Paperback & Hardback low content books

I watched the following video:

and she has one on her cover’s too:

I was thinking what the next project would be and then I thought of a Camino Journal paperback. With content ideas as follows:

• Cover and rear design- Francasis route, Journal
• A frontice piece? Description for KDP. Also put on select- Hardback and paperback
• What to take ?
• What to get along the way?
• Day traveled – brief- where to and stayed? weather , mood, expenses, meals coffee, etc
• A bar chart to colour in on distance to Compostella 780 odd km
• Expenses along the way
• A Map area- Make Black & White, break down to be readable
• Smallest size- for Hardbacks 6″x9″ (alternative 8.5″x11″), actually there is a 5 x 8 1/2 that ‘ll aim for
• Blank page one side & Lined other side?
• Addresses?/Phones etc
• Some gridded?
• A little trove of different things
• About 40 days daily- tracker (may stuff up some, or head onto Finestare
• About 150 pages?
• Number pages so can reference them.

Daily itinerary

• Date
• Where staying
• Meals
• Budget- planned, actual
• Running tally
• Mood
• Weather
• Distance travelled?
• Overall distance %- bar column?
• What did I see? special ?
• NOTES-
• Divide into 2 cols?

Lined Paper & Grids, Page Numbers, Formatting

I’m playing with word and there are a few issues and challenges, but it’s a bit like Excel, heaps of versatility if you know what to ask for.

Grids

Grids and line in Word do not print to PDF, so have to use tables. That put me back a bit . I thought I had that all set up , it seems not.

Maps

I’ve downloaded Google Earth, but with only Grayscale its too intense and noisy, so back to Google Maps but can’t get labels to show, also pilgrim was walking the wrong way.

Will need to muddle through. Only a reference really. I wasted a lot of yesterday on that an sore neck from it. I think I may have a way forward.

Am putting a set together and it looks shit at the moment. Still have to do daily itinerary.

Paperback

Hardcover?

Cost a lot higher. Printing

An article on a journal build.

Bleed

Still trying to get my head around this.

No ISBN create A+ content

To advertise book add a A+ content to show what is in there

Gutter

This has been causing me grief, I think I’m beginning to figure it out. See Canva setup

Canva Setup

ended up just doing pages in Canva and saving as PDF’s. It was easier than using Word.

The issue was I setup and published 3 times to KDP and in previewer my pages were misaligned or over the top/bottom margins. The other issue was gutter. As books get thicker, so the text has to shift to the outside edge of the page, so trying to align to the middle doesn’t work.

I’ve still got to figure out bleed but I had to reduce the area of where I could put text, so kept on shrinking until it didn’t create warnings in DP Preview.

Next TIME!!!!! Upload 24 sheets to book to publish to see what issues are, rather than creating the whole 130 odd pages in Canva.

I had a really inefficient process going, a bit stupid, but I seem to like pain when learning. It makes me more cautious later, after a very painful learning curve.

After uploading and checking on Preview a number of times (as in lots) I finally got the framework right.

Pricing

The publishing costs for the paperback is only $2.42 US compared to $7.07 for the hardcover. A big jump for a bit of cardboard.

Commission/Royalties sounds good , 60% , but that subtracts price of printing, so for a $7.50 sale price you get $2. So in reality not as impressive. The Hardback is even more wicked, Sale Price at $15.49 and your royalty is about $2 too. But extra effort is only for cover, the rest is already done. Just giving consumer extr

End comment

At the end of the day, a lot of effort for little return but a good learning exercise. I spoke with Zoe about using it as a marking tool and she was quite interested in exploring it further.

I think, in a niche market you may get some money but I’m such a noob. I liked the concept and my execution was poor so it took a long time to figure out the issues for publishing, gutter and errors. I was getting to the point of considering giving up.

I struggled with Word & also with Canva, I think I’ll need some time to reflect on the whole process.

I still need to try and do A+ content as I do not have an ISBN number and no look inside so I need to advertise it better, also the process of learning A+ content will be educational. That is for tomorrow though.

Waiting on approval before its published.

Worth an explore

Total distraction, make word search book-I thought video was interesting but free Microsoft Store app gone now.