[Chat], and the world [chats] with you; [Brainstorm], and you [brainstorm] alone.

Quoth

I am interested in that information as well, @ruzkin

Anybody in the mood to read about 40 pages of microfics and tell me which ones are not good enough to be in a book?

Or should I just leave everything in and to hell with it?

Edcrab

I haven't proofread anything in a month!

...uh, I mean that I'm eager to read them, not that I'm going to be rusty and crap. Although maybe that applies too.

Quoth

I don't even need it proofed, just "these suck, take them out" kind of thing. Although you are certainly welcome to proof it, of course. Can I send it to your gmail account?

Edcrab

Fire away! Replace proofread with critique/casually read, whatever. My brainrot has reduced my... words of... thinking. Doing... ness.

ElJeffe

TheBigEasy wrote:

Speaking of covers ... say, ruzkin, can you tell me the specs for the covers you used for your kindle books? As in ... resolution, dpi.

And did you just consider the Kindle itself when making the cover or did tablets (ie the iPad) play a role as well, as in making adjustments for the bigger screen real estate?

I am not ruz and I haven't made any proper artwork in years, but I was always in the habit of making such things as if they were going to be for print, then scaling down. If your machine is beefy enough, it's not any harder to make something at 2000x3000 than at 500x750, and you can't effectively scale upwards after the fact. This is based on a job that included making brochures that might be both printed as high-quality glossies and viewed on a monitor. (I was a game artist in my former life and did a lot of promotional stuff because I was the only artist who understood stuff that wasn't art, like advertising, or convincing people with lots of money to give it to us.)

That said, for something like a book cover I would have worked at whatever the size for a standard hardcover is - I dunno, 6"x8"? - at 300dpi. 600dpi if my machine could get away with it. Which would make the res either 1800x2400 or 3600x4800. Just because if you ever have any reason to print out that cover, you want it to look nice.

TheBigEasy

Well ... just looking at the Olesia Anderson ebook on my tablet at least answers my second question. The image didn't just scale up to account for the 10'' screen, but stayed at the size I imagine of a Kindle screen ...

And yeah, you are right Jeffe ... Make the cover bigger, in case I need it some time down the road and scale it down for other purposes seems to be the right way to do it. Now all I need to do is figure out how to do a cover .

Wank

@ElJeffe: Hey, I think you've written a good book. Found myself thinking about it today with no prompting.

ruzkin

TheBigEasy wrote:

Speaking of covers ... say, ruzkin, can you tell me the specs for the covers you used for your kindle books? As in ... resolution, dpi.

And did you just consider the Kindle itself when making the cover or did tablets (ie the iPad) play a role as well, as in making adjustments for the bigger screen real estate?

I do my covers at a 2:3 ratio (usually, sometimes I screw up), minimum length 1000 along the short side. There's no hard and fast rule for it on Kindle, and the KDP servers resize your cover to fit anyway after you upload.

ruzkin

TheBigEasy wrote:

Well ... just looking at the Olesia Anderson ebook on my tablet at least answers my second question. The image didn't just scale up to account for the 10'' screen, but stayed at the size I imagine of a Kindle screen ...

And yeah, you are right Jeffe ... Make the cover bigger, in case I need it some time down the road and scale it down for other purposes seems to be the right way to do it. Now all I need to do is figure out how to do a cover .

That cover was uploaded at 1000*1500, large enough for an iPad screen. I assume Amazon resized.

ElJeffe

Wank wrote:

@ElJeffe: Hey, I think you've written a good book. Found myself thinking about it today with no prompting.

This is probably the best compliment I have received on any work of mine. I am currently beaming.

Also: fucking tendonitis can eat a dick. I have to keep my thumb immobilized for two weeks and typing with my hand all dolled up in an Ace bandage is obnoicosdffjHNFJKHDJKHDKJUHF GAH FUCK YOU HAND.

...

I guess the beaming is over now.,

Zsetrek

Some things about these forums may change, but the one constant is that the WB chat thread moves like a snail in amber.

How is everyone going? Been a while since I popped by.

Quoth

We're all published and famous now. Ed lives in a castle in Bavaria, Baron owns a fleet of zeppelins, and spff has some kind of orbital laser that he uses to deface national monuments.

Zsetrek

My, how the time has changed them all! I remember when Ed considered that sleeping on the back seat of a bus, covered only by a film of greasy fish-n-chips newspaper, was "too fancy by 'alf" and "not conducive-like to the writin' and 'spiration and words and whatnot." Baron would wander the streets of Melbourne, looking at the crowded sky, and mumble solemn vows to himself: "One day, I shall win back the airborne printing press that Black Bart, airpirate of the Southern Wastes, stole from my father!" And spff would empty out a fishbowl, invert it over his head and attempt to write upside-down, suspended from his shower recess, hoping to perfect the art of zero-gravity poetry.

Quoth

Well, I mean... Spff still does that, but in actual zero gravity now.

