POD: Cut to the Chassis
Posted on November 10th, 2024 in braindump
The most frequently asked question I’m seeing about Shivering Sands — from people that actually want to try one of these POD whatsits — is some variation of: What did you use (InDesign, Lulu templates, witchcraft) to build the book?
And, honestly, I’m not sure if that’s curiosity about my specific method, or if that’s asking for some sort of an endorsement for the best method. But there’s just no real answer to that second question, beyond “whatever works!”
Because, look, Lulu’s uploader and templates are lovely. I just happen to be allergic to them. It’s nothing to do with Lulu, in particular– I’m just allergic to anything that’s easy.
Because I’m crazy. I’m the lord mayor of a little factory town called Crazyopolis. I see the words “one-click” or “get started in 5 minutes” or “ready-made” or, yes, “easy” — and I start screaming nonononono get it away get it AWAY!
Look. Do you remember this?
The Radio Shack 150 in ONE Electronic Project Kit. I had one of these. This exact model, in fact. And I don’t have any fucking idea what the other 149 projects were. No. Fucking. Clue. Because about halfway through the first project, after taking a good long look at the whole-board schematic, I started trying to figure out what I could make it do… with no real interest in things like instructions or the laws of physics or if a bigger battery would make it catch on fire or if OSHA would approve my trying to incorporate it and my chemistry set and the dog into one mad experiment.
See? Crazy.
I’m just not the target demographic for templates.
My friend Lee Barnett (AKA Budgie), on the other hand, isn’t stricken with my particular brand of crazy. He put together his book, The Fast Fiction Challenge, using the Lulu system from start to finish, and it turned out just lovely. In fact, I’d recommend you buy a copy, just to see how well it turned out. (Actually, I’d recommend you buy a copy, anyway, because Lee’s an excellent writer.) He’s written up a bit of a review on his experiences with the Lulu system, which I hope he’ll put somewhere public so I can link it in a bit.
Jamais Cascio put together his book, Hacking the Earth, using, I believe, OpenOffice. Which is free like street furniture so, you know, it’s not like you need to go expensive to go more DIY. (Also a book you should buy, because Jamais is made ov geenius. And also because I did the cover layout.)
Edit: Jamais kindly nudged me with a correction to the above.
Actually, I took blog posts, formatted them