Publishing: a print interior and a publishing EPUB

When a book is ready to publish, three things help: front and back matter pages, a print interior PDF and a publishing edition of the EPUB. The reading-copy PDF, the Word manuscript and the ordinary EPUB are not changed by them.

Publishing details

On the book's page, Edit details has a Publishing details fold: the copyright line, the publisher, the edition, the paperback ISBN, the ebook ISBN, a description and a cover picture. They are saved in the book's own book.yml, in your storage, like the rest of the details. Every one is optional. If your storage is a public GitHub repository, anyone can read them.

The cover picture is kept in the project's pictures folder (codex/_images) like a wiki picture, and book.yml holds its name. An EPUB takes a PNG, JPEG or GIF cover; a WebP picture is kept but left out of the EPUB. The print interior has no cover, because KDP and IngramSpark want the cover as a separate file.

Front and back matter

The book's page has a Front and back matter card. Each page is a Markdown file in the book's front or back folder, next to chapters:

• books/<book>/front/0010-dedication.md
• books/<book>/back/0010-acknowledgements.md

Pages are in the order of the number at the start of the file name. The card adds a dedication, epigraph or foreword to the front and acknowledgements, an about-the-author page or an also-by page to the back, or any other page with a title you choose. A page opens like a note, with Read, Edit and History.

What a page is comes from the words in its file name. A dedication or epigraph is printed alone on its page, centred and in italics, without its heading. A file with copyright in its name replaces the copyright page that is made from the book's details. Every other page starts on a new page with its heading, and is listed in the contents.

The print interior

In Export, choose PDF, then PDF layout, then Print interior. Choose:

• the trim size: 5 × 8, 5.25 × 8, 5.5 × 8.5, 6 × 9, A5 or one of your own (4 to 8.5 inches wide, 6 to 11.7 tall, the sizes KDP prints);
• bleed: 0.125 inch more on the top, bottom and outer edges, so a 6 × 9 book becomes a 6.125 × 9.25 inch page. The trim box is written into the file so a printer's software shows where the book is cut. Only a picture or colour that runs off the page needs bleed;
• mirrored margins, which put the wider margin on the inside of both pages;
• whether chapters, parts and matter pages start on right-hand pages. The left-hand page before one is left blank, with no running head or number;
• the running head (author on left pages and title on right pages, or title and chapter), page numbers, and how the first paragraph of a chapter looks (plain, first line in small capitals or a drop cap);
• the scene break, a contents page and a half-title page.

The file starts with a title page and a copyright page made from the book's details, then any dedication or epigraph, the contents, the other front matter, the chapters, and the back matter. Front matter has no running heads or numbers, and neither do chapter openers, part pages and blank pages.

The inside margin follows KDP's table for the number of pages the book makes: at least 0.375 inch up to 150 pages, 0.5 up to 300, 0.625 up to 500, 0.75 up to 700 and 0.875 above that. Rescriptus never goes under IngramSpark's 0.5 inch safe area, and adds a quarter inch so words are not lost in the curve of the spine. The page count is only known once the book is laid out, so the book is laid out again if the first count needs a different margin. When the file is made, the dialog says how many pages it has and which margin was used, and warns if the book has fewer than 24 pages or more than 828, the limits for a KDP paperback.

What this file is, and is not

It is a PDF with its fonts inside it (EB Garamond) and the page size and bleed KDP asks for. KDP takes an ordinary PDF like this.

It is not a PDF/X file, and it is not CMYK. The PDF maker Rescriptus uses (Typst, running in your browser) can write PDF/A and tagged PDF but has no PDF/X or colour-conversion output, and the newest release candidate has none either. IngramSpark recommends PDF/X-1a or PDF/X-3: check its report when you upload, or convert the file in another program first. A black-and-white book needs no colour conversion.

Everything is made in your browser. The server never sees the book.

The publishing EPUB

In Export, choose EPUB, then Publishing edition. The file then has the book's front and back matter pages, a copyright page, the cover picture, the publisher on the title page, and in its details the publisher, the rights line, the description and the ebook ISBN. The dialog says if the cover or the pages are missing and why. The file passes EPUBCheck.