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RobertVeith
Participating Frequently
February 1, 2019
Answered

How do I get Amazon to approve my graphic novel for printing?

  • February 1, 2019
  • 3 replies
  • 3294 views

Long story short, my graphic novel has been published successfully to digital and POD services, but Amazon's Kindle Direct consistently rejects it.

Reason given: too much complexity. Too many vectors.

I put the book together in InDesign. Each panel is an image. Each speech bubble is a text object with a bubble around it. It's 300 pages. Over a thousand images. It's going to be complex.

(Note: my previous graphic novel, created in much the same way, passed through CreateSpace without issue. While KDP is ostensibly the successor to CreateSpace, there are obviously some differences in functionality)

Been going back and forth with Kindle Direct for a few weeks. They recommend flattening the document and exporting it as CMYK and using PDF/X-1a. All of which I did before the initial submission… which they rejected. Most recently, they recommended printing to PDF rather than exporting to PDF, an option which I don't have in InDesign (I'm running InDesign 2019 on a Mac if that makes a difference).

I am tempted to give up on Amazon all together. But before doing that, I thought I would throw this question at the experts and see if you all have any experience and/or suggestions.

  • Is there a tool in Acrobat or a third party tool I should use to export the document?
  • Is there something I need to download in order to print to PDF?
  • Should I export all of the pages as JPGs and re-compile them into a fully rasterized PDF book?
  • Are there settings in the PDF export dialog in addition to flattening, CMYK, PDF/X-1a that I should know about?
  • Anyone have experience publishing a graphically intensive POD to KDP?
This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer rob day

Hi Rob,

How do I get to that Transparency Flattener Preset window you have there? When I go to the Advanced tab in the PDF exporter, I only see three Flattener options and don't see how I might do anything with them.


Edit>Transparency Flattener Presets...>New

Just keep in mind the flattener is only used on spreads with a transparent object—if you want to rasterize all the pages you could put a small, transparent object on your Masterpage. Set the raster/Vector balance to 0. The Line Art and Text Resolution is the resolution the vector art will be converted into. Your art is fairly coarse so you may not need 1200ppi.

Also, to keep the high raster resolution you'll have to turn off Downsampling in the Compression tab.

So:

I'm guessing the problem Amazon has with the vectors is the POD print speed, and not whether they can get output. They might not be happy with the high res either.

3 replies

E
Community Expert
Eugene TysonCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 7, 2019

I agree with my learened friends on this forum.

But the person that I am I would highly advise duplicating your file - and then making raster versions of all your vector graphics and replace them insitu within the digitial novel.

It would be a much cleaner more accurate way. You just don't know what will happen to an object when flattening.

I'd highly recommend going the long way round, it might be longer, slower, but it's more accurate.

rob day
Community Expert
rob dayCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 7, 2019

I'd highly recommend going the long way round, it might be longer, slower, but it's more accurate.

Hi Eugene, you can use ArcrobatPro's Object Inspector or Preflight to get an accurate view of the raster conversion.

There could be a case made for converting the text bubbles to 1200 ppi, 1-bit line art in order to cut down on file size, but doing that 1000+ times wouldn't be trivial, and I don't see how it improves the output—there's no appearance difference between 1200ppi grayscale B&W, and 1200ppi 1-bit—and that would make the text uneditable in ID. In the end it's the resolution of the text bubbles that matters.

Here's one of Robert’s pages flattened and rasterized, and I can use Object Inspector to check the resolution of the text bubbles. This complex page is only 4Mb!

R
RobertVeithAuthor
Participating Frequently
February 7, 2019

Amazon took the all-rastered file. When I looked at it, the text looked "gritty" in my screen. It may still look okay in print. I don't have a quality printer in my office to check it. I tweaked the preset a bit to have higher resolution for the rastered text, but then Amazon *didn't* take the file. Still, I think this is the answer. Going to try to figure out today if it's the larger file size that's causing the acceptance problem or something else.

But the book is live on Amazon!

