An Old Dog Learning New Tricks

Reverse engineering a KDP book

In previous stories about self-publishing, I mentioned about how I found formatting a story for the purposes of publishing a book something of a black art far beyond my limited digital intellect. For that reason I was paying a freelance formatter I came across on Fiverr. I found him to be very professional, punctual and economic.

However, the guy is a young student based in Pakistan and recently got behind with some book I had sent him, no doubt due to needing time for his academic studies. At this point I came up with an idea about how I could get my head around formatting my own books and save some time and money.

The idea I had was what you might call reverse engineering. That is to say, I took apart a story the formatter had done for me, very carefully noting all the settings he had used. I also copied and pasted a chapter graphic motif from the story he did for me.

Today I was finally able to publish a book I had managed to format all by myself. However, this was only after many hours of pulling my hair out over various other matters. For example…

I write using Pages, which has a drop down menu for the size of document you want to write. Scrolling down that menu I could not see anything akin to a KDP 6 X 9 paperback book. That surprised me as that size of book is the one that is most commonly used.

The first thing you need before you start to write, or copy and paste, is to select the correct size of document. You cannot just use any old template. If you do not choose the correct one, then there isn’t any point setting the margins and gutter, or anything else for that matter.

Eventually, after quite a while trawling the net looking for help, I came across one site which gave me the answer I was so desperately looking for. The solution to the problem is really quite simple, and you won’t find it in Pages!

First, open a new blank document in Pages. Then, come out of Pages and click on ‘File’ in the toolbar at the top of your desktop and scroll down to ‘Page Setup’. In the box that appears, the first of four items is Format, where you can select a printer you want to use. But we dont want a printer, we want to create a custom page size.

No problem, for Format, select ‘Any Printer’ (if you don’t do this then what you want won’t work). Then click on ‘Paper Size’ at the bottom of which you will see ‘Custom.’ It is here that you can now set your KDP 6 X 9 document size.

A small box will appear, at the bottom left of which you can click on a plus sign to create a new document. Now you can enter the sizes. At this point don’t worry about the margin sizes as you can set those later, inside your Pages document.

Be aware that when entering your page size for a KDP book, if your book has any colour element, even if it is only a logo on the title page, you must use the bleed size of the document, which you can get from KDP.

Once you have set all of this up, then that page set up will appear in the document size menu in Pages. So you only have to go through this process of stepping out of Pages to Page Setup once.

Getting back to my idea of reverse engineering, I also downloaded a KDP sample template with text in it. Again, this enabled me to learn all about the settings. The other thing I noticed was that new chapters always start halfway down the page.

In reality, I have spent many hours getting my head around all that is involved in formatting a book for publication on KDP. And although I am no expert, I have at last, at least, been able to properly format my own novel, with text and full colour imagery.

Taking a wider perspective, learning to format my books is a skill that can now be added to the others I have had to learn, such as creating my own book covers. Even better still, I now do not have to pay anything to anybody to get my books published, I can do it all by myself. What this gives me is the control and power to get things done without being dependent on others. Ultimately, this all gives me the creative freedom to do things the way I want them to be done.

In summary, here is what I have specifically gained by following this process;

I have learned a new computer skill. I have learned how to save time and money. I have learned how to gain control of the process. I have learned how to win the creative freedom to do what I want.

Taking a more holistic view, I have also gained;

A sense of achievement. A sense of pride. An increase in confidence and self-esteem. Affirmation that depsite being seventy years old, I am not quite ready for the knackers yard just yet. There is still life in the old dog for the time being. ‘Rock on Tommy,’ as they say.