New Lessons: eBook to Print

By admin | October 26, 2019

How many of you publish eBooks only (Kindle or iBook editions…)? That’s me. For now. But…

Now I’m thinking all things paperback publishing. No hardcovers for now, and that’s okay.

In fact, more seriously than ever, I’m considering embarking on the tree-killing phase of my independent publishing journey.
That translates into “Fear of Commitment.” Once on paper, no more easy revisions!

I flirted with starting down this path well over a year ago, and shared what I learned at that time in an article about one print-on-demand (POD) vendor, KDP, or Kindle Direct Publishing, an Amazon company. FYI, if you were familiar with CreateSpace, it has been absorbed into KDP. I posted some good info in an article you can find here.

You can see I’ve learned more since then, but rather than repeat much of that material, see that article for good questions self-publishing authors of print books should research on cryptic topics such as book format, spline width, full-bleed, text boundaries, etc. Not for the feint of heart, but essential questions all. Fortunately, Print-on-demand (POD) vendors are helpful navigating this morass.

Here’s what I’m learning today:

Scrivener remains my overwhelming author software of choice; however, I need to learn even more new terms and why they are important as I set my sites on print. For example:
- What is the difference between mass-market and trade paperbacks? See Joseph Kunz’s excellent article explaining the difference. I’m aiming at mass-market for lower unit cost (and price).
- What precise formatting dimensions are expected for each, and how does that influence my design (my “copy,” or text; and graphics) for a front cover, the spine (the narrow edge that shows when the book sits on the shelf), and the back cover?
  - I suggest studying the detailed specifications of each POD vendor before spending time creating your own format and design. Don’t waste time redesigning, like me.
  - For example, guidelines for KDP can be found here.
- I design my own cover art using Canva which offers some nice basic designs from templates, especially after I add my own artwork, which is optional. If you hire the services of a professional cover designer for several hundred dollars or more for each project, you need not worry so much about this part of the process other than paying your artist. A few ideas for you:
  - Use your favorite search engine (my favorite is duckduckgo.com because they don’t micro-market to me like the big boys) to locate “book cover designers” and roll the dice! Or,
  - Consult with successful authors to discover their favorites. Joanna Penn has made a name for herself writing and publishing both fiction and non-fiction. Take a look at her extensive list of book cover designers here.
Scrivener continues to be my amazing all-in-one writer’s studio. All of my formatting, even for paper, can be achieved within this single program. As I discover I need them (e.g., for print), I’m finding useful features in the Compile (format/export) feature of Scrivener:
- The “Print” function in Compile, for example, doesn’t mean I need to print to paper. Rather, I will format for print, and save my output in a PDF file format, or some other type of file, to pre-flight (inspect) the results,
- Heretofore unimportant (to me) formatting and ID options, such as:
  - Margins. They now need careful consideration. New terms, such as guttering are now important. These are the margins closest to the center of the book, where the rightmost margin of the leftmost page is closest to the leftmost margin of the rightmost (facing) page. The gutter. Why? Well, the thicker (as in more pages in) the book, the wider the guttering margins must be. Huh! Who knew?
  - Page Count. Too many pages means too high a book price required by the printer (they charge by the page). If the book costs too much, that impacts my sales. Artificially lowering the price (a tighter profit margin) leaves fewer pennies left to drift into this author’s bank account. And my CFO claims it’s not enough to justify a year’s worth of effort. Huh. Alas, what is a poor scribe to do. Is not every word I pen precious? The truth is it ain’t worth a plug nickel if nobody buys the darn book because it costs too much!
  - Scrivener Compile for Print: This may require a good deal of experimentation, but this article is helping tweak my freak. And remember, experimentation with the look of the book can be achieved without killing a single tree. Select Print formatting in Compile and then export your format to a PDF file instead of to a printer. I will spend the time to get it right!
  - ISBNs: A comprehensive discussion of ISBNs can be found in this article. ISBN is an acronym for the all-important International Standard Book Number. This article is a must-read for all self-published authors!
    - While I haven’t needed an ISBN to self-publish an eBook within a single channel (think only Kindle Edition only on Amazon, for example), a unique ISBN is required for each:
      - Print book,
      - Audiobook,
      - Language.
    - ISBNs for use in any sales channel are not free. I’m saving my pennies to buy 100 ISBNs for $575 (better deal than $150 each!). Why? Well…
      - I’ll have 4 books published by year-end x 3 (eBook + audiobook + paperback) = 12 ISBNs I require now, and,
      - I’ll require 3 additional ISBNs for each new book (potentially).
      - Each revision requires an additional IBSN for each format
      - If I should choose to publish other authors’ books (unlikely), I will have some ISBNs to spare.
      - Plus I have several shorter projects like short story anthologies and novellas in the wings.
I’m discovering new resources on the Internet for exploring features I had yet to learn within Scrivener, and will be useful as I commit to print. Some features ease the task of writing, while others ensure a consistent look and feel across all my books once printed. Very cool stuff. Such as:
- Keywords. Here’s why. I assign a keyword to each scene or chapter within which a certain character appears. Then I can search on that keyword in my 100,000-word novel to see how many scenes or chapters in which that character appears. Or I assign a different keyword to all the scenes or chapters relevant to one storyline, and a different keyword to another. That helps me understand the balance and distribution across the storylines.
- Templates. Let’s say I don’t want to recreate dozens of settings for each new book. I only publish one book a year. Remembering all those settings for that long is a pain, and if dozens of options are not precisely duplicated, the latest book doesn’t look quite like the last one. This is particularly problematic for a series. Using the same template for each project simplifies matters. I discovered some wonderful articles for future projects that you might find useful in structuring your own work. My advice? Study Scrivener templates! Create your own! Or modify someone else’s for your use to keep your projects consistent! Examples:
  - 30-Chapter Novel Template (Damien LeDoux)
  - Romance Novel Template (Gwen Hayes)
  - Murder Mystery Template (Jennifer Mattern)
  - And if you need some help importing templates into Scrivener or are looking for some non-fiction templates (some cost a few bucks), click here.
- Page Formatting Options for Print:
  - I’m in the process of crafting my fondest page and book formatting dreams within Compile in Scrivener. And not just for Fractured Dreams, but for all my projects. With quality and consistency. But this will take some work on my part unless I want to spend money. Here are the options:
    - This Page Formatting Tricks article includes some clever ideas on how to use Scrivener Collections to track different versions of the same project (ePub or iBooks, Print, or Kindle). I like these ideas because it keeps me from needing external tools,
    - Alternatives to focusing on Scrivener Compile include spending money formatting your manuscripts with other products like Adobe InDesign (free trial, then $21 monthly!) or the ease-of-use-per-dollar value, Vellum ($250, one-time charge for eBook & Print), but those are still additional significant expenditures and learning curves of other tools.
    - Or you can spend even more (thousands across multiple projects) hiring one of the countless professional book formatting services to do the work for you. All are reasonable choices with different price points, but the choice is yours.

So it occurred to me that even after spending a few years using just the Scrivener features I needed, I’m still learning more this amazing tool can do for me.

Now that my manuscript (final draft) for “Fractured Dreams” is out for beta readers to pick apart (thank you, all!), I’m spending some time learning all this print stuff before I start work on the next project.

You get the idea. Thinking paperback requires different considerations than thinking eBook; however, Scrivener continues to keep this author from straying.
That pleases me because I SO dislike jumping between two or more tools.

Put this in your “for what it’s worth” department.