Two weeks ago I had my first children's book published on Amazon, for the kindle. Thanks to one of my followers I learned about a company where you can get print versions of you books and also have them available on Amazon. So I had to do it.
I needed to reformat my images to a different size, and a few days after I submitted my files I got this proof in the mail. At first I thought it's perfect I love it, but when I looked closer I realized that there were a few things that needed to be fixed.
First of all, although you can't tell in the picture above, the b looks closer to purple than to blue, and d looks a bit orange when he is supposed to be red. This wouldn't be that big of deal except that the letter b really should be blue.
I needed to reformat my images to a different size, and a few days after I submitted my files I got this proof in the mail. At first I thought it's perfect I love it, but when I looked closer I realized that there were a few things that needed to be fixed.
First of all, although you can't tell in the picture above, the b looks closer to purple than to blue, and d looks a bit orange when he is supposed to be red. This wouldn't be that big of deal except that the letter b really should be blue.
Second, on this page with the balloons. Again the balloon is purple. When I purposely made that balloon different so that the b would have more of an impact.
And thirdly, b's eye's are squished together. So I knew that I still had some work to do before I started selling them.
And thirdly, b's eye's are squished together. So I knew that I still had some work to do before I started selling them.
Why my colors shifted from blue to purple.
It took me a while to figure out why my colors were shifting, but it turns out that it has to do with rgb and cmyk. RGB stands for Red, green, and blue. It is the color system that computers use. While CMYK stands for Cyan, magenta, yellow, and Key (which actually means black). This is the color system that the majority of printers use.
So when the printer what trying to convert my rgb colors into cmyk colors that is when they shifted. Apparently rgb has a much bigger range of colors than cmyk. So the colors that I was using couldn't the printer couldn't actually duplicate, and when it tried to pick a similar color the colors shifted.
So when the printer what trying to convert my rgb colors into cmyk colors that is when they shifted. Apparently rgb has a much bigger range of colors than cmyk. So the colors that I was using couldn't the printer couldn't actually duplicate, and when it tried to pick a similar color the colors shifted.
. . . and the solution
So what I needed to do was to change my illustrations into cmyk. That way I could see what colors I was going to get and make the necessary changes before I sent the book off to the printer. Oh, that sounds so much easier than it actually was. The problem is that most programs that can actually accomplish this are really expensive. I mean I think I would just keep a purple looking blue rather than dishing out $500 or more on the professional version's of Adobe's Photoshop.
So I went off in search of a free alternative. The usually answer to this is of course gimp. So I checked and no gimp doesn't do cmyk. After a lot more search I discovered that there was a plug in to gimp that could. Seperate+ So I was all excited that I was going to find a solution.
Four hours later after trying to install this said plug-in, I discovered that the problem wasn't with the plug-in or the instructions on how to install it, it was just not going to work with the current version of gimp that I had installed. So I installed a back version and finally was able to convert my images.
As of today I've ordered another proof, and cross my fingers hopefully this one will be the final version.
So I went off in search of a free alternative. The usually answer to this is of course gimp. So I checked and no gimp doesn't do cmyk. After a lot more search I discovered that there was a plug in to gimp that could. Seperate+ So I was all excited that I was going to find a solution.
Four hours later after trying to install this said plug-in, I discovered that the problem wasn't with the plug-in or the instructions on how to install it, it was just not going to work with the current version of gimp that I had installed. So I installed a back version and finally was able to convert my images.
As of today I've ordered another proof, and cross my fingers hopefully this one will be the final version.
The writing bug
So after finishing all of that I got a brilliant idea. I have so many teaching material products online. I think it would be great if some of them were in print as well. I thought about it for a while and decided that I was going to start with my Pirate Word Ladders. I've created a brand new cover. The new cover is on the left. You can see the improvement over the old cover that I had before below. I'm quite proud of my new cover.
I'm still in the process of converting the word ladders to the proper format for create space but soon instead of printing out a bunch of copies you can buy a book with them already printed out for you.
I'm still in the process of converting the word ladders to the proper format for create space but soon instead of printing out a bunch of copies you can buy a book with them already printed out for you.
 | This was a lot longer of a post than I was planning on writing. If you would like to purchase my digital version of the pirate word ladders you can by adding them to your cart below.
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  | And if you'd like to buy the kindle edition of b and d are buddies you can by clicking on the picture to the left.  |
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