Paperbacks, My God!

(This would be easier.)

 

 

Ever have that sinking feeling that you can follow someone's instructions exactly to the letter and still find yourself with a complete mess? That's me with trying to create a paperback.

 

Silly me, I thought it would be an automatic process. KDP asks, "Ready to create your paperback?) and you click the button, and voila!

 

Oh, no; it appears there is a ton of work and "learning" involved, not only in formatting the book itself, but also sizing the cover just right so it wraps around the physical book. The more I read about it, the more confused I get.

 

It seems that one cannot simply import their Word of Kindle Create doc; there's "trim" involved, requiring the margins to be set just right, and other terms I don't understand and don't know how to do. Atticus charges $147.00 to do it professionally (formatting, that is), while Vellum's price is $249.00. Kind of a no-brainer if someone wants to pay for this service. The book cover is a separate issue all together.

 

I'm sad now that I've had my mind set on creating a paperback, because I don't think there's any way to talk myself out of it. Will the whole thing turn out crappy and I'll be out $147.00? Believe me, if there was a way to do it myself, I definitely would. I guess there goes my marketing budget and then some.

 

Maybe I should try to configure my cover first, before I spend money needlessly on formatting. If I can't get the cover right, all bets are off. Some people say they use Kindle Create to upload their cover. I wasn't aware it had that option; I've certainly never run across it. But if that option exists, then what? I'm told Kindle Create doesn't format a manuscript correctly for paperback, so now I'll be stuck with an unusable text file with a cover photo attached. This is madness.  

I may have to scuttle the whole paperback notion. That's a shame. I really wanted one.

 

I guess we can't have it all.