Is it easy to add a hardback edition to your kdp-published paperback?

August 28, 2023 7:51 AM

I've got a couple of self-published paperbacks available on Amazon. I'm thinking of adding a hardback option for them - more for my own satisfaction than anything - but I'm wondering if it's worth the trouble. Does anyone here have any experience of doing this and, if so, how much of a pain in the ass was it to get right? I've got couple of additional questions below the fold.

Do you have to reformat the the whole of the book's interior content as part of preparing it for hardback publication?

Does the finished hardback print your cover image directly on its own cover, or does it add a dust jacket carrying that image?

Thank you.

posted by Paul Slade to Media & Arts (1 answer total)

IIRC, for my 6x9 all I had to do was rearrange the cover image against the hardcover template, because the dimensions are a little different. The cover image is printed directly on the boards and spine, no dust jacket.

I didn't have the change the interior at all... Wait, there was ONE thing. Any page that had an transparent PNG (RGBA instead of RGB) was converted to a full-page bitmap at a lower resolution. You could tell because some of the text was dithered slightly, only on these pages. I noticed the same behavior in GhostScript, so that must be what the printer is using. I got around this by flattening each of the transparent PNGs to RGB against a white background using ImageMagick.
posted by credulous at 1:27 PM on August 28, 2023 [1 favorite]