If you happen to not
have purchased the paperback copy of “Circa Sixty Years Dead”
then no worries. You may be better off waiting a few
days and I’ll leave it at its initial low price of $3.89 a little
longer. The reason I’m saying this is because, as I promised you
last post, I purchased a copy myself as kind of a proof (or author’s)
copy. It turned out to be a proof alright. A proof that it didn’t
come out the way I intended it to. I confess much of this was due to
myself missing overlooking certain tools on Kindle Direct
Publishing’s cover creator program.
If you happened to
have bought a copy of the paperback version of “Circa” you
probably noticed a long, ugly, gray line running along the left edge
of the front cover. Not only that, but the lettering of the title and
the image under it were pixelated. “Circa” is not a cyberpunk
story, so the pixelated edges won’t work for customers. I apologise
if you bought it like that.
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| Credit: Pixabay.com |
The problem is that
the previewer in the book cover creator is not a precise image of
what the product will look like in actuality and therefore in print.
But as I said last post, we would take the risk
together and I definitely took that risk. So we both wasted $3.89.
But it’s not a total waste. We paid to see how well the book would
turn out, and if you read it I sure hope the story at least turned
out way the hell better than the cover did and that you got some
of your money’s worth. So what you can do is, if you haven’t done
so yet, leave a review on “Circa”’s Amazon page and
I’m perfectly fine with you saying the book cover sucks if you
really think it does, because it does.
In the meantime,
ever since I received my “proof” a couple days ago in the mail, I
have been doing all I can to improve the cover. I confess there were
some tools on the cover creator that I had somehow missed and using
them could have prevented this screw up. If you happen to be planning
to self-publish a paperback, espcially through Kindle Direct, take
this as a warning not to miss any of these tools. One
of these
was a “3-D” view mode which allows you to manipulate the position
of the image of the book so you can see front, back and
spine.
Another tool was one
that scales the image on the book cover. Kindle Direct strongly
recommends all images are a minimum of 300 dpi (dots per inch). Using
this tool, if you scale the image to a low enough or high enough
percentage it will likely get rid of the pixelation and any
blurriness the image may show when it comes out in print. In my case
I had to scale the cover’s image down to about 23.-something (I
can’t remember the exact percentage) in order to get it to the 300
minimum dpi. Once I did that, I relaunched the book and so hopefully
it will be available in its improved form for purchase in the next
day or two. And, because Kindle Direct doesn’t offer free or even
discounted proofs, I will purchase another copy for myself once the
improved form is available.
I’ll let you know
more what happens with the relaunch of “Circa”’s paperback
edition next time. Also next time, I’ll have news on the logo I’ve
been working on for my self-publishing imprint. In the mean time, for
you fellow self-publishing writers out there, have you tried KindleDirect Publishing’s paperback publishing tool yet? If
so, what have your experiences been with it?
Until next time . .
.
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