[FM Discuss] Booki and CreateSpace

[James Simmons]

I just used Booki to create a PDF for CreateSpace and I have some observations:

1).  The default gutter is not acceptable for CreateSpace.  They want
at least .75 inches for the gutter.  I can change this using the
Advanced options on export of course, and I did, but the method is not
obvious.  On the gutter it seems that whatever you put there is
*added* to the default gutter.  I used 20 mm as the value and the
gutter was much too wide.  When I used 10 it looked good and was
accepted.  10 mm is about one half an inch, based on the plastic ruler
I used to convert the units.  CreateSpace only specifies inches.  They
are based in one of the two countries in the world that has not gone
metric.

2).  When I specified 10 for the outer margin it seemed to *remove*
the outer margin.  I of course wanted to make it larger.

3).  CreateSpace pushes the 6" x 9" size, which is US Trade in the OBJAVI menu.

4).  CreateSpace complained that my pictures were less than 300 DPI.
They were 150 DPI, which is what they need to be for a usable web
site.  I told CreateSpace to print the book anyway.  We'll see how it
looks.  The PDF looked pretty good.

5).  CreateSpace has a pretty good cover generator.  One of the
templates lets you specify a front page image and a back page image
and it takes care of the spine.  I got some display fonts from Font
Squirrel and did the front and back with The GIMP.  This is a pretty
easy way to do a cover.  Other templates do more of the work for you.
Anne Gentle has done covers for my books using Inkscape, but with
CreateSpace I was able to do a fairly good job without her much
appreciated help.  I hope the actual book looks as good as what I saw
on the screen.

This is what I came up with:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8919415/LATOBJCover.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8919415/LATOBJBack.jpg

James Simmons