So you've created your book,
you've done the cover and you've done the interior and you're over at KDP and
you upload the interior manuscript.
You upload your cover file and you click on launch previewer and you wait,
and you wait some more. And then up pops the print previewer.
And you've got the cover here, which looks fine so far.
And you've clicked to look at the interior and it won't let you click approve.
And you see the dreaded red warning triangle and this red error
there. And when you hover your mouse over the interior of the book,
it does come up with this pop-up text,
which gives you an idea of what the problem might be.
And also under where it says error.
It also gives you an idea of what the problem might be,.but the issue can be
interpreting what it says,
and this can apply whether you're doing fiction, non-fiction books,
creating no content and low content books.
And often the problems arise out of a couple of main
things, which is what we're going to cover in today's video on getting your book
formatted in the correct way in the first place.
So hopefully you don't get these errors.
So if that sounds something useful to you then please follow along. Now,
if you've not been here before, my name is Paul Marles,
and I do videos on how to make it, keep it and grow it.
And that's your money I'm talking about. If you do like videos like that,
then please do give it a thumbs up,
hit the subscribe button and smash that notification bell to receive
notification of when I produce more videos like this.
So what we're going to cover is the formatting of the cover of the book,
which will be quick and the interior, which will be the main part of the video,
because that's the main thing that a lot of people run into trouble with.
And that's what causes the main issues when uploading that book.
So let's get straight into it. Now,
we first want to decide on what size our book is going to be.
Now the most common size of many books is 6 by 9 inches.
If you're creating larger books, it could be non-fiction books,
or it could be things like puzzle books, handwriting, books, coloring books,
the most common size of those tends to be 8.5 by 11 inches.
Now you can do smaller books,
sort of 5 by 8 inches,
which is also a common size for fiction and some
non-fiction books because they're a better size for putting in the pocket.
However, the only slight issue with that is obviously if it's smaller,
you'll have more pages.
If you've got more pages it does actually cost more to produce,
which cuts away a bit at your profit margin. So the book,
the example today is going to be a book that's 6 by 9 inches. Now,
in order to create your cover,
you could do it all within KDP by going over to the
KDP cover creator. And you find that within the KDP platform,
where in the section where you upload your cover file,
you can click on use cover creator, launch cover creator,
and this will take you to the Kindle cover creator,
where you can create your own cover within the platform itself.
The only issue is it can be very basic.
You don't have a lot of the flexibility that you have if you're
using image, editing software, such as Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator,
Affinity Designer, Inkscape, Gravit Designer or Canva.
And those are the most popular ways that a lot of people do create their covers.
So that's exactly what we're going to do today.
And this is how I create my covers. So what we need, first of all,
is to know what our actual cover size is. So this will include the back cover,
the front cover and the bit for the spine.
And also we need to allow for something called bleed,
which you don't really need to worry about at the moment. Now,
the quickest way to get a template for this cover is to go over to a website
called bookow.com. So you click on Createspace, KDP,
cover template generator.
You scroll down and you put in the dimensions of your book. In this case,
we said 6 inches by 9 inches. And then the number of pages for this,
I'm going to use 120 pages, which is the most common for things like in, um,
no content to low content books.
But obviously that's going to depend on the type of book you produce and the
number of words you've written. But 120 pages for the moment,
then you put in your email address, repeat it,
click on the tick box to consent to email, the cover template.
And you will be sent a templates. That's looks like this.
And the important information we need is in the top left-hand corner,
which tells us our page layout size,
which is 12.52 inches by 9.25 inches in this case.
And so we could go over to our image editing software today,
I'm using Affinity Designer, but there are many out there.
You can use a platform like Canva or other software like Photoshop,
Adobe Illustrator, et cetera.
And you would set up your page dimensions with those dimensions,
from the template.
And then what you can do is just drag in the template that you've just
downloaded and position that on the page.
And this is useful because you can get your content for the back cover and front
cover within this red or pinky colored box.
