Sydney Strand

So I wrote this short story that turned into a novelette (a fancier word for short story, but it's 12,000 words, a not-quite-short-story-amount that requires a fancier name). I wanted to put it in a tiny booklet form, a tangible something to give my mom who eschews eReaders, as well as something to put on my own bookshelf to show "Hey, look at this real thing you spent three months writing!" My usual go-to is Createspace, but they don't do smaller books. So I went to LuLu. My Experience with LuLu, The First Time So I downloaded the templates, just as I did with Createspace. I needed them for their 4.25 x 6.88 Pocketbook. (Doesn't that sound perfect for my cute Novelette? I thought so, too.) Let's talk the Interior: It had the same issues as the Createspace interior template, in that I had to be mindful of using section breaks and NOT page breaks. This messed with pagination and headers if a page break or a continuous section break (and not ...

The cover with the spine Createspace hated Writing a book from a self-publishing point of view is more than just writing the book. You also get to put the book together from scratch in all that spare time writing gives you. Snicker. So. Let's talk covers (mostly) and innards (somewhat) when it comes to creating a PRINT book. This is NOT a step-by-step guide about how to technically create such a cover. This is just a reality check as to the time and effort and money you need when you put together a cover and you're NOT using someone to help you. I. I always start with the eBook cover. I always have an ebook before I have a print book. I like doing this so that I can find all those final errors in the eBook before I print it out. Finding an error in an eBook is a lot easier/cheaper/faster to change than an error in a print book. II. For the eBook cover, I need: -A photo editing program. I use Adobe Illustrator, which I paid $19.99 a month for (the first year)...