CreateSpace Part Three

From Buckeye to G.I. cover

On Saturday I received the proof of From Buckeye to G.I. from CreateSpace. The first thing I noticed was the color and trim of the cover. The color was a little lighter than the original book, but I actually like it better. And they managed to trim the cover so that the border is equal around all four sides - something that Lightning Source seemed unable to accomplish. So far, so good. Then I opened up the book and found the pictures, illustrations and even the text of the book to be considerably lighter than they appear in the original book. I already have a challenge with the photos and illustrations due to the fact that the scanned documents were over 50 years old. I don't need the printing to add to the problem.

I contacted CreateSpace on Sunday to inquire about the issue. Today I received a response that basically said there is nothing they can change, and perhaps I need to rescan all my documents to a higher resolution and resubmit the book. Since there are 144 of them in the book, there is no way I am doing what they suggest. They were all originally scanned at 300 dpi, which is acceptable for printing. Funny how Lightning Source didn't seem to have any problems with them.

So the question is, am I being too picky about this? Is it sort of like the television sets at Best Buy, where you can definitely tell the difference in resolution when you see them all side by side but when you get yours home it looks perfectly fine? I think I will have some other people take a look at the book to get some impartial feedback.

Under Cover

Here is the cover for my new ebook. I am really happy with how it turned out. It seems to contain all the suggestions I have seen for creating a good ebook cover. I have been working my way through the Smashwords guidelines on converting your Microsoft Word manuscript into a successful ebook submission. Is it ever tedious! But I am shooting for getting it accepted on the first submission. Apparently not many people make it through on the first try. We'll see what happens. I have made the changes and have printed out the book to see how it looks. I need to verify that I removed all references to St. Louis County, as well as the forms I made available in the print book. The forms cannot be reproduced in an ebook. Down the road I think I will package the forms as a pdf and sell them separately off the website.

In terms of my dad's book, I am at a standstill until I get the back cover and book spine designed to go with the front cover that Katie came up with. On a whim I asked the ebook cover designer if she knew of anyone who would do those two pieces without also wanting to do the front cover. On her website she had indicated that she no longer is designing print book covers. She said that since I am going to print through Lightening Source, she would take on the project. I'm not sure what difference the printer makes to her, unless it is because she is familiar with their cover specifications? At any rate, I plan to take her up on her offer. I need to get a few things put together for her before she can begin. I also need to ask her what the charge will be for the design. She was so reasonable on the ebook, I'm hoping this print cover will be an acceptable fee as well.

Perfect by Design?

The interior of the book is finished! I received my virtual copy from the designer on Thursday, ready to be shipped off to a printer. So, next on the hit list is the exterior design. Katie has created the front cover for me, and it needs a little tweaking. But the spine and back cover still need to be done. Obviously it would make sense to have her do those as well. Unfortunately she is down to her last 19 days of college, so no way can she look at it before the end of the semester. And then she will have exactly 4 days in St. Louis before she heads off to Prague for a 5 week marketing session for school. I need to decide if I want to wait until July to have her complete the cover, or just turn it over to a different designer at this point.

In the meantime I have been working on my e-book. I decided to take my house history research book and strip out all references to St. Louis County, and then turn the remainder into an e-book. I think there is a market for the book as no other e-books exist yet on this topic. Plus I am very curious to see how all this e-book stuff works. I am going to go with Smashwords to produce the book. First of all I heard Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, speak at Publishing University last year and I was impressed with him and what he is doing. Second, he will format the book for all of the different reading devices, and will put the book into distribution. There is no charge to have him set up the book, and he just gets a percentage (I believe 15%) of each sale. That beats the heck out of the 40% or more that bookstores get on a printed book.

I have downloaded the Smashwords instructions (of course it is an e-book!) on how to properly set up your book in Microsoft Word prior to uploading it to Smashwords. I think I will be able to handle this myself, but if not Mark offers a list of reasonable contractors who will get your Word document into the proper format. I also contacted one of the e-book cover designers that Mark has worked with to see if she is interested in doing a cover for Keys to Unlocking House History. I just sent an email on Friday, so I haven't received a reply yet. I really did not expect to with it being Easter weekend.

The times, they are a changing!

Cover Up

I have been giving more thought to the book cover, in particular the back cover copy. I did go ahead and email the CBI Hump Pilots organization, and Jay replied back that he would be happy to read the book and write a comment for the back cover. That is exciting news as I believe it will lend credibility to the story. I have also emailed Harry Lagerstedt of the USS Anderson group to see if he will do the same for me. Since he was actually on the same voyage as my dad, I thought it would be fun to get a quote from him. The Anderson website is unavailable right now, so I hope that doesn't mean something bad has happened. Harry has been so sweet and helpful to me, and I know he is not a youngster. I probably need one more person to provide a quote, but I'm not sure who to approach. Perhaps someone from the Delhi veterans group in Cincinnati since that is where my dad was from.

After I get that all settled, I'll need the back cover designed. Katie did a great job on the front cover, and I can probably email her the information and she can do it from school. Worst case scenario I can hire Camp Pope to do the work for me.

This weekend I will be re-working the photographs and other documents in the book that don't meet the minimum DPI standards. Hopefully this will not be too big of an ordeal. This is when I really wish Katie was still at home to offer some guidance.