Edcrab

He also keeps searing "robots suck!!" into my property with his goddamned space laser.

And I'll have you know that my tastes grow ever more refined, and I now sleep beneath an eiderdown manufactured from pressed, clean newspapers.

chiasaur11

Edcrab wrote:

He also keeps searing "robots suck!!" into my property with his goddamned space laser.

And I'll have you know that my tastes grow ever more refined, and I now sleep beneath an eiderdown manufactured from pressed, clean newspapers.

But you hire people to spit on them some days, to remind you of your roots.

Five shillings a day, I get. You are too generous, sir.

Quoth

So, what do you guys think of this cover, which is not nearly as good as anything ruz has done: http://candleinsunshine.com/asthemoonclimbs/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/AdAstra.pdf

tapeslinger

So minimalist it hurts! I love the robot tho, so cute! I think it would need a little bolder line quality, on kindle on my phone it's super pixelly.

Quoth

Does the text look good at least? The picture is the part I'm thinking of ditching.

tapeslinger

The type is clear and works well with the style, I think. I would say you should do something with color to draw the eyes in. Does not have to be much, just enough to make an impression on the viewers.

Amalia

I feel like I need a hair more space between the Ad Astra Per line and the Apiarium line. It feels a little bit too close to me. And I agree with Tape. You need some color to draw in the eye if you are going to keep it that minimalist.

tapeslinger

Oh, the space looked ok for me but again, phone kindle

Edcrab

Hahah, aww, that's cute. If I saw that cover on a shelf I'd definitely pick it up and read the blurb, or whatever the equivalent is when browsing for ebooks

geardrops

Well snap. I've been promoted to Assistant Editor at this magazine I slush for (young adult scifi/fantasy - http://scapezine.com/ if you're interested).

(Not to mention I'm taking over a friend's blog/site/thing which is actually turning into a THING that people are all like "are you going to write a press release?" and I'm like "press release wat?" and I also just nabbed a gig teaching high school girls about tech entrepreneurship and startups and oh god what a week what have I done?)

Edcrab

I wasn't familiar with Scape before now, but that's a neat website!

It sounds like you've got a metric crapton of work on your hands but I guess it's better to be busy than bored.

Quoth

Okay, am I getting warmer here:

http://candleinsunshine.com/asthemoonclimbs/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/adastracover2.png

tapeslinger

Will have to take a look at this when I get home from work, my phone is a pain to read a zine on from work. Cool though!

tapeslinger

@Quoth : I like the new version of this, I think the bee makes more sense to me. Pixelly though, again that may just be my phone.

Quoth

I'm not sure... it doesn't look pixelated on my giant computer monitor, but maybe my eyesight is just that bad.

Edcrab

It does look like it could use a little antialiasing, maybe? Or perhaps that's a look you like!

Quoth

I have no idea what that means! Can that be done in Sumopaint because that's what I've got at the moment...

geardrops

@Quoth I like how it's really simple and clean, though I'm not sure about the font. I'm no font-expert or anything, so I can't really offer much more than "It's not working for me." But I like the bee and the honeycomb. (Maybe center them? Not sure.)

( @tapeslinger @edcrab Thanks! Be sure to think of us if you ever write anything scifi/fantasy for the young adult audience! )

Edcrab

Quoth wrote:

I have no idea what that means! Can that be done in Sumopaint because that's what I've got at the moment...

I'm not sure! It's... well, I guess you could call it a method for reducing jaggies?

Quoth

I will try to do that if I can get on Gimp at some point, I guess? Gimp can do that? Uh, why do I suck at this.

Here is another version per someone's hatred of the honeycomb:

http://candleinsunshine.com/asthemoonclimbs/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/adastracover4.png

MKR

The technical explanation for antialiasing: The algorithm goes "whoops, a valley" and zaps the tops of valley to turn it into a nice little plain.

Quoth

Yeah, it took some digging through Wikipedia to get to that. The article on it is... Dense.

ruzkin

Quoth, my recommendations:

If you have an all-white cover, put a thin black border around it so it feels more solid on a kindle screen.
Enlargen the bee/hive design. The images are good, but far too small.
Find a papery texture, something very subtle, and lay it over the top. Pure white is very jarring. Also consider adding a very, very subtle gradient involving light cream colours or similar. Real book paper is rarely blindingly white, and seeing it that way digitally is often jarring.
As others have said, antialias your text. You can achieve the same effect just by copy-pasting the layer and then adding a very light gaussian blur.

And then, good luck!

MKR

I would offer some suggestions on covers, but nonfiction seems to have wildly different expectations.

Quoth

I will do the things you suggest. Thanks! Especially for that anti-aliasing tip, as there is no filter for that as far as I can tell.

MKR

Filters->Enhance->Alias or something to that effect

Unless the text is still text, in which case you can tick Antialiasing in the tools thing. And if you don't have one (haven't used the default GIMP in ages):