What’s With The Delay?
Getting Whimsi ready to publish in paperback form has been an educational journey! 
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) has manuscript and cover standards for publishing which require compliance by every author/publisher. In my original naivety I just lazily assumed that with a digital book already in place, there would be a button somewhere I could click and voila! after a few whirrings and buzzings somewhere in cyberspace the paperback edition would just magically appear.
Uh, not so fast, pilgrim!
Given a moment, it is easy to understand KDP’s holding everybody to a common standard for the books they accept. (I really should have known this would be the case. I experienced the same requirement for exacting preparation when I wrote my doctoral dissertation at Andrews University!)
- First, the most obvious – anything published under ANY publisher’s mark needs to be consistent with the mark’s standards. Consumers of any product expect consistency from the brand, regardless of the field. It doesn’t matter if it is publishing, fast food, clothing, or whatever. And the only way to provide that is to have required standards and procedures for the business.
- Second, as an author, I want my book presented in the most attractive way, so prospective readers will make the leap to buy it, read it, and even share or recommend it to their friends. A consistent form of presentation contributes to that. It is good to benefit from KDP’s experience.
- KDP wants their authors to be successful! Their success is totally wrapped up in the success of the books they approve. That’s a good thing. To this end, KDP provides lots of good coaching along the way. They’re used to dealing with novices, as well as seasoned writers.
So, what are some of those pesky details that have to be considered?
- Oh, just some little things like margins, pagination, etc. The preview program is really good at spotting errors that need to be corrected. You can over-ride the program, but it’s nice to have the alert so you can decide yay or nay for each potential problem.
- Photos and pictorial illustrations need to be uploaded at a minimum of 300 dots per inch (dpi). That’s because in print anything less than that density in digital photos will look fuzzy. However, getting to the 300dpi standard has proven challenging for us. In Whimsi, every page of text has an illustration opposite it on the facing page. This is the biggy we’re working on right now. We’re hoping this will be the LAST major hurdle we have to jump!
Even so, with all this, Kimberly and I are really excited to see this little story coming together in a paperback edition! It will be a day for celebration when it is all finished and ready to go!
Have a wonderful day, and a great week!
Loren
