Forum / Self-publish your book on the Espresso Book Machine!

  • Better.thumb
    Smiley McGrouchpants, Jr-Esq-III
    Jul 26, 01:48am

    Here's mine (6 of the choose-your-own adventure-type stories I wrote):

    http://net.ondemandbooks.com/odb/selfespress/9781495160837

    This page has instructions on how to format the text (see more on this, below):

    http://ondemandbooks.com/self-publishing-ebm-locations.php

    At Powell's in Portland, they charge you $149 to get it on the machine, orderable & distributed everywhere, via the website. Still, if you don't live here, you can pay by phone, and work with them via email, which might be worth it — considering how confusing & multilayered & expensive the packages offered on the website seem to be. Just get it in print, I say!

    Here's the email for the EBM team at Powell's City of Books location: POD@powells.com

    PLUS! You can get your own ISBN for $55. Here's how: Google "ISBN $55". Yup, that's how I did it. And, they give you a barcode. Isn't that fascinating?
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    Some of the spec's need clarification, in terms of producing a PDF for the cover and a PDF for the text you can send them. Using the Photoshop, Paint and Word programs available at Kinko's for the uppity "Design" price of $0.45 a minute, you can get the features you need to get it rolling. If you have a great computer with them on it already, even better!

    PHOTOS: These can be — let's go ahead and say it — "Photoshopped" up to the required DPI of 300, regardless of whether your was 72 DPI to begin with. It feels like cheating, it feels like magic, here's all you have to do to "adjust up" the quality of your picture, regardless of what you choose to begin with:

    Photoshop:

    Image > Image Size > Scale Styles / Constrain Proportions / Resample Image:

    Resolution: 300 pixels/inch

    (You have to unclick the three options after "Image Size," or it'll tilt the *size* of your picture, rather than just the *picture quality*. Just do it!)

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    SAVING THE IMAGE AS A PDF YOU CAN SEND IN: As with the Word document, you do *not* "Save As," but "Print," with a "PDF Document" as the result.

    Here's how:

    Print > Adobe Pdf > Adobe PDF Document Properties > Default Settings: > PDF/X-1a:2001

    The last is the standard for a "Print Ready" PDF; otherwise, it's just not formatted correctly, and it won't work. Aren't we learning so much about publishing today, kids!
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    SAVING THE WORD DOCUMENT AS A PDF YOU CAN SEND IN: Again, you have to "Print" to "PDF Document," thusly:

    Print > Printer > Adobe PDF

    Then, you make the adjustment, as above, for the print ready standard.

    Printer Properties > Adobe PDF Settings > Default Settings > PDF/X-1a:2001

    On top of that, something seems to go screwy, unless you're planning on printing an 8" X 11.5" book (ha ha!), so, adjust for that here:

    Printer Properties > Paper/Quality > Advabced... > Paper Size: > PostScript Custom Page Size > Custom Page Size Dimensions Width: 4.5 Height: 6.0
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    HTH! Those values above are for my "Crouching Schuyler, Hidden Dragon" book. You mileage may vary.

    Be glad to see the Fictionauters outracing each other to get books in self-published print! I gave the site a shout-out in my end credits, too, and took some "blurbs" from comments I got here. Hopefully interest will spike, and re-spike, and hit the roof! Yay for fiction. Yay for Ficitonaut.

    Thank you all so much.

  • Mugshotme_(3).thumb
    Mathew Paust
    Jul 26, 07:11pm

    Trouble is, ain't nobody buyin' books no mo'. Watchin' TeeVee is sooo much easier'n readin', ya know? 'less'n the book has a real bang-up, knockout purdy cover (can yew say gurrls? heeheehee). Well then there now all bets are off!

  • Angelcity1.thumb
    Chris Okum
    Jul 26, 11:34pm

    As two of my co-workers have said to me - independently of each other - while noticing the pile of library books on my desk, and with great satisfaction (as if they were telling me that they had just won a marathon), "I don't like to read." I also heard this comment - again, spoken with relish - by two men in the writer's workshop class I attempted to take years ago, when asked by the instructor what books they were currently reading. "I don't like to read," they said. When the instructor pointed out to them that taking a writer's workshop but having no interest in reading was kind of like taking an art class and not liking to look at painting, or taking a film class and admitting that you didn't like to watch movies, the two men both shrugged their shoulders and said, "Whatever."

  • Mugshotme_(3).thumb
    Mathew Paust
    Jul 27, 03:46pm

    Chris, maybe they just didn't want to lie and admit they read Romance novels.

  • Better.thumb
    Smiley McGrouchpants, Jr-Esq-III
    Jul 27, 04:25pm

    Everybody's still pissed at the pretentious 6th grade English teacher, who belabored "symbolism" as an interesting thing to look for in Literature: "the doves symbolize ... freedom!" I could all but feel the interest of everyone waning, as if in sync, eyes searching out the window, for something else to alight on, anything, anything at all ... the idea that what you're reading has some "hidden answer" in it, beyond the narrative's content that you're failing to grasp, just *kills* enthusiasm. I'm sure we, as Americans, lost all those kids to Scooby-Doo and/or Rush Limbaugh (perhaps NASCAR), because of that guy. Fuck him!

  • Mugshotme_(3).thumb
    Mathew Paust
    Jul 27, 04:37pm

    And yet...and yet, how to explain the runaway success of the Da Vinci Code phenomenon? Maybe playing on our guilt for having ignored that fucking English teacher? A sort of sugar-coated penance? Or maybe having the symbols explained--in a voice unlike the "Beuuuuuuhler" one--as the plot dashes along? Sort of like a scavenger hunt? I'm wearing out my question mark key...

  • Samuel Derrick Rosen
    Jul 27, 07:35pm

    I could go a cappuccino.

  • Better.thumb
    Smiley McGrouchpants, Jr-Esq-III
    Jul 27, 11:46pm

    WHOOPS! I forgot to mention: CMYK is what you want for printing, not RGB. (Grossly irresponsible of me, but hey, what did you expect, free advice, worth every penny!) In Photoshop, you can just go to "Image" and then "Mode" and click on "CMYK Color": the fuckin' program will do it *for* you! Will wonders never cease.

    Paust: Yes. Yes, that's it: it's the other side of the exact same coin. "Da Vinci Code" = "Cliff's Notes," the thrill of getting away with it, but more muddled, because it's an actual book. Fuck Dan Brown, and the horse he rode in on, I say!

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