Export to 6x9 print format for createspace?

[davstrom]

I would like to export my Storyist novel-formatted story to a 6x9 format to export to Createspace for a 6x9 print book.

I previously used the export to mobi to make a file that I uploaded to Amazon for Kindle, and it worked fine. Now I would like to make a 6x9 version, text in nice print format (Time New Roman, single space paragraphs, etc.?) and not double-space Courier as in the Novel stylesheet. The process looks complex so far: export to RTF or some such and reformat the document.

I would have liked to export from Storyist to PDF or .docx or some such that would already be formatted properly for Createspace.

Or I would like to have a stylesheet that is formatted for 6x9 Createspace books, and I could transfer my Storyist novel (actually a couple of short stories) to that.

What is the easiest way to get a Storyist story into Createspace 6x9 format?

P.S. I will want to do that in the future with embedded pictures, as in children’s books. For now, I will settle for text.

[marguerite]

Well, the results will never be as clean as an actual typeset book (they won't with the CreateSpace templates, either). But you can get a fair way toward the result you want. I assume you have a Storyist file containing your novel already, since you created a Kindle file. Before you do anything else, go to the File Menu, choose Page Setup, then 6x9 from the Paper Size menu.

 

1. Open the Inspector. Under Margins, check mirror pages and insure that the inside is about 0.25" more than the outside.

2. Edit the styles (Section Text, Section Separator, Chapter Title, etc.) so that they are single-spaced and justified and have the fonts you want. Correct the formatting for the Header and Footer styles, too (but see below). If you want different left/right headers or footers, check those boxes in the Inspector. Click different first page header/footer so you can get the page numbers off the first page (title or copyright).

3. If you are happy with # between sections, no problem. If not, save the file under a new name, then run a search and replace to turn # into the character(s) of your choice. This removes all your sections in the Project View, which is why you perform this step on a copy, but for print you don't care. Remove any section separators that come before chapter titles.

4. Make a list of all the chapter numbers, titles (if any), and page numbers. You will need to create the table of contents by hand.

5. Fix the title page. The Novel template includes a sample, if you need it.

6. Add a copyright page with the ISBN and the usual disclaimers. Any printed book in your genre will give you the basic text. If necessary, reset the page number to 0 so that your book starts at 1.

7. Add the table of contents.

8. Print the file to PDF and check it.

 

Note that Storyist was designed to send manuscripts to editors, agents, or publishers rather than for publication by a POD printer like CreateSpace. That means that you have to use work-arounds to avoid certain typesetting no-nos. You can't remove headers from the chapter openers, so you would do better to use footers that consist only of page numbers. You want to create a new 1st paragraph style that has no indent on the first line. Watch out for double spaces after periods (do a global search and rerun it until you get rid of them all). And while you're at it, run another search for paragraph breaks followed by white space.

 

There may be other details I've forgotten, but that will at least get you started.

Hope that helps,

M

[davstrom]

It helps. Thank you. I am trying your steps and I will see how they work for me. So far, so good.