Help with On Demand Printing for a Small Guidebook

 Shitty Chris Sharma - I am well on my way with the Big Waters Guide.  I have put it on hold while I take an ass beating on this one.  Luckily for that book I did the correct orientation. 

Bale - The troll in me makes it difficult not to bait you into a virtue-signaling rant about how sport routes ruin the wilderness experience for the 1001 hikers a day who park their shiny SUVs in a giant new parking lot, plop their poops in the 50 turd traps built by the BLM and proceed to carve their names in the cliff walls for an Insti Post. But alas, yes it is the same drainage as the world-famous hiking destination but it is located upriver in a scruffy, sagebrush draw that is seldom visited by the judgemental hoards. When the first routes at this area were put up, the Buckskin Trailhead was nothing more than the terminus of a two-track road and now look at the wonderful bastion of wilderness it has become! Don't lecture me about what's "best for the area". 

Kyran Keislingwrote:

 Shitty Chris Sharma - I am well on my way with the Big Waters Guide.  I have put it on hold while I take an ass beating on this one.  Luckily for that book I did the correct orientation. 

Bale - The troll in me makes it difficult not to bait you into a virtue-signaling rant about how sport routes ruin the wilderness experience for the 1001 hikers a day who park their shiny SUVs in a giant new parking lot, plop their poops in the 50 turd traps built by the BLM and proceed to carve their names in the cliff walls for an Insti Post. But alas, yes it is the same drainage as the world-famous hiking destination but it is located upriver in a scruffy, sagebrush draw that is seldom visited by the judgemental hoards. When the first routes at this area were put up, the Buckskin Trailhead was nothing more than the terminus of a two-track road and now look at the wonderful bastion of wilderness it has become! Don't lecture me about what's "best for the area". 

Fortunately, (or unfortunately), as a native Utahn, I have seen too many places before they were overrun that used to be “ nothing more than the terminus of a two-track road”. Yeah, I get it man,     no lecturing here, I’m just a man who remembers the quiet desert before folks posted on YT or MP, and who also appreciates the unknown corners that remain. Signed, Son of Boomer. 

Nolan Nolan -  Now that I have muddled through Kindle a bit deeper I have found that they too do not offer a book with my layout.  It looks like I have to redo the whole book! Good idea on the notes pages though.  

petzl logic - That will be one nice thing about converting to a portrait layout. It will be easier to read the descriptions.  The massive downside is that the topos will be half the size and harder to read. I think that the topos are way more important than the descriptions.  I would imagine that most people don't even read the descriptions.       

Bale - As a native Northern Arizonan of 51 years who has witnessed the demise of MANY a secret hidey hole in this region I feel your pain.  Page AZ has gone from a town that would see 1 million tourists a year, all who went boating on Lake Powell, to a town that sees over 4 million in a year.  This town has become more popular than the Grand Canyon.  I would venture to say that this area is the most altered area in the country in the last 15 years. We are Moab incarnate. It is heartbreaking.  

With that being said, there are still plenty of unknown corners and secrets left out there if you choose to find them. For example, The Glen Canyon Challenge has received exactly zero takers.  The Grand Canyon has more than 500 miles of climbing solitude to enjoy.  The Vermillion Cliffs offer some spectacular big walls that the hoards drive by on their way to Zion and if you look hard enough you might find the routes that my friends and I put up out there that have never been posted to this site and never will be.  

Both the Buckskin Gulch and the Big Water Boulders were submitted to MP by an out out-of-towner 5 years ago or so and he did an extremely poor job of it.  I had developed both of these areas 20 years earlier and was content to leave them in obscurity but once they were shared on the interwebz I figured I should do it the right way for both aesthetic and safety reasons. Since then, my quiet desert solitude has been ruined by exactly zero people at the Big Waters.  Sometimes I wish I would run into another boulderer just for the comradery.  When I really started putting effort into the Buckskin, I thought it would get crowded but much to my surprise it still is very quiet and I rarely see more than 2 parties there at any given time and 75% of the time there is no one.  It is too far from any big city to ever get overrun.  The hikers however literally number in the 100s per day.  The dirt roads are like highways now.  The guiding businesses are absolutely insane.  

