KDP how-to book with pictures

indianroads

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I see that KDP can publish 8.27 x 11.69, which I think would work for a book on self defense I’m thinking about putting together. It also looks like photos and drawings are allowed too. Has anyone here published something similar? Any advice?
 

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I see. A4 is kind of an oddball size for a print book, however, you can make it with as many pictures as you want. The uploaded file format will be PDF. They will print as grey scale black and whites, so unless your pictures are largely line art, they aren't going to look the greatest. They will basically look like any other illustrated paperback.

And by the way that applies to text too. If you don't change the text to all black (e.g. chapter headings defaulting to blue in Word) those will also come out in grey scale.
 
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indianroads

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I have yet to figure out how to get line art from photographs - the graphics are the largest hurdle.
 

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You can't really change photos to line art. You need an illustrator if you want it to look right.
 

indianroads

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You can't really change photos to line art. You need an illustrator if you want it to look right.

Yeah - that's what I thought. I definitely have a steep learning curve, and will need to bring in some help for the illustrations.
 

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KDP Print can produce color interiors as well, but color printing is quite a bit more expensive than black & white, and isn't generally profitable in the world of POD (although IngramSpark offers 3 levels of color printing, and I think two of them are lower cost than KDP Print's color printing).
 

Al X.

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KDP Print can produce color interiors as well, but color printing is quite a bit more expensive than black & white, and isn't generally profitable in the world of POD (although IngramSpark offers 3 levels of color printing, and I think two of them are lower cost than KDP Print's color printing).

Yeah I guess you are right. I categorically dismissed it for the cost.
 

CathleenT

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I pubbed a print color book with Amazon (CreateSpace)--a biography of my aunt, who was a marine during WWII. It came out fine, with all the color images properly embedded and all that. But that project was never meant to be a commercial proposition. It sold its expected fifty copies to family members and no more.

Is there some reason why you're not formatting for ebook? These come with color illustrations for no extra cost, and unless you're selling heavily at cons and book fairs, your ebook sales are likely to far outstrip your print sales. Just a thought. :)
 

indianroads

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I pubbed a print color book with Amazon (CreateSpace)--a biography of my aunt, who was a marine during WWII. It came out fine, with all the color images properly embedded and all that. But that project was never meant to be a commercial proposition. It sold its expected fifty copies to family members and no more.

Is there some reason why you're not formatting for ebook? These come with color illustrations for no extra cost, and unless you're selling heavily at cons and book fairs, your ebook sales are likely to far outstrip your print sales. Just a thought. :)

I believe the market for this book will be martial art instructors - many of which are not overly technical and may have an aversion to the ebook format. Also, the size of the book may cause formatting issues when it's reduced to fit the kindle format and images would become impossible to see clearly.

This will be a very small market - particularly to instructors of Tae Kwon Do, a Korean martial art which is now an Olympic Sport. The issue this book hopes to alleviate is that with the inclusion of TKD into the Olympic Games is that the self defense aspect of the art is being forgotten; many younger instructors know nothing about it.
 

Al X.

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I believe the market for this book will be martial art instructors - many of which are not overly technical and may have an aversion to the ebook format. Also, the size of the book may cause formatting issues when it's reduced to fit the kindle format and images would become impossible to see clearly.

This will be a very small market - particularly to instructors of Tae Kwon Do, a Korean martial art which is now an Olympic Sport. The issue this book hopes to alleviate is that with the inclusion of TKD into the Olympic Games is that the self defense aspect of the art is being forgotten; many younger instructors know nothing about it.

Well there is another option. You can offer the PDF version as an electronic deliverable. That is common these days for technical manuals and reports which have figures, photos and fixed formats. It could easily be read on a computer or tablet device - even some of the large format smart phones. Exactly how and who you go through to offer it in a PDF format, that you supply, I don't know, but I suspect it is doable.