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Why does gedit print cover pages?

Self publishing a book with a full-color cover

  • I'm trying to self-publish a few copies of a book I'm writing, just to give to one person as a gift and keep a couple copies for myself. The one time I've done this before, I went to McNally Jackson, the bookstore in NYC (where I live). The results were mostly fine except for two things. Main problem: I didn't like the results of the supposedly "full color" cover. Also, the covers were slightly nicked. Do you know of any other service that will do this kind of thing with a truly full-color cover, for a reasonable price? I used https://www.flickr.com/photos/stewart/69975518/in/set-1506171 as the background (with off-white text superimposed). The cover looks great on my MacBook, but the physical cover ended up as a purely monochromatic dull blue, with none of the brownish grey, red, or bright blue of the online photo. (Needless to say, I've followed the legal requirements for using the Creative Commons photo.) Also, each copy had a small nick in the same place. As I said, that was a relatively minor problem. I called http://www.mcnallyjackson.com/self-publishing to ask about both the monochromatic cover and the nicks, but the store said these things were inevitable. I see that McNally Jackson uses the Espresso Book Machine, which is also used by other self-publishing services, including the Brooklyn Public Library. It's supposed to print "http://www.lib.umich.edu/espresso-book-machine." If this is really the state of the art and I shouldn't expect to find anything better, then of course I'd want to know that too. I do like that McNally Jackson lets you specify your book dimensions. My book is pretty short (about 100 pages), so it would look weird for it to be 6" x 9" or bigger. That's what concerns me about http://www.lulu.com/create/books... Any suggestions?

  • Answer:

    Createspace will do a https://www.createspace.com/Special/Pop/book_trimsizes-pagecount.html which should work better for 100 pages.

jejune at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

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I have used Blurb a few times - but only for black and white, since that's what my photo work is - but the reproduction quality has been excellent. Not cheap though. Might be a get what you pay for situation, although I haven't explored many alternatives.

blaneyphoto

Thanks for the suggestions so far. I should add: only the cover needs to be in color. The inside is just text.

jejune

Regarding the book cover - I used to print out my own color artwork at Kinko's onto 11" by 17" paper with pretty decent results, for some ridiculously low cost. I'm not sure what's out there now in the color printing biz, but I'm just wondering if you'd be happier with a full-color dust jacket that you had printed somewhere else? Maybe as a backup plan, if the original book cover disappoints? (I'm assuming you're talking about printing a similar small 3 or 4 copies of the book).

doctor tough love

(I'm assuming you're talking about printing a similar small 3 or 4 copies of the book). Yes, that's right. I pretty much want to do the same thing I did before — I'm just updating the content of the book and giving it to a different person.

jejune

Can you post a photo of the printed cover? What software did you use to put the white text on it? Did you deliver in RGB or CMYK? If it prints four color process, there would be no reason to not have any of those other colors you describe...unless there was a terrible conversion from RGB to CMYK done along the way, which is certainly possible.

Brainy

What software did you use to put the white text on it? Did you deliver in RGB or CMYK? I used Apple Pages to combine the photo and text, then converted it to a PDF. McNally Jackson requires you to submit everything as PDFs. I can take a photo of the cover and post it here soon...

jejune

jejune

For instance, the back cover includes the reddish marks just left of the center of the original photo (which I cropped). None of the red or tan colors showed up.

jejune

Could you post the PDF you submitted?

Brainy

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