In the end, these tourists are cattle.  The best spots have been discovered by the masses and it's too late to change it back.  It's now better to herd them and keep them all in the designated areas.  The rest of us can still get off the beaten path and find all the solitude and adventure we want.   

Kyran, I thought your first reply to me was a bit snippy and defensive, but wow! Thank you for taking the time to write such a thoughtful, well-reasoned post, with which I wholeheartedly agree. Hell, I may even buy your guidebook just based on that:) 

I had a wonderful trip down the Paria in March, (those tight BLM permits are kinda nice if you can get one). Haven’t been to Wire Pass since 2010. That whole area has a special place in my heart. Did u happen to see that old movie set before it burned down? My wife and I usually come through Page a couple times a year, maybe I’ll hit you up. Good luck! 

Ben Crowellwrote:

Here's a guidebook I've done using Lulu: https://www.lulu.com/shop/benjamin-crowell/climbing-routes-at-tahquitz/paperback/product-1965vymv.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Not the topic of this thread, but... Thanks, Ben! Just bought a copy! 

Just thought I'd come back to this thread and let everyone know that I finally got the book published.  I learned a massive amount about book sizing and paid the piper for not starting with the end in mind.  I made my book in a landscape format because of the nature of the canyon but found out that most on demand companies don't offer a landscape format unless it is spiral bound.  In the end I found one format from Kindle that was properly bound and was in landscape, and that was the sole reason for going with them.  They also required a minimum of 24 pages, which allowed me to enlarge my descriptions at the end, making them much more readable.  Thanks again to everyone who tried to help me with this endeavor.  

The Buckskin Gulch Climbing Guide  

I'm late to this party, but I did self publish a 200 page illustrated full color college textbook using the free on demand Amazon publishing system. It's really cool how it's all free. They only print the books when someone buys one, hence the on demand label. I get royalties on each book.

I also published a traditional climbing guidebook in both black and white, and on a big lazer printer before Amazon existed.

I worked in the printing / web design industry, so I was fortunate to have gurus I could lean on when Adobe inDesign got confusing. But the whole Amazon printing thing is all over youtube, and you don't have to use inDesign...people publish in Word.

But I was determined to have a good looking book, so I taught myself inDesign via some Lynda and youtube tutorials.

Not to get too far into the nitty gritty, but the bottom line is Amazon needed me to upload a pdf. But before I did that they have a process where you sort of sandbox your book...meaning, you drop your pdf into their "book tester" software, and it marks all the pages in red where there is a bleed or cropping problem. It's a great system, but not for the faint of heart. Requires a lot of study and patience.

http://websterart.com/wordpress/2020/02/ever-wanted-to-build-a-website-from-scratch/

Ordered a copy, thanks Kyran! 

Quick question for a few folks here in here:

If I was looking to distribute a book through a couple gyms/local gear stores/Kindle, would I need an ISBN? 

Kyran, what'd you use to design your book? I hear a lot about Adobe inDesign, is that the standard these days? Are there any other alternatives that are remotely comparable (like GIMP to Photoshop, etc.)

Looking to go down this rabbit hole with an area I've been working on and always appreciate extra insight to the process.

I want to climb this route with you! Next road trip!

https://www.mountainproject.com/route/122147441/fritzs-gotez-route

Tal Mwrote:

Quick question for a few folks here in here:

If I was looking to distribute a book through a couple gyms/local gear stores/Kindle, would I need an ISBN? 

Kyran, what'd you use to design your book? I hear a lot about Adobe inDesign, is that the standard these days? Are there any other alternatives that are remotely comparable (like GIMP to Photoshop, etc.)

Looking to go down this rabbit hole with an area I've been working on and always appreciate extra insight to the process.

Yes, you would need an ISBN for Kindle. If I would have formatted my book correctly in the beginning I would have gone with lulu.com and they do not require a number. The number was very easy to get though.  

Self distribution is an entirely different matter.  You would want to go through a printing business rather than an on demand printing service, as it would be a lot cheaper.  I didn't explore this option because I have access to a quality printer and do it myself.  

I used Photoshop to create my overlays and route paths because I like the Bevel and Emboss layer style it has and the ability to crop images. Illustrator could be used as well.  I then used Indesign to lay the book out.  I have always had the Adobe suite so i have never had the need to explore alternatives. If you were going to pay for only one piece of Adobe software it would be Indesign.  It has all the tools you need to make the book. 

