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 – A Look Inside
