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Latex CreateSpace BookCover

This is a template for creating a quality book cover PDF suitable for use by CreateSpace and Ingram Spark print-on-demand paperback publishers. The default setup is for a 6" x 9" paperback, but the parameters are are easily changed.

Note that if you are writing a non-fiction book, you might consider doing so in LaTeX. My Non-Fiction Book/eBook template on Github is a bit more complex to use, but will do all the heavy lifting of generating page runners, tables of content (both summary and detailed), bibliography, multi-leveled index, and lists of terms and abbreviations. It will regenerate your book for print-on-demand (POD) printers, as ePub files, as a distributable PDF file, as an HTML web site, and as a raw ASCII file (an annoying requirement for obtaining catalog in publication data).

Structure

BookParameters.tex is a LaTeX file containing defines about your book. You edit this while constructing your book. In my projects, all LaTeX root files for the same publication include this file.

The spine width is determined by the page count and the width of the paper stock. The CreateSpace white stock is set by default.

You will need to provide your own image files. I've included some example files that are CC licensed from Wikipedia as an example.

There are four files you can expect to edit:

• BookParameters.tex
• cover/BackCover.tex
• cover/FrontCover.tex
• cover/SpineCover.tex

You will need to adjust image sizes and spacing for your own text and image shapes by editing the .tex file. Reasonable familiarity with LaTeX is required.

Building Your Cover PDF File

Run the provided script:

    ./bin/makecover

This should produce output that looks like:

$ makecover
    - Book Format 6in x 9in (315 pages)
    - ISBN13: 978-4-4444444-4-6, Price: $9.95 [50995]
    - GhostScript generation of ISBN Barcode image
    - Pass 1 - Generating Front Cover
    - Pass 1 - Generating Back Cover
    - Pass 1 - Generating Spine for Cover
    - Pass 2 - Generating Front Cover
    - Pass 2 - Generating Back Cover
    - Pass 2 - Generating Spine for Cover
    - Assembling Final Cover
    - Removing intermediate files
    - Done.

If any step fails (usually due to missing or incorrectly configured tools) you should examine the log files generated into the cover/logs directory.

Page Count and Spine

The TotalPageCount parameter in BookParameters.tex controls the thickness of your book's spine. The page count times the SinglePageThicknessPt determines the thickness. This is currently set to the thickness of standard white paper used by CreateSpace, but you may need to change it to match the bond used by your print on demand publisher.

Once you have built a PDF for your book, you can set the page count by:

• [1] editing BookParameters.tex directly or
• [2] running ./bin/setBookParameter TotalPageCount nnn or
• [3] running setBookTotalPageCount [logfile] against the final pdflatex log file created when you built your pdf. This extracts the page count from the log and modifies BookParameters.tex. You will need the ./bin directory in your path.

SpineCover.tex automatically adjusts the format of the spine based on the page count, but you will need to edit it if your book title, subtitle, author name, or publisher names are significantly longer than those provided in the example.

ISBN Numbers

You should have ISBN numbers for each verson of your book. In the United States these must be either purchased directly from Bowker at MyIdentifiers.com. I recommend buying a block of 10 ISBNs for $250. Alternatively, you can get a 'free' ISBN from CreateSpace if you are publishing your print version only with them. There are issues with doing this, that may make it difficult to use other printers, but you may decide to save the bucks (not recommended).

Once you have your ISBNs, modify the BookParameters.tex fields, PrintISBN, PrintISBNShort, EbookISBN, and EbookISBNShort. 13 digit ISBN numbers can be converted to 10 digit and vice versa using this tool. Make sure you select Hyphenate ISBNs. You must have the dashes in the correct places in your barcodes.

Price and ISBN Barcode

The PrintPrice parameter is the price that will be added to the barcode placed in the lower right corner of the back cover. Undefine (put a % in front of) the parameter to generate a barcode without a price. Note that most retailers will not accept books without the price extension.

This barcode is generated with ghostscript using Terry Burton's most excellent PostScript based barcode generator. Use $99.99 if your price exceeds $100 (good luck selling that puppy).

eBook Cover Art

A special .tex file FrontCoverEbook.tex is included to help you create the large format art required for eBook covers. Apple iBooks and Amazon Kindle now require images with 1400+ pixels on short side. Ingram Spark requires a minimum of 1600 pixels on shortest side and 2560 pixels on the longer side.

This project typesets a 12" x 18" PDF file. You can then use Gimp, Pinta, or other image capture programs to grab a suitable image for upload. I often just use the Okular PDF Viewer on Linux to select and save cover images.

License

This project is MIT Licensed and under the Free Public License 1.0.0. You are free to choose the one that works for you. if you want to grab parts for use in your own project then please remove my name and hack away.

Installing

Just copy the contents to your directories and use as is. You will need a complete LaTeX environment, which includes pdflatex.

I strongly recommend installing TeX Live 2016. Others who have attempted to use TexLive 2013 have seen problems with the pgf package.

You can check that you have a proper TeXLive install with tex --version:

  $ which tex # This is a linux command to discover the install path.
      /usr/local/texlive/2016/bin/x86_64-linux/tex
  $ tex --version
      TeX 3.14159265 (TeX Live 2016)
      kpathsea version 6.2.2
      ...

If your cover includes an ISBN barcode, then you must also have the gs (GhostScript) command available from the command line. Check the install with:

    $ which gs
    /usr/bin/gs
    $ gs --version
    9.10

I use TeXstudio for interactive editing of the LaTeX files. I also strongly recommend installing it.

texclean Utility

Running pdflatex generates a lot of trash intermediate files. You can delete these with this ./bin/texclean utility.

Usage: texclean [texfilename]
Clean up trash files for a LaTeX .tex file.

-a             clean for all .tex files in the directory.
-t             trial run -- commands are shown but not executed.
-q             quiet output during command execution.
-v             verbose output during command execution.

All the various intermediate files created during LaTex processing
of a file are deleted.