Okay, so far so good. As I mentioned, I am going to print some books thru Lightning Source.
To do this I must submit ready-to-print files of the text and the cover. This takes some doing. I am pretty proud of myself, after studying their website I am starting to learn the process.
It turns out I can make the msword to PDF conversion of the text with the adobe acrobat software I have. Now I am going thru the process of re-building the cover of “Principles of Applied Stupidity” to suit their rather intensely specific technical requirements.
If you have never designed a book cover, well, it is an adventure in math. The one single graphic file has to include the back cover, the spine, the front cover, as well as the 1/8 of an inch all around that will be chopped off in the final trim.
At least Lightning Source does one thing for you, which is do the calculations for the size of the book’s spine (which of course varies depending on # of pages and the thickness of each individual sheet of paper– YEESH) . . . I won’t bend your brain too much but I will tell you there is a lot of math of calculating the “bleed” and trim size and making sure all that adds up.
But things have come along considerably and seem to be do-able and under control for the moment.
Sorry to bore you with this stuff– I guess folks who like literature and sausage should not see it being made.
© Justin Locke
