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Thursday, February 11, 2010

So close...

Okay so remember how back in November I participated in National Novel Writing Month? And how I completed it? And how I can get a free, professionally printed and bound copy of my book? Well, like so many other things in my life right now, that's not going well.

I finally finished the editing stage, I designed my cover and was ready to submit. Well I typed it up as a Word document, they want it in a PDF format. Okay, fine, I found a free website that converts it. So I convert it and submit. Not good enough. Apparently the trim sizing is off and they will not accept it. My copy that I converted is formatted for 8.5 x 11 and my book size is 5 x 8. I have NO IDEA how to change this. No one knows how either, apparently.

So I sent an inquiry to CreateSpace who is handling the whole thing and they don't ANSWER technical stuff like that. I was told to refer to the help manual that came with my software! What manual? What software? I went back to the converter website but that's all they do is convert! I am so BEYOND frustrated right now that it's not even funny.

From what I can gather, it seems to me that I am supposed to BUY some sort of software that does this and let me just say how that is NOT happening right now with Frank still out of work. I don't know how we're going to pay bills this month let alone purchase some stupid software because of a minor technicality!

GGGRRRR..... I just want to hit something. I mean, really, really hit something. I mean, I am doing all that I can to bring in money and it's still not enough. The weather won't cooperate and my husband is slowly sinking in to his own kind of madness and depression because of the time off. Not a good combination to have us both home alone feeling this way. One of us is gonna crack soon and I think it's going to be me.

8 comments:

A.Marie said...

I can honestly tell you that I understand where you are coming from....when my husband was laid off and there was no work and very little money coming in (unemployment just does not cover enough!), I thought I was going to go n.u.t.s. I did sink into a little depression for awhile over the whole thing. When he (finally) got full time work, I was beyond overjoyed.

tahtimbo said...

You might want top try OpenOffice.org. It's a free program to install (free is good). I used it to convert my novel to PDF. It will also change the size of your novel. After you install it, you will need to convert your novel to an odt file (it does it automatically). Then, go to "format" (on menu bar), come down to where it says "page" and click. You can then re-size it to any size you want. You can then hit the "convert to pdf" button on the menu bar.
I hope this helps.

Unknown said...

i am also going crazy not working, but hopefully i will be able to find something soon. big hugz to you my friend!

aldon @ orient lodge said...

My daughter has published a few books at Lulu Press, which has some similar weird requirements, but if I recall properly, it wasn't too hard to take care of. I just went to page setup in Word, and changed the page size and margin sizes to what they wanted. Then, when I printed to PDF, it was the right size.

However, I seem to recall the Lulu will actually take Word documents as well as PDF documents.

Contact me if you want help.

CastoCreations said...

I'm so sorry! Hang in there though.

Are you trying to change the PDF? I don't think that can be done. I think you'll have to make the adjustments within the Word file and then re-PDF it. At least that's my guess from the info here. I'm not an expert. I just play one online.

You could also try to find a forum for Word or MS program help. I know there's an Excel forum out there so there must be one for Word.

meretrisha said...

hi stace.. it's wrong timing to feel that way when VDay is coming but i can definitely understand what you're going through. by the way, as to your pdf problem, i think "aldon" has the best answer, less complicated to do, so go for it (hope it works)! and good luck on that novel thing, it's gonna be a hit! :-)

Janiss said...

I feel badly for you that you are having such a PITA problem with the book layout. And it makes me mad that they didn't warn the entrants about this to begin with. I've done book layouts, both the non-pro way with Word and the real way with InDesign, and neither method is for the faint of heart!

CafePress has a whole tutorial section about formatting and laying out books. I think you can access it without having an account (although it is free to set one up). I'll give you a link to the most important page, the one you'll need to get your text into the 5x8 format - it has a downloadable template you can try pasting your text into. That may work, and if it does, you can tweak it from there to prep it for PDF (the rest of this section this page comes from addresses all of this). Here is the page link:

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/help/learn_book.aspx?page=learn_book_layout.aspx#setting

I really, really hope this works for you! Good luck, and I'll be looking forward to see if it works out.

Unknown said...

Looks like you got some good suggestions. I hope one of them will work. I was going to try to help you figure it out. I love to solve problems. Even if they're not mine. I'm nosy. I can't help it. Anyway, good luck and keep us updated!