Help! (please) 6x9 page is increasing

[Kathryn5C6D]

Hello!

I am trying to print a hardcover book on the Barnes and Noble site. They want you to use bleed marks. (se below pic)

My InDesign Page setup is as follows:

My adjust layout:

My Export:

And here is how large it becomes when its a PDF.  I need it to stay 6x9 but also with the bleed marks. Please help me...I have no clue what I am doing. 

[BobLevine · Accepted solution]

Looks okay to me. 6x9 is the size it will be trimmed to.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Technical question resolved, I have to ask... why are you using the B&N site? There are several better direct-publishing options.

[Kathryn5C6D]

good question and simple answer (no clue what I am doing lol). I welcome the site you would use. Appreciate the help! 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

There are many book publishing services and outlets, from those that do little more than print copies and make them available for direct sale, to, probably, Amazon, which is a global publishing outlet that has a digital and print publishing back end.

If your goal is to buy some number of printed copies for your own purposes and direct sale, it's hard to beat Lulu.com. And if you want to "publish" your book for hosted sale to buyers all over the US and world, it's hard to beat Amazon.

Nearly all other services and providers are in a very distant second tier. Barnes & Noble hasn't been competitive in this sector for a long time; I think I have two titles also-listed with them and don't recall a sale of either, ever. In the e-book world, authors who don't like Amazon for some reason or another tend to go with SmashWords (which has now merged with another provider whose name escapes me); again, the title I also-listed there might have sold one copy in two years.

Amazon has its issues at every level (can be difficult to get submission materials to meet their technical standards, limitations on some kinds of content and nonstandard formats, feeding the Jeff Bezos machine) but in general they are easy to publish with in both print and digital (Kindle), their seller portal is easy to navigate and get income from and their market reach is unparalleled.

Some aggressive author/publishers follow the rule of listing everywhere, but in many discussions over the years, most admit that 95% of their sales and revenue come from Amazon KDP. Since submissions have to vary slightly to meet each provider, and there are sometimes fees for the smaller ones, it's hard to justify the widespread listing effort... but the whole self-publishing world is saddled with vast amounts of misinformation, disinformation and outdatedashellinformation.

Print your books via Lulu.com (which offers gorgeous jacketed hardcovers, something Amazon does not). Sell your books via Amazon (which also has good author-copy prices and quality), especially to the e-book market. Ignore pretty much everyone else..

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

I concur, your files are fine.

Where does it say to add bleed marks? Based on their template, as long as you save your PDF with the required bleed, selecting the marks is unnecessary. Your final file should subsequently have pages sized 6.125" x 9.25" (since you've set your inside bleed to "0"). Even with the bleed marks added (which is why your PDF pages are larger) they will be cropped off anyway. Our imposition software positions the pages based on the Trim Box embedded in the PDF, which is the final 6" x 9" size, so unless they are rejecting your file because the marks are there, just redo the PDF without marks selected.

Then. when you view your PDF, just hover near the bottom left corner of the window, and the size will appear:

 (the numbers will be truncated to 2 digits so don't be worried that is says 6.12 instead of 6.125)