Shawn P. B. Robinson

For a long time, I didn’t produce hardcover copies of my book.

There were two reasons why.

First, I didn’t get around to it. I don’t have anything else to add to that other than to hang my head in shame.

Second, I found it painfully complicated. I just couldn’t figure out how to do it. The issue isn’t the interior PDF of your Hardcover book (that’s done the same way as your regular print book). The issue is with the cover. Formatting a hardcover cover file is really tricky… at least at first.

When I finally overcame the monumental obstacle of reason #1 above, I tackled reason #2 by contacting a friend (author R. E. Henderson) who had hardcover copies of his book. I asked him how he did it. I took his reply and tried what he said and still ended up confused. I then left it for a month or two (or longer). Sometimes I’m slow up on the uptake. This experience is a perfect example of that.

Finally, I figured it out. I now want to offer two simple ways to create a hardcover book: Using MS Publisher and using DocHub. This blog won’t include a step-by-step for all the clicks in MS Publisher or DocHub as anyone familiar with creating covers in MS Publisher will be able to work with the one and the other involves making use of the tools you have right on the screen (DocHub).

So, here we go!

1) You need an IngramSpark account.

I’ve blogged a fair amount on the topic of Ingram. They are an excellent company to work with, and they produce a quality print. If you want your print books distributed all over the place (much further than Amazon can reach), you should be using IngramSpark.

There are other Hardcover services out there. One such service is called Blurb. You will find Blurb will be a little easier to work with than Ingram in terms of their system for uploading and more. Their site is also far more impressive looking, but there is a big downside: your book will cost around double the amount it’ll cost with Ingram. In the end, Blurb uses Ingram to distribute your book anyway, so you might want to just go through Ingram from the start. The advantage with using Blurb is they provide a free ISBN, which can save you a lot of money, but considering the HIGH cost of printing books through

Blurb, you will likely pay for your ISBN cost in 10-20 book sales.

I think it’s worth going with Ingram.

Another option is Lulu.

Again, they have the same benefits as Blurb (although they are cheaper per book than Blurb), but they are still pricier than Ingram. Also, Ingram’s quality is known as being better than Lulu.

Here is a breakdown of a cost/book (this is your print cost, which means you have to price it way above this for sale to get a royalty). For the example below, I used a 6″x9″ book, black and white interior, casewrap hardcover, at 150 pages:

Blurb: $14.25/book
Lulu: $11.50/book
Ingram: $7.68/book

This means if you go with Ingram, you can set your book at a much lower price (be more attractive to buyers) or keep the price high (and make more royalties).

NOTE: with Ingram, there are loads of fees for setting up books and revisions and more. Anytime there is a fee, do a Google search for a coupon code. There are always coupon codes out there that get rid of the fees. I’ve used Ingram a LOT over the years and have never paid a single fee.

2) You need an ISBN

You’ll have to purchase an ISBN (if you use Ingram). ISBNs are purchased differently in each and every country. Check out my blog on where to get an ISBN.

NOTE: Your Print copy and your Hardcover copy each need their own ISBN.

3) Get a free template from Ingram

Head over to this site.

On this site, you fill out the form with your ISBN, Page Count and email address. The other areas are as follows:

Trim Size

You’ll notice that there are not quite as many trim sizes available as there are in paperback. As of the posting of this blog, the following sizes are available:
5×8
5.5×8.5
5.830×8.270
6×9
6.14×9.21
6.69×9.61
7×10
7.5×9.25
8×8
8×10
8×10.880
8.5×8.5
8.5×11
11×8.5

Interior Paper

This is the actual paper you are you using, whether you’re talking cream or color white. They have recently included a “groundwood” option, which is an eggshell mass market-like paper.

File Type

If you are able to use InDesign CS3 or InDesign CC or the newer versions, you can run with those, but for the sake of this blog, I’m focusing in on the PDF option. So select PDF.

For the pricing area, it doesn’t really matter what you choose, as we’ll be ignoring Ingram’s barcode.

4) Get yourself a barcode

Check out this blog for a free barcode image file.

5) Load up MS Publisher or DocHub (through Google Docs)

If you’re using MS Publisher, you’ll create a new document that’s 18″x12″. Next, drop the PDF that you received from Ingram into the file and stretch it out, so it fits the 18×12 file perfectly, lining up the corners of your PDF with the outside margins of your Publisher document.

If you’re using DocHub, you’ll have to load up Google Drive (online). Save your file in Google Drive and right-click on it. You’ll get an option for “Open With” and click on that. If DocHub loads up, Great! If not, click “Connect More Apps. Search for DocHub and add it. Load the file up in DocHub and move on to the next steps.