And you can align it also within that box so that,
you know it's going to look good when it's on the actual book
itself. And it also has a space there to put the,
any writing you may have on the spine of the book.
And when you've done all that,
you can then just switch off that layer for the template or just delete
it. And then your book your cover is then ready to save as a PDF file and then
upload to the KDP platform. We're onto the interior now.
And this is the bit that can cause some confusion. So again,
decide on the page size, well we've already done that, which is 6 by 9 inches.
Then we have to decide on whether the pages are going to have
bleed or no bleed.
And this is determined by what content you have in the book.
So if you have images or content that goes right to the edges of the
page, this is called bleed.
But if the content doesn't
and there is a margin around your content, then this is called no bleed.
Now,
even if just one page in your book has an image or content
that goes right to the edge of a page,
then the whole document will need the bleed settings.
But if it doesn't, then it would be no bleed.
And in which case the size of the page that you would create would just be
the size of your book. So it'd be 6 by 9 inches. However,
if it does have bleed,
then we need to increase the size of our page so that during manufacture,
it can then be trimmed down.
So if you are placing any images or graphics that do go to the edge of the
page, then do remember some of that may be trimmed off.
So how do we decide on what size our page should be?
If it does have bleed? Well,
we put an extra amount at the top outside margin and
the bottom. So we need to increase the page size. And for this,
we add 0.125 Inches to the top,
0.125 inches to the bottom and 0.125 inches to the side.
So our page becomes
6.125 inches by 9.25 inches.
And you would add this amount on whether your book was an 8.5
by 11 book or a 5 by 8 book or any other size for that matter.
So when it comes to upload in your book,
this is where you put the bleed or no bleed settings.
Then the second bit you need to take into account is the
margins. Now you can imagine if you created a book and the content of the book,
whether it's writing or table or images
went right up to the edge of the page, it would look a bit odd.
So we want to have our content within the margins.
So if our book is no bleed,
we would have to have our content within the following
margins.
And this would be for 24 to 150 page book.
So the inside margin or gutter would be not 0.375,
the outside margin 0.25 inches, the top margin 0.25inches.
And the bottom also 0.25 inches.
Now the actual margin size is going to be dependent on the number of pages in
the book.
But if you go to the KDP help page and I'll leave the link to this in
the description below, and you scroll down,
you can see there is a section on margins,
and you can see that it is dependent on the number of pages.
So if there are more pages in the book,
then the actual margin sizes would be bigger.
But what happens if our book has bleed and our
pages are actually bigger? Well,
what we need to do is actually increase the size of our margins to add on that
bit, extra for the bleed.
So now the inside margin would remain the same at
0.375 inches, but the outside margin would be 0.375 inches,
top margin 0.375 inches.
And the bottom also 0.375
inches, because we're basically adding on the amount for the bleed,
to the amount for the margins. Now,
what you can do when setting up your page in your image editing software is
you can add a box for the margins. In the case of Affinity Designer,
you click on document set up, and you've got this box here,
which says include margins.
You untick that little lock and you put in your inside margin that we've just
mentioned 0.375.
And we put in our outside margins of not 0.25,
and we can just copy and paste that to the other boxes, click on.
Okay. And you'll see, it'll provide us with this box here.
And as long as our content is within that box,
then we're all good to go. And when we upload our book,
there would hopefully be no issues. Now,
the KDP help section does also provide templates for
pages and how to customize these pages.
It tends to refer to opening the document in Microsoft word.
But that's probably more useful if you're creating a written book rather
than the no content and low content books.
So that covers the main areas that most people have when uploading
their books to the KDP platform.
And it covers those main areas where Amazon or KDP reports to you that there is
an error and doesn't allow you to proceed with the upload of your book. Now,
this video is going to be added to my book tutorials playlist.
So if you're interested in becoming an author, becoming a publisher,
creating your own publishing business, then watch this playlist here,
which will take you through all the various different steps on creating your own
books. Thank you very much for your time. It's very much appreciated.
And until next time, goodbye.