Amazon kindle website print9/17/2023 ![]() However, I found the color vibrant and pretty much accurate compared with the original picture. – The paper is matte and has some grain which can appear when looking a bit closely, or maybe it is just caused by the printing process: So probably the issue here seems like a one-off mistake. Some were printed in England (like this book) and some in Poland and the margins were OK: Not perfect still but I think not really noticeable unless you are specifically looking for it. Still, it makes the book look a bit shoddy.Įdit September 2020: Since writing this, I have published 2 other color books through Amazon (see here and here, with pictures of the actual printed books) but I didn’t see the same issue on the multiple copies I received for those books. However, it must be said that none of the pictures or texts, which were all in the safe zone, have been cut. On top of that, when the outside margin becomes small, some internal print markings appear in the gutter: Also, on the right page, the shape of the photo on the next page can be seen bleeding through, even though the 2 margins should have been identical. For example:Ībove, these are supposed to be the exact same margins. It is all the more visible since the photos in the book are aligned with the borders of the safe zone (the zone on the page that should contain all the important content). It seems the printing on the page is not very precise and the end result is that margins can vary wildly between each pages. This probably happened in transport: These days, Amazon uses soft bubble-wrapped envelopes instead of rigid cardboard. Also the front (soft) cover and the first few pages were dog-eared. – When I got the book, the coating of the glossy back cover was scratched in a few places. – KDP only allows text on the spine for books with at least 100 pages. – The PDF I sent included a margin for bleed, although in the end I ended up not making use of it. ![]() – The length of the book is 104 pages for the content and KDP added an additional 4 pages, all empty apart from the last one which had some internal barcode and a “Printed in Great Britain by Amazon” footer. I haven’t tested it yet so I am not sure of the quality. It is quite a bit pricier than softcover though. Update July 2022: Since last year, publishing hardcover books has also become possible. The book is square with a size of 8.5 inch x 8.5 inch. It still a soft cover (only choice offered by Amazon KDP). I also used the glossy cover finish, instead of matte. – In contrast with my previous books, which were in B&W, this one was in color. Here are some details about the book and the publishing process: I think the result came out OK enough, especially for the price and printed on demand, although it is obviously not Taschen-level quality. Here are some additional images of the interior, back cover and spine. Here is the code that was used to generate it (I had put a link in the comments after it was requested this is the same): ![]() Here is the full PDF of the paperback version of the book as uploaded to Amazon KDP: Someone in the comments also mentioned Affinity Publisher as a cheap alternative for desktop publishing that may be easier to use than Scribus. ![]() I actually would recommend that over Python + Reportlab for anything a little complex to layout. ![]() It is kind of like Adobe InDesign (but free) and it is quite easy to develop extensions in Python to automate parts of the workflow (I have written some for my second book here). I am planning some other book projects I care about more and this allowed me to see if it was worth it putting in the effort.Įdit September 2020: Since writing this, I have published 3 more books: Instead of using Python code and Reportlab to format the book like mentioned here, I used Scribus, an open source desktop publishing software (version 1.4 for the first book and version 1.5 for the second Version 1.5 is still in beta and is a bit buggy but has better handling for font embedding, useful for the print replica). I kept it simple since I was mostly interested in checking out how a Print-On-Demand color book would turn out and also test if Reportlab / Python could be used as a suitable replacement for Latex (which I used in my previous books) for the book layout. The book is nominally in French, however, apart from the title, there is no text in French in the book: The content is basically only photos, along with the geographic coordinates of where it was taken. Here are the product pages on Amazon: US, FR, UK, DE, JP. It is a Print-On-Demand color photo book titled “Croix de Savoie” ( Crosses of Savoie). Recently, I published a new book through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). ![]()
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