POD File. (For Dummies.)

This book has nine-point text, a Mentor edition of 'The Odyssey' in a pocketbook sized paperback.


by Louis Bertrand Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved


So far the POD file for 'The Case of the Curious Killers' is going fairly well. A minor point, but I didn't grab the most up to date file. But I would have gone through it anyway, a quick re-write won't hurt the thing.

It is tempting to open up the margins a little more. One 4x7 I have here has a .25 inner margin and about .375 outer. But with this template both measurements have to be the same, because of the left-hand/right-hand page thing. They have to match in a mirror-like image sort of a way. That's my interpretation, but I will check and fool around with it.

Otherwise the left page has a big gutter and the right page a small one, is what I'm saying. At Smashwords, for formatting we are advised to keep it simple, no more than two types and sizes of font, stuff like that. Nothing over 16-point, etc. But those were all e-books. This is a little different.

I haven't run across anything like that on Lulu, but they do stress embedding your fonts to make the printable Pdf. There are instructions for OpenOffice on how to do that. (Editor's Note: He is talking about making Pdf's in Adobe Digital Editions.)

Right. I was confused, but I'm all right now...

Ten-point looks fine for the text, and it again looks like about 427 pages. The 741-page figure I got the other day was clearly wrong, but I still don't know what happened there. I'm paying attention to the proper number of blank sheets. Page numbering should not be a problem...okay, it's not immediately obvious, but I can try it as a .doc file in Word and import it again...maybe.

In other words, I'm taking my time and thinking it out as best I can. Realistically, I probably will have to go through a couple of proofs, maybe more.

I could upload a file and pay someone $300.00, allegedly. I would be waiting a lot longer, on my income. This way I learn how to do it for myself. The postal delays will be the worst thing--it's almost inevitable that we discover some little thing in the file before we even get a copy by mail.