KDP Book

[Dorottya334674487s9r]

I am working on a little book with my friend. I used Adobe Illustrator to make the cover and in the pricess of working with InDesign to make the book. I am new to KDP book formatting, but have used these programs before - there is so much murky information out there its a bit overwhelming. 

I was hoping to receive some help to make sure that I am starting out with the right dimensions/template for the print version interior pages of the book. 

Interior pages: Black and White only with no bleed. (Small black and white images at each chapter.) 

Paperback trim size: 5 x 7.5 inches (custom size)

Page Count: 24-150 pages

Inside margins: 0.5 inches

Outside margins: 0.5 inches 

Also posting here the document size etc. 

Also any free resources to learn about this process (design with Acrobat programs to publish with Amazon for both print and ebook) would be awesome - it has been a steep learning curve for sure. 

Thanks so much! 

[Derek Cross]

Have you studied this?
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GKX2T59EVGFSMKQK

[Dorottya334674487s9r]

Yes, thanks you! I really studied that page and I know I have to read through it a few more times to completely digest it - but so far we are following everything! 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

KDP print books are a fairly easy process, assuming three things:

• You have reasonable mastery of InDesign, especially in page layout (size, margins, facing pages, headers/footers). If you're still learning these, a few tutorials or videos will help you get things right without a lot of trial-and-error.
• You should follow all the page and trim size numbers given you by KDP to the dot. It looks as if you know this and have all the numbers you need for your desired trim size. Covers are much fussier and have to wait until you have a final page count (to determine the spine thickness); the best way to do your first cover or two is to enter the numbers in the spine-width calculator and download the template it generates. (You can actually lay that image into a background layer in InDesign as a visual design reference.)
• Don't try anything tricky with your layout. KDP simply does not allow things like upside-down pages, back-to-back books (like the old Ace Doubles), or many other "clever" or "unusual" layouts. Keep it all standard or the bots will reject the submission.

Basically, if you can export the content to suitable PDFs, you'll be good to go. But again, having more than basic PDF export knowledge helps with things like bleeds, color profiles, etc.

E-books are another whole world, although KDP/Kindle is one of the easier ones to deal with. It is NOT just a matter of exporting the same book file to EPUB; you have to follow some different rules to get a clean, well-organized export. Here is a basic primer on InDesign-to-EPUB/Kindle, and there are some more advanced essays in the same place: http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/DPR/dpr_indesign_epub_basics.php.

Happy to answer questions and help as you move your project along.

ETA: You will probably do better to do the cover layout in InDesign and pull any design or illustration assets into it from Illustrator. Much easier to manage in the resizing and export for print.

[Dorottya334674487s9r]

Hello!

Thank you so much, I really appreciate your help. 

Currently chewing my way formatting the print version. 

I keep second guessing my margin choices. We are aiming for a clean "easy to read" look. Currently it is 0.5 inches all around. I keep thinking that having a larger inside margin larger (0.7 or more?) would be a better idea? It is a small book with not a lot of pages so the spine will be minimal but is there an industry standard or is it completely personal preference (as long as following the KDP guidelines?).

Thanks again.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

A larger inside margin is almost always needed. The smaller the book and even more so the smaller the page count/thickness, especially with a "tight" binding like perfect-bound, the larger it should be for convenient reading. On a 6x9 book, I typically use 1 inch inside, 1/2-inch outside (well, actually 6pc and 3pc — picas are so much more convenient for print layout! 🙂 ) We've all read books that have too small an inside margin and are a PITA to read without breaking the spine. Your readers will appreciate it.

Within reason, KDP doesn't care how large your margins are — only that they are wide enough to keep all text inside the safe trim zone of about 3/8 inch. They have very little opinion about esthetics  — that's your job.

[Dorottya334674487s9r]

Got it! Thanks so much! 

[Dorottya334674487s9r]

Hello James!

Thanks again for your previous help!

I am now trying to make my TOC with Indesign and I am having an issue with one chapter heading not showing up. I have made sure that it had the "Chapter Title" applied, same as the others. All show up but for this one! I am about to give up and just enter it manually - but I thought I check in if there is some trick to making the TOC, it is not as easy as I thought. 

Thank You!

Dorka 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

A basic TOC should be a very easy thing. If you have that paragraph style listed for inclusion, the TOC generation should find it and include it in the complied TOC. (It can get a lot "less easy" from there with various formatting and content issues, but this basic step is, or should be, very simple.)

All I can suggest is that you delete all your TOC and any TOC 'styles' you've saved, and start over.

Add the "chapter heading" style to the list. For a dynamic EPUB TOC, disable all page number inclusions etc.

Save the "style" under a distinct name ("EPUB TOC" or the like).

Generate the TOC and when you get the text-placement cursor, either hit Esc so as not to place a text frame in the document, or drag it out somewhere on the pasteboard so you can review it. It should contain entries for all of your designated TOC styles. (Delete it when you are through; you usually do not want an inline TOC in e-books.)

