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Tuesday, August 16, 2016

CreateSpace Cover Calculator (Tech Tuesday)

To be honest, I’m surprised that CreateSpace doesn’t have something like this on their own site already. Any time you want to publish a paperback with CreateSpace, you need to include a cover (or pay them to make one for you). The DIY guidelines include a formula for calculating spine width, based on the number of pages and what kind of paper you’re using. But even if you’re decent at math, and I am, it can be nerve-wracking enough to double-check and check those measurements again.

Now if there was a way you could feed your page size, number of pages, and paper type to a calculator and get a no-sweat measurement that you could use for that cover…


Oh. Just look to the right. Over there in the sidebar. I’m no JavaScript whiz, but I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do and there’s plenty of information online. I had the thing going in not much time, which surprises me all the more that CreateSpace hasn’t done it. It’s been around for a month or so now, but I figured it was a good topic for Tech Tuesday.

The “Page size” dropdown lets you choose from all the standard CreateSpace sizes, plus a “Spine Only” selection if you’re using a custom page size. The widget automatically adds the 1/8" bleed to all four sides of your cover, expands to show the results, and collapses again if you click Reset. The rest of it should be self-explanatory.

Feel free to drop by and use the widget any time you need to calculate a cover. If you want your own copy, that’s fine, too. I released it under a Creative Commons attribution/share-alike license, which means give me credit and pass your changes on so all indies can benefit. Then again, I’m not sure what else it might need… except maybe a way to select Lightning Source.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the tool, Larry.

    ReplyDelete
  2. No prob, Patricia. I needed it, and it's easier to share than to keep to myself!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I wonder if CreateSpace would be interested in this. Probably not. I like using them, but they have the worst customer service.

    ReplyDelete

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