Monday, February 20, 2012

Using A CreateSpace Template

I think you're better off using your own created in Word.  I did do the paperback of Charlie (Dream Horse) in Open Office in 2009 and used the CreateSpace template for Summer Horse but Word is easier.  If you don't have Word and do have OO or Libre Office (why name it that??  Why not Sunshine Office?  Because it's free?  Then Free Office.)

Anyway, just choose the mirror layout, type in your size specifications and you're ready to start pasting in your text.  You will need to be mindful that chapters start on odd pages.  You'll have to add page breaks or blanks at the end of some chapters to make that happen but that's not hard.  You can force what is an odd or even page, so look for that box if that need arises.

What will be a pain is figuring out how to get the numbering right.  I admit I was going nuts until I found this tut.  It will solve everything if you follow it.  It's not complicated but--what do you expect, it's a Microscoff product, it's not intuitive or streamlined.

You need to split the front matter from the text to get the numbering to work properly.  Also not a big deal.  Microscoff will give you no hints where to do this or how find it, but this guy explains it perfectly and slowly.




So go turn your digital books into paper books.

Don't whine that I didn't show you how to build the cover.  In a post I went step by step last year with Summer Horse, do a search you'll find it.  It's easy.

You will want to use their cover template and if you want to do it from scratch, it's darn hard to find the page anymore.  Here it is.  Tell them how many pages and their computer will do all the math for you.

https://www.createspace.com/Help/Book/ArtworkDownload.do

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