I hope your 2012 is cruising along with the current.  Mine was taking on water at the beginning, but I’ve righted the vessel, and I think it’s flowing in the right direction now.  Whew!

I uploaded DARK POOL in November to the usual e-places:  Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and i-Books.  I elected to ignore Smashwords, for the time, and started to working on the CreateSpace edition.  When I originally published 3 LIES, I waited several months before tackling the CreateSpace formatting.  Once I understood the process, I knew I should have done it sooner, as it was much easier than I had expected.

I uploaded my DARK POOL cover a week before we were due to leave for vacation.  (Had a blast on the beach.  Now I want to learn how to kiteboard.  Anyone out there kiteboard?)    After CreateSpace ran their checks, I received the usual email warning about image dpi and ignored them, knowing that the end result would be lovely.  So I ordered a copy of my proof.  It arrived the day before I was supposed to leave town, and the result was disappointing:

As you can see, the edge of the original art did not extend to the edge of the cover, neither on the side nor the botton.  Not happy.  I followed my own rules from the series I did on formatting a book for CreateSpace.  Hmmm.

Instead of packing, cleaning, planning, I dropped everything on my list to revise my cover.  CreateSpace clearly shrank my cover image as my measurements were meticulous.  I go down to the 64ths of an inch when I work on this stuff.  I R Geek.

But I really wasn’t thinking clearly about the cover (why did they shrink it??) as I hadn’t played on a beach in a very long time.  My mind was on boogie boards, dolphins, and unrestricted access to negative ions.   So I decided to outsmart Amazon.  Sadly, we all know where this is going.  And I revised my cover, but this time, I stretched it a smidge to make up for their shrinkage.  I know.  Bad move.

From the comfort of my condo on the sand, I ordered a new proof copy to be delivered the day before Thanksgiving at the beach.  As it turned out, I followed the lone UPS truck to a hotel parking lot where he handed over the goods.  But it wasn’t so good:

The art still didn’t extend to the bottom edge.  Now, I’m officially fussed.  I don’t really want to think about CreateSpace or covers, as we have a date with the sea turtle rescue place to check out their rehab patients.

So I pull a Scarlett O’Hara and decide: I can’t  think about that now.  I’ll think about that tomorrow. Tomorrow was the day I returned home and called Amazon.  The convo went something like this:

Me:  Dude.  Why do you guys keep messing with my cover?  It’s a .pdf.  You’re supposed to take a picture and move on.

Amazon Dude:  They will sometimes adjust the cover if they feel it needs, well, adjusting.

Me:  That seems a little arbitrary.  You’ve changed it on me twice, and there is no way for me to guess what you are going to do with it.

Amazon Dude:  If you restrict the excess border to .125 all the way around, they won’t change it at all.

Me:  Are you sure?

Amazon Dude:  Positive.

 I thanked the dude, after impolitely muttering something about it-would-have-been-nice-to-know, and proceeded to adjust my cover with the meager border dimension.  And it came out lovely:

I amended my earlier posts about covers to include a warning about excessive borders, also called bleed.  I was lucky on my first cover.  Unlike gravity, I don’t know anyone who can plan on luck.

Other Posts in this Series: 

CreateSpace Series – Part 1

CreateSpace Series – Part 2

CreateSpace Series – Part 3

CreateSpace Series – A Look Inside