If any chapters or entries are missing, there is some fault with the style applied to those headings. Make sure it's the EXACT same heading — CHAPTERHEAD and CHAPTER-HEAD and ChapterHead are all different styles.

[Dorottya334674487s9r]

Thanks! That was an excellent advice, it worked! 

[Dorottya334674487s9r]

Hello James! 

We have finished our book, size 5x7.5 and of course realized that we picked the wrong trim size for extended distribution. 

We are changing the size of the files (both cover in Illustrator and the interior pages in Idesign).

What is the best way to do this in Idesign, where everything is completley lined up and looking good at the moment? I am going from 5x7.5 to 5.06x7.81. SO it is not a huge difference - but before I started I thought I ask you if there was a way to do this with minimal amount of work as to not mess things up?

Thanks for your continued help! 

Dorka 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Should be fairly easy, but you may have to make some adjustments, page by page, to get the best results.

First, if there's not some hard and fast reason youv'e chosen this trim size, I'd go with the very slightly more standard 5x8 inch trim size. I'm not sure of the reasons very slightly different sizes such as the one you've chosen exist, but it's probably just decades-old choices in the publishing trade and thus not very relevant. But that's my general tendency to keep things simple talking; feel free to stay with your chosen new size.

Step one is to create a copy of your book file — never do major changes like this on your one-and-only master. This is a good time to export it to IDML, then open that and save it under the new name as a regular INDD. This will generally clean up the book file and should have no downside, at least not more than will be fixed by tweaking the size change.

• Go to File | Document Setup, then Layout Adjustment. (Or just click File | Layout Adjustment.)
  
• In Layout Adjustment, enter your new numbers. Width and Height are first: those would be 5 inches or 5.06 inches, and 8 inches or 7.81 inches. Then review your margins: inside margin really should be one inch; outer can be a half inch or up to 3/4 inch. Top and bottom margins will depend on how you have headers and/or footers set up; use a half inch if you have no header or footer on that end, and allow about 3/4 inch to make room for a header/footer. Adjust all these as necessary but don't make any of them too small, especially that critical inside one.
• Click OK... and your book should reshape/reflow all the way through.

Then review your Parent pages and adjust those headers and footers if needed.

Then go through page by page, and fix any flow or layout problems the resizing caused, working front to back and adjusting styles as you go.

It really shouldn't be any more complex than that, but know that Adjust Layout sometimes doesn't work as intended or leaves pages unchanged (mostly the primary text frame). You can manually fix any page that for some reason doesn't adjust, or back up and try the whole process again. Report back if you don't get the results you want/expect.

[Dorottya334674487s9r]

Thanks so much! Amazing. I really appreciat it. I am digging in, I will report back!

[Dorottya334674487s9r]

Hello James!

I wanted to ask you, I see a lot of threats on this discussion - the outoput from Indesign to PDF for KDP. I have read thorugh the threads and also looked at the KDP guidelines. 

I have embedded all the photos / and set the subset fonts to 5%. 

Only using BW images inside the book - which are mainly CMYK, but one is RGB. I am hoping that it won't be an issue. 

Here is the screen shot of the export dialogue box I am most concern about.

Does that all sound okay to you? 

 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

PDFs for Amazon/KDP just aren't very fussy. You can tweak them for slight improvements, but I've never gotten a poor result from any of the generic settings.

The format of images in the InDesign file are not important, as the PDF export will reformat them according to the color model selected. (It is wise/advanced to use source images that match your end needs, but not essential.) For black and white printing, it is best to select a gray color profile, which will convert the color images to some optimal format instead of leaving it for the final print process to do it.

There is little or no reason to adjust font subsetting; if you leave it at 100% it will still include all of the letters and glyphs needed. Subsetting is primarily for exports when many fonts are used and reducing the full set of each has a big effect on final file size.

But mostly — if the PDF pages look right to you, and print acceptably on a home or office printer, you're probably going to be happy with the KDP result.

[Dorottya334674487s9r]

Wow, thanks James for the quick reply! Amazing. 

[Dorottya334674487s9r]

James - Thanks for all your amazing help so far with the book.

We have received our proof copy and found that some of the black and white images had a faint white horizontal line across them and generally looking pretty low quality.  We have printed the proof copy standard, not premium color. Images were in CMYK - I have since then went back and changed all the photos to GREYSCALE (we are also printing with Ingram, and they require the images to be in GREYSCALE) and checked my PDF proof on the computer, and like the way it looks. 

I have exported the book from Idesign as PDF/X-1a (per the KDP guidelines). 

Do you have a better export settings recommendation from Idesign to get the best quality black and white photographs? We are printing a second proof copy. 

For the book cover from Illustrator, I have done a simple pdf export, high quality print and it looked good on our proof.

Thanks again for all your help!

