Support for Indie Authors discussion

I am trying to format my second book for Createspace into paperback. I have looked online at various Youtube videos and they are confusing me. Different people say different things. Keep in mind that I am not technologically savvy about doing this at all. I had a small company help me out with my first book, but want to try it on my own so it doesn't cost as much. Any help is appreciated! I am in the editing stage right now.

What are you using to format them, and what problems are you running into?

Mostly, it will format it for you (tell you what margins etc to use) but there will most likely be some things it won't catch! I went through page by page several times to make sure that everything was accurate (i.e. that chapters started at the top of the page and not the middle, page numbers were on the outer edges of the pages and not in the middle) and if something looked wrong, I went back to the original file, changed it, and uploaded the file again. It took a while, but in the end the finished product was wonderful!

Becca,

How did you add page numbers? We published the book on amazon which, of course, has no page numbers. How did you add them/convert the ms?

I went through create space for my book, and I looked at a forum made by createspace that helped me with formating. I'll see if I can't find in .... (venturing into cybersapce)...found it! It has pictures!

https://forums.createspace.com/en/com...

The one thing that I didn't like was that his forum tells you not to bother with the gutter, but my gutter was way too small. Use the gutter unless you want the inside of your pages to be smashed into the spine.

To the op: my husband uploaded our amazon ebook to createspace and it was fairly easy. It is not a perfect transition so you absolutely must go through your book page by page. There is no substitution for that. When you receive your approval email be sure and order review proofs. Don't just look at the edits online. Actually holding the book in our hands and going yhrough the whole book was very helpful for us.

they have a formatted Word document. download it. copy and paste your manuscript there and you're good to go. I'll post the download link tomorrow when I'm near a computer if you can't find it.

Page numbers are added in the "Header" section if you are using Word :) and I agree, definitely get the print review to double check everything

The preference is to convert Word to PDF, PDF-A compliant to embed the fonts. All images have to be at least 300 dpi, careful because Word likes to compress all your images. You have to check your document and make sure you turn off "compress all images". Watch out for spaces at the left leading edge of your sentence. Clean documents avoid hitting return to advance rows, use paragraph breaks instead.

Becca
Many thanks - didn't mean to hijack the thread.

My wife does all the formatting for our books both createspace & Amazon etc. She works for a larger company but also works through fiver and her own website for herself.

If anyone ever wants to get a quote on a job don't hesitate to contact me and I can put you in touch with her.

I agree about the proof copies, once you think it's ready then let a friend read it that hasn't read it, fresh eyes are best!

Ben
I would like a quote. I don't usually trust fiverr but maybe this is legit?

Hi Tara I'll message you her email and you can deal with her via email. She also has her own website etc I'll message you directly!

I think if you are tech savvy its best to pay Createspace to do formatting for you...I used them and found their service good. I used them for 2 books. At least so far no one has said my formatting is bad. I will recommend Createspace for formatting

I used LibreOffice instead of word. It's free and the PDF export is more intelligent. I simply loaded up the template, pasted the whole novel into it as unformatted text and then manually tweaked the formatting.

The result is here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Run-Stars-1-...

Createspace provides templates.

Amit wrote: "they have a formatted Word document. download it. copy and paste your manuscript there and you're good to go. I'll post the download link tomorrow when I'm near a computer if you can't find it."

Thank you Amit. If you can post it that would be great!

Morris wrote: "The preference is to convert Word to PDF, PDF-A compliant to embed the fonts. All images have to be at least 300 dpi, careful because Word likes to compress all your images. You have to check your ..."

Thank you for the info, but my book is all text.

Robert wrote: "Amit is right, they have a formatted Word document you can download. Just paste your work in that and all spacing, etc., solved. Trouble is it is tucked away in the design process, easy to overlook..."

Thanks so much!

Becca wrote: "Page numbers are added in the "Header" section if you are using Word :) and I agree, definitely get the print review to double check everything"

Thank you!

Becca wrote: "Mostly, it will format it for you (tell you what margins etc to use) but there will most likely be some things it won't catch! I went through page by page several times to make sure that everything..."

Thank you for the info!

This is the page for book interior templates of all available sizes:
https://www.createspace.com/Products/...

If you still have trouble, send me the manuscript and I'll send you a proper PDF for Createspace.

Anyone else with the same problem go ahead and send. it's only half an hour to format maximum. not a problem. PM only.

Thanks everyone for your help! CreateSpace is now reviewing my book. It looks like there are only three minor things that need changing. So I guess it won't be too long that my second book will be "live."

I didn't find it too bad. I'm not particularly savvy on the technical side, but createspace did the page fitting side of it for me and it came through beautiful. Hope you've managed to get it back as you wanted.

Good luck with your new book. My second one was also released via these methods this week (its my first full length one) and I got the proof in the post today. It was nearly as good as the day I got my dog lol.

Billy wrote: "I didn't find it too bad. I'm not particularly savvy on the technical side, but createspace did the page fitting side of it for me and it came through beautiful. Hope you've managed to get it back ..."

Thank you! It wasn't too bad going through the process. And congratulations on your second book!

I invested $40 or so in one of Joel Friedlander's "2-way" MS Word templates (not in any way connected, so this isn't advertising :-) ) for a non-fiction book with lots of images and I found it saved me so much time that it was worth it.

I recommend this online PDF tip sheet from harvard.com (Harvard Book Store)

DIY Formatting and Layout Guidelines

They have fully formatted templates you can download and use. If the formatting goes out when you copy and paste into it, go to 'styles' in Word's formatting menu. Select a section of the CS formatted text to see which formatting type it is, then highlight the copied text and click on the same style in the side menu. It can take time to get it right, but the templates make life a lot easier.

Angela wrote: "They have fully formatted templates you can download and use. If the formatting goes out when you copy and paste into it, go to 'styles' in Word's formatting menu. Select a section of the CS format..."

Hi Angela,
I'm using MS Word to type my book. I downloaded a formatted template from CreateSpace and have just been overwriting the existing text with my own. Is that a good way to start out?
Thank you, Sue

Nicole wrote: "I recommend this online PDF tip sheet from harvard.com (Harvard Book Store)

DIY Formatting and Layout Guidelines"

Afraid that's coming up as page not found, Nicole.

Try http://www.harvard.com/images/uploads...

Carol wrote: "Thanks everyone for your help! CreateSpace is now reviewing my book. It looks like there are only three minor things that need changing. So I guess it won't be too long that my second book will be live..."

Carol,
I apologize, I did not mean to hijack your thread. I forget to read topic headings.

Congratulations on getting your book to CreateSpace. Hope it is published soon!! That's a great accomplishment!

On the CreateSpace website is a box at the top right of each page with the words "search site" where you can type a question and get a list of possible answers. Also, above that box are links to Community and Help. Help is like a website map and is good, but Community has answers to questions just like yours. Under the "search site" box is another box with the words "search community." I know you've already uploaded your book, but this may help you with future problems you might have on anything concerning CreateSpace.

Congratulations and Good Luck!!
Sue

Morris wrote: "The preference is to convert Word to PDF, PDF-A compliant to embed the fonts. All images have to be at least 300 dpi, careful because Word likes to compress all your images. You have to check your ..." Thank you. I always have issues with the images. I did not know you had to compress them.