Interesting to note that most POD books are fulfilled by Lightning Source. This book went through Lightning Source with no problems. So, I asked Amazon who they use for POD fulfillment and they say they're doing it mostly in house now. So, Amazon's in-house POD is not as capable (or as forgiving?) as Lightning Source.

All of you: thanks for helping me with this! Rob, Bill, Eugene, if you want a free digital copy of the comic, I'd be happy to get you one. Just message me via my FB page: https://www.facebook.com/CivilizedLands/

Bill Silbert
Community Expert
Bill SilbertCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 1, 2019

I think what the Kindle Direct people mean by "printing to pdf" is actually the rather archaic process of making a pdf by creating a postscript file through InDesign's Print dialog window and then using Acrobat Distiller to create the actual pdf. This was the method used back in the olden days (mostly pre-InDesign) to make pdfs before the more accepted Export to Pdf was readily available. The only reason that I could see anybody recommending this is that it can actually make a decent pdf that is much smaller in file size and probably a great deal less complex than the more modern version—which sounds like what you're looking for. I present here the method so that you can try it if you wish. I know full well that other ACPs will leap to the fray and opine that this way is too ancient to be recommended but ultimately the choice is yours.

The first step in this process is to go into the InDesign Print window and select Postcript file as your printer. Then set up everything else in the Print window in the way you would if you were printing to a physical printer (including page size, crop marks, etc.). At the point when you would normally click on "Print" you will see that it says "Save" instead. When you click on that you will get the option to save the file to a location of your choice. Then go into your Acrobat Application folder and you should see the Acrobat Distiller app there. Launch it and change your default settings to the quality level you're looking for (see screen shot). Then go File>Open and open the postscript file you created. Distiller will then create the pdf and leave it at the same location that you put the postcript file.

    P
    potatopancake
    Participant
    November 5, 2020

    Thank you for taking the time to post this Bill. My wife's book kept being rejected, KDP support specified this was because the file contained transparencies and recommended I try "Print to PDF." Never done it that way and had no idea you could make a PDF out of a Postscript file... followed your steps and success!! Huge relief. Thanks again.

    rob day
    Community Expert
    rob dayCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 5, 2020

    KDP support specified this was because the file contained transparencies 

     

    Just to clarify, the PDF/X-1a Export preset does not allow live transparency—all transparent objects and effects get flattened on Export. You don’t have to print a postscript file in order to get a PDF with no transparency.

      rob day
      Community Expert
      rob dayCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      February 1, 2019

      Can you post a screen capture of a page or maybe package a page and share it via DropBox.

      I doubt printing a PDF would matter because PDF/X-1a is a flattened PDF (you can still Print a PDF from CC2019/OSX, just have to use Distiller). The Flattener preset you use in the PDF/X1a Advanced tab could affect vectors if there's any transparency on the spread

      R
      RobertVeithAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      February 1, 2019

      Here is a link to a PDF file containing a few of the pages.

      Dropbox - CL_V01_CC19_example.pdf

      > I doubt printing a PDF would matter because PDF/X-1a is a flattened PDF

      That's what I thought too. For some reason, whatever automated process Amazon uses to check their incoming books doesn't see PDF/X-1a as flat.

      rob day
      Community Expert
      rob dayCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      February 1, 2019
      • Should I export all of the pages as JPGs and re-compile them into a fully rasterized PDF book?
      • Are there settings in the PDF export dialog in addition to flattening, CMYK, PDF/X-1a that I should know about?

      When you export to PDF/X1-a the Flattener preset you choose in the Advanced tab has an affect on spreads that include any transparent object, so it would be possible to force all of the pages (including the text) to rasters. The file size of the PDF would be considerably larger, but there would be no vectors. Something like this:

      For the transparency flattening to kick in there has to be at least one transparent object on each spread. It doesn't have to be visible—you could set one of the back images to Multiply.

      It doesn't look to me like you are using any InDesign transparency, if that's the case there's nothing to flatten.

      They may be complaining about all of the frames and bubbles, but that doesn't have anything to do with flattening and Printing a PDF wouldn't necessarily affect the vector usage.

      Here I'm showing Line Art only in AcrobatPro:

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