space and I'm not crazy about their quality.
Suggestions???