For the last couple of months, all of my paperbacks have been unavailable due to some quality control problems with KDP Paperback. The quality of their product is substantially inferior to CreateSpace, unfortunately. But for now, it still remains the best option for getting my books out in paperback, so that’s what I’m doing until I can put them up through Ingram Spark.
To mitigate the quality problems, I’ve made a new cover design which I hope to replicate across all of my paperback books. The biggest problem was that the cover was misaligned beyond the margin of error in the cover template, meaning that the front cover would bleed into the spine, or vice versa. As you can see, the new design has a solid background that wraps around the whole cover, with the text and art well outside of the margin of error. If Amazon screws this up, you’d be justified in asking customer service for another copy, or a refund.
In any case, I’m going to roll out the new paperbacks gradually over the next few months, as I manage to get to them. The inside content is changing slightly, in that I’m including the author’s notes at the end. I’m also adding chapter names to my earlier books, where previously they were simply “Chapter One” or “Chapter Two.” Other than that, everything is mostly the same.
I like the way the design for this one turned out. The paperback cover itself is slightly darker than the image shown, but all I’ve got right now is the proof, so I’ll post images after I’ve ordered a few author copies to sell. Hopefully by the end of this year, all of my books novella length and longer will be up in print as well as ebook!