Biggest lesson I learned in this process is to start from the end.  I had to resize my book 3 times because of my knuckleheadedness.  Make sure you build the book to the trim size and not the actual size of the book.  Anywhere you publish will have a guide for finding out what this size is.  Make sure to use good bleeds (extra space that will be trimmed at the end) all the way around. Make sure you look at the type of binding they offer for each size book.  This is what killed me because lulu only offered a spiral bind for the saze I selected.  I was sooooo pissed when I figured this out!!!

Good luck!  

F r i t zwrote:

I want to climb this route with you! Next road trip!

https://www.mountainproject.com/route/122147441/fritzs-gotez-route

Absolutely!!  And then put up a route of your own. There's still a few lines left.  

This thread motivated me to actually start the guidebook creation I've been talking about for a while. 

I think I'm going to run into an issue pretty quickly - namely, size of the file. With 300DPI photos for printing, it seems very easy to run into size issues quickly. How did you manage to compress the image size without sacrificing too much on image quality? 1 6"x9" picture is roughly 7MB immediately, as far as I can tell.

Tal Mwrote:

This thread motivated me to actually start the guidebook creation I've been talking about for a while. 

I think I'm going to run into an issue pretty quickly - namely, size of the file. With 300DPI photos for printing, it seems very easy to run into size issues quickly. How did you manage to compress the image size without sacrificing too much on image quality? 1 6"x9" picture is roughly 7MB immediately, as far as I can tell.

Big file sizes are fine.  Each page I made in Photoshop was around 27 MB, then the PDF that I exported out of Indesign was a total of 36.4 and it uploaded fine into KDP.  File size shouldn't matter that much unless you are working on a slow computer and if that is the case I would highly recommend getting a new one before starting or buying some extra RAM. 

Using InDesign makes using large images A LOT less of a pain. This is because InDesign is only using a mockup of the photo for layout when using it (whereas Photoshop is always using the full res image and so is huge RAM hog).Then, at the very end when you export it, Indesign gathers up all resources and makes it all publishing quality. You will get a HUGE pdf file (or package) if you don't compress the photos. But this large file size generally okay because you should just be uploading the hi res copy once and be done. Using uncompressed files will also ensure your image quality remains high.

I really recommend learning indesign for this. It will be more upfront hassle, but well worth it in the long run. Its $20 a month and I think theres a 7 day free trial. 

Tony Swrote:

Using InDesign makes using large images A LOT less of a pain. This is because InDesign is only using a mockup of the photo for layout when using it (whereas Photoshop is always using the full res image and so is huge RAM hog).Then, at the very end when you export it, Indesign gathers up all resources and makes it all publishing quality. You will get a HUGE pdf file (or package) if you don't compress the photos. But this large file size generally okay because you should just be uploading the hi res copy once and be done. Using uncompressed files will also ensure your image quality remains high.

I really recommend learning indesign for this. It will be more upfront hassle, but well worth it in the long run. Its $20 a month and I think theres a 7 day free trial. 

This is how Scribus works as well (what I've been using, essentially the open source free version of Indesign). The actual scribus doc is pretty small, it's just the final PDF that was big. That being said, compressing the images a bit has helped a ton without dropping much quality so I'll just keep metering that.

FYI: older versions of inDesign work perfectly well. You can find (on ebay) legal CD / DVD's with a valid serial number from before Adobe went to their subscription model. Also lots of books and videos to match that version. Be careful about cross matching versions. You can open your file in a newer version, but going the other way can be bad, especially if you embedded files (copy + paste). Proper way to use a photo is to 'place' it into inDesign. The full res photo is used to make the pdf, but those pixels live outside the inDesign file. I embedded a lot of screen shots and scaled down to raise the dpi. But I got bit by the version conflict . Buy the version you can afford and stick with that. Pro tip: The Table of Contents function is Money! Clickable chapters in the pdf that auto update when you insert more pages

Good information here.  I am thinking of doing a guidebook that I would pay for myself and give out to friends and have been trying to figure what company to use if we don’t intend to sell to the general public.   This thread has helped.