All that’s left now is to build your cover on the screen right on top of the PDF that you just loaded up. So, the barcode you ordered above can be used here (drop it on the screen), and you can add your text and cover images. With both DocHub and MS Publisher, you can add the images, move them around and set up your cover file.

A few things to keep in mind:

The white areas of the PDF are areas that will not be printed. It is perfectly fine for you to leave images in the white areas, but just know that it will be cut off and won’t be printed.

If you look at the PDF, you’ll want to keep all your text in the pink areas of the PDF. The pink areas on the PDF are the front and back covers and spine.

The blue areas are areas that wrap around the cover edges and the folds where the cover opens. Cover and back images and so forth should wrap around and through these blue areas, but you won’t want text in there as it’ll either be lost or look funny (if it’s in the fold of the cover).

Your cover image needs to cover the ENTIRE pink AND blue areas.

The blue areas around the outside are primarily the image that wraps around the edges of the cover. If you grab a Hardcover book off a shelf and look at it, you’ll see the printed image of the cover wraps around the cover edges and then is covered partly up by an interior page that’s glued over it. The blue around the outside of the PDF is that part of the book. Just keep in mind that the blue area needs to be covered with your cover image (so you’ll lose a bit of the cover image as it wraps around the edges–that’s just the way it is with hardcovers). To extend my cover image, sometimes I reverse the cover image and then set it next to the main cover image, so it appears that the image continues, and I don’t lose as much of the main image.

Another issue to consider is that the blue areas in the center of the PDF are the folds or bends of the Hardcover. That’s where you open the cover, and the cover bends in that spot.

This is a little tricky to work with. First, you should not have any text in that area as it’ll look funny. The challenge, however, involves centering your front and back cover text.

If you look at a hardcover book, you’ll notice that even though you can’t put text in the blue areas, those areas do take up space. That means if you center your title in the pink areas, it will look off-center on your front cover because there is extra space to the left. You’ll notice some hardcover copies deal with this by putting a different image in the fold area of the Hardcover (like a band or a stripe of color). You can also center your cover title more to the left a bit so that it doesn’t look off-center (that’s often what I do).

Now, one of the things I found with DocHub is that when I produced the final PDF and uploaded it to Ingram, the PDF template showed up (through the image). I dealt with this by dropping a white square image onto the PDF cover file in DocHub and placed it under all the cover files, but over the PDF from Ingram. That solved the problem.

For MS Publisher, I generally delete the PDF from the file once I’m done building the cover and then produce the file without the PDF. It makes it all neater.

Once you’re done, produce the PDF. The final file should be the 18″x12″ sized image, and the final cover should be in a PDF format.

There you have it: two simple and affordable ways to create a Hardcover cover file.

The interior file is done the same way as the paperback interior (just remember to change the ISBN number in the interior file to your hardcover ISBN and make sure the page size is all correct). The only thing you might want to keep in mind is that your Interior gutters might need a bit more space as Hardcover books do not always open quite as easily as paperbacks. If you do have to change the hardcover trim size or gutter size, make sure you go over your interior file carefully to make sure the chapters and any images and more line up okay.

Now, once I hit publish on my hardcover preorder on IngramSpark, here’s I found:

–Within a few hours, my hardcovers were up on Amazon for preorder (in US and Canada–NOTE: I didn’t check all the regions), although in the UK they were still listed as unavailable. There were no images, and the information was not complete (description was there, but author added review quotes were not visible). The Hardcovers were also not tied to their paperback or Kindle versions at that point.
–Within about 24 hours, the information was complete, images were up, and the hardcovers were available for preorder. They were still not tied to paperback or Kindle versions
–In less than three days, they were tied to the paperback and Kindle versions, but on Amazon in the US and Canada, reviews left for the kindle and paperback were not yet tied to the Hardcover. In Canada, one out of three of the books had the Hardcover listed as “unavailable” even though it was available just a short while before that point (but all information was correct). In the UK, everything seemed to be perfect. It was available for preorder, and reviews were tied to the hardcover version as well as the paperback.

The process is relatively quick with Amazon and Ingram. I find Amazon Canada struggles more than some regions to keep the books listed as available (this is frustrating as a Canadian author), but that’s the way Amazon operates. There’s always the feeling as a Canadian author that Amazon kind of forgets about us.

You will find as well that your book should quickly appear on sites like Books-A-Million, Chapters, Foyles, Book Depository, etc. It won’t take long for Ingram to get it out to all the places around the world! Ingram is good at what they do.

Enjoy!

Shawn