Dorka  

[James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted solution]

KDP proof/author copies are the next thing to worthless except to check page comp, binding/cover layout accuracy and organization. They are little more than an equivalent of the old "blue-back" advance reader copies of books, if you've ever encountered them.

For one thing, despite the insistence of some KDPgurus™, they are not run on the main production lines, but on secondary printers of office-grade quality (if that) and questionable maintenance/calibration. So the print quality, cover and binding alignment and overall finish are in no way representative of a production copy. This is true nowhere more than image quality. Regular KDP quality can be a little iffy, with fades and streaks found in something like 10% of print runs. (All copies in modest print runs are usually consistent, but maybe one run in ten is either wholly flawed or has flawed copies in it.)

It's perhaps the best example of Amazon's weird save-pennies-in-the-wrong-places model for KDP. But the bottom line is that proof/author copies are only worth ordering if you have questions about how the book, overall, comes out of the chute — not for anything like a a quality or "press" check.

Editorial mode off now. 🙂

Because of the poor loop from submission to actual print copy, it's hard to guess how every image will come out. (Keep in mind that Amazon has several printing plants across North America alone, more around the world, and most have multiple production lines... so consistency is completely out the window.) Their recommended standards are quite vague and as many other things in their info system are out of date or just plain wrong, it's foolish to put too much faith in accuracy of those standards. (Okay, wait, I said editorial mode off...)

For black and white interiors, I recommend converting images to grayscale, as you've done, and using Photoshop's Black and White conversion feature to select the right "curve" for each image to get a good eyeball result. Be sure to place them at 300ppi or greater (effective — as the Info window shows you). I rarely bother with PDF standards for these kind of exports, but I do set the color mode to grayscale using the sGray color model — which makes the color/standards gururs here weep and tear their hair at my slackiness — and I have yet to have serious issues with the printed resolution and tonal range of images in any KDP production-printed book. (I am fortunate in that I have seen very, very few image issues such as fading or streaks, but I have no idea what my customers get.)

You can do a reasonable job of proofing by printing the image pages on a any good office-grade printer, preferably a laser printer with optimized resolution and a grayscale mode. (That is, not a low cost-per-page general printer or a photo printer.) If nothing else, it should give you a good approximation of the tonal range of the image as it will print from KDP. My experience across time and platforms and projects is that there's a tendency to make monochrome images too dark/low in tonal range, which looks good on the screen but tends to print dark and muddy. So once you find an optimal setting, get used to what might seem like slightly washed-out images in the ID layout.

So—

• Don't rely on KDP author proofs. Order them only if you need "proof" of how the book will go together, but not for any print or finish quality issues.
• It's not a workaround to publish the book and order Author Copies, which will come from a regular production line... but take at least three weeks to arrive. (This is a deliberate delay by KDP; I have had customers get books in hand from a new listing ten to twelve days before I got my "Author Copies.")
• Convert all monochrome images to grayscale and insert at 300+ effective PPI.
• From good-office-printer proofs, adjust image tonal range; these may look light or washed out in the ID layout.
• Submit the interior PDF using any PDF standard you choose (X-1a is as good as any), but set the color mode to grayscale/sGray color model.

That should get you the best results, consistently, although once you actually get production copies you may find you need to change the tonal range of some images. Don't obsess over it, given the variability of KDP output, but fix really dark or light images towards a better "center."

Hope that helps.

[Dorottya334674487s9r]

Wonderful! Thanks so much. So greateful for you help! 

[Eugene Tyson]

I marked @James Gifford—NitroPress last reply as correct - if there are other more appropriate correct replies please also mark those as correct as it helps others with similar issues.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

You're welcome, and take also a very surly but heartfelt "good luck!" with your KDP project.

Surly because they've again demonstrated what an automated/clueless operation they are. I got this last night, regarding a book I published in Kindle and paperback two years ago, which has sold well and garnered very positive reviews both within Amazon and elsewhere, and (to be clear) was in no way misrepresented or mislabeled:

• It appears your book is a companion guide. Per our Content Guidelines, we don’t allow content that is disappointing to customers, and we’ve found that companion guides frequently cause a negative or confusing experience for customers. As a result, we won’t be making your book(s) available on Amazon.

Boom, canceled, blocked, no recourse. (A reply justfiying the book, as invited in the email, simply returned another copy of the notice.) Welcome to the mad, mad, mad, mad world of KDP. Better luck to you.

[Dorottya334674487s9r]

Gosh, that's is terrible. I am really sorry! I wish there was a recourse, I am sure you have put so much work in it. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

KDP/Kindle is a double-edged sword, sharp on both edges. Other than some really head-pounding experiences like this, it's been worth it overall for my books. This one was... a low-investment effort, a teaser version of a bigger book I am working on, but it's going to be a while before I get over them (1) deciding it was a crap/filler book like so many that do get published there, (2) doing so two full years later and (3) doing so on a very general factor that "these kinds of books are often disappointing."

Anyway, not the venue. Good luck with your project and keep any questions coming.