[FM Discuss] E-Book Enlightenment: Reading And Leading With One Laptop Per Child [Paperback] is on Amazon.com

Sun Mar 4 11:46:10 PST 2012

I went through the process a few years back for the OLPC (and maybe
SugarLabs) books but just didn't have the patience for the last bit of
details... I should pick it up again and see how far the last 10%
really is. Thanks James for posting.

Anne

On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 12:53 PM, James Simmons <nicestep at gmail.com> wrote:
> John,
>
> I may do a blog post on that subject if I can remember my login.  It's
> pretty simple though.  You use OBJAVI 2 to create your PDF in the size you
> want, using your style sheet.  The size we call Crown Quarto is one of the
> choices, but they call it something else.  The size they push is the 6" x 9"
> format, which OBJAVI calls USTRADE.  So you submit this PDF.  On books with
> 300 or more pages you might need to use a larger "gutter" than OBJAVI will
> give you by default, so you can put 10 in the "gutter" option to make the
> gutter 10mm wider.  I only needed to do this for a USTRADE book I did.  My
> Crown Quarto titles were fine with the default.
>
> Now if this PDF has illustrations CS will complain that they are under 300
> DPI.  If the pictures are diagrams, screen grabs, or photos of objects it
> might be safe to ignore these warnings.  If there are photos of people you
> might have a problem.  The only way to know is to get a proof copy and see.
>  A proof copy might cost 4.50 US plus shipping, which might be another $5 or
> more if you're in a hurry.
>
> If it turns out you need 300 DPI pictures you'll need to use Open Office and
> one of CS's template files to make your book instead of Booki.  I discovered
> when I used copy and paste to get my Booki pages into the template that all
> my italics disappeared and had to be put back by hand.  This seems to be an
> Open Office issue.
>
> For your cover design you can submit a PDF (Inkscape has a wizard for
> creating a wraparound cover with the correct dimensions) but the way I did
> it was to use the cover wizard CS provides.
>
> The cover wizard is an AJAX app that walks you through making a cover.
>  There are many cover designs to choose from, all named after trees.  The
> one I chose is called The Palms, and it prompts you for a front cover image
> and a back cover image and lets you specify what you want printed on the
> spine and what colors to use.  It will tell you the dimension of the image,
> which MUST be 300 DPI or more.  So I used The GIMP to make my front and back
> cover images.  I used a free font from FontSquirrel called ChunkFive for the
> title.  There are some good articles on designing covers, etc. on the CS
> website.  They suggested using a Display font for the title, because these
> are designed to be rendered in large sizes and the fonts you already have
> are not.
>
> Designing your own book cover with The GIMP can be fun, but if you like you
> can pay to have it designed by a professional.  You can pay to have the
> inside pages formatted too.
>
> By all means get some color on the cover, because it is much too expensive
> to have color on the inside pages.  Books are priced by the page count.  It
> is the same price no matter what page size you use.  They push 6x9 because
> that is an easy size to distribute, but you can use larger pages and save
> money.  Color pages cost four times as much as B/W pages because each page
> has to be printed four times with different colored inks.  If you have one
> interior page that needs color the whole book needs to be printed that way.
>  So color pages only make sense for children's books where every page has a
> color picture or some decoration.  There is no extra charge for a color
> cover, though, so get a nice photo on there if you can.
>
> You can do B/W on cream colored pages instead of white pages.  I don't know
> what that costs.
>
> When you set up the book you can get a free ISBN number, use one you already
> have, or pay to get one using your own imprint.  What I think this means is
> that if you think there is some kind of stigma to having your book published
> by Create Space you can pay for an ISBN and list the publisher as a
> different name.
>
> CS will calculate what your book costs to print and give you a minimum
> price.  You can charge whatever you like above that. Your royalties will
> depend on where you publish the book.  CS will give you a "Store" page on
> their own site for selling the book, and you will get MUCH higher royalties
> selling it there than you do on Amazon.  Of course actually getting people
> to see that page is your problem.  CS will also submit your book to be
> listed on Amazon.com in the U.S. only.  To get it listed elsewhere you can
> pay a one time charge of $25 to get the book listed in catalogs used by
> bookstores.  Without this listing you have no hope of selling your book on
> other sites or bookstores.  With it you have no guarantee.  It takes awhile
> to get listed from what I've heard.  I have not bothered to do this for my
> books.  I might do it for *one* book as an experiment.
>
> James Simmons
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 11:22 AM, John Curwood
> <marketing at lovinglearning.co.nz> wrote:
>>
>> After reading your post yesterday, I just had to go onto Amazon and check
>> it out. It was very cool when my search listed it (and the ebook) in the
>> search results. What was the process like to the the books into print form
>> on Create Space?
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> John
>>
>>
>> On 04/03/12 03:29, James Simmons wrote:
>>
>> E-Book Enlightenment: Reading And Leading With One Laptop Per Child
>> [Paperback] is now on Amazon.com, again only the U.S. site. Outside the U.S.
>> you should be able to order directly from Create Space.
>>
>> Eventually Amazon will have Search Inside The Book working for this title
>> and you'll be able to appreciate all the great artwork done by Oceana Rain
>> Fields. This art did not survive translation to Kindle format. It looked
>> terrible there, so I had to remove it. Even in B/W it really adds something
>> to this printed edition.
>>
>> If the idea of having a really attractive printed book that explains
>> everything about e-books, including how to make them, seems odd to you then
>> you really should read the book!
>>
>> The URL is:
>>
>>
>> http://www.amazon.com/E-Book-Enlightenment-Reading-Leading-Laptop/dp/1470123223/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330784346&sr=1-14
>>
>> James Simmons
>>
>>
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