I chose cream for my first book, and must admit I wasn't thrilled when I first saw it. But the white seems so... stark. I'm going with cream again, although I wish it were a little lighter cream. My book size is 5.25x8, which seems pretty standard. It's sort of what used to be called "trade paperback" in the old days. And if you use the CreateSpace template, you shouldn't have to worry about the gutter, as that's taken into account in the template. At least, that was my experience.philstern said:Anybody want to give me some recommendations for things I'll have absolutely no idea about? Paper color, gutters, margins, book size, etc?
This is the standard YA trade paperback, which is a bit smaller than the standard adult trade paperbacks for whatever reason. But if you write YA, 5.25x8 seems the way to go.Jena H said:My book size is 5.25x8, which seems pretty standard. It's sort of what used to be called "trade paperback" in the old days.
Start reading up on typefaces, leading, and kerning. Get some paperbacks off your shelves and look for the details of how they're laid out. What do you like? What bugs you? Think about how you're going to mark scene breaks. You'll likely need some kind of glyph. The more pages in the book, the more expensive it'll be, so a larger trim size will actually make a cheaper book because you'll fit more words on each page. My book is 99K words. At at 5x8 trim size, it runs to 380 pp. and costs $13.95. (CS won't let me sell it for less than $13.41.) The cream paper is not pale in color; it's a pretty rich cream. CS says it's printing process can be off by up to 1/8", so it's best to have a forgiving cover design -- nothing important too near the edges and a spine that can withstand being printed off-center (don't put a rule between the covers and the spine, for instance). If you use Word, you'll need to master the page numbering process, which is very annoying. There's no way around it, alas. The use of section breaks and the "link to previous" button in the header settings are key to getting the page numbering to work properly.philstern said:Anybody want to give me some recommendations for things I'll have absolutely no idea about? Paper color, gutters, margins, book size, etc?
I actually went so far as to round up a dozen or so books in the same genres my first two novels were in that I found the design of attractive, and measure them all, to get an idea of what was reasonably "normal". It helped that I happened to have a pica rule laying around.Becca Mills said:Start reading up on typefaces, leading, and kerning. Get some paperbacks off your shelves and look for the details of how they're laid out. What do you like? What bugs you?
Createspace has free interior templates in Word format that have alternating author name/book title in the headers and page numbers in the footers. Just decide on a book size (I went with 5.5" x 8.5"), and download the template, then just copy and paste your novel. It's very easy, and my proof looks awesome.AndreSanThomas said:Pay someone. If you want page numbers and alternating headers and chapters that start on right hand pages and the occassional blank page where needed (which should be sans page number too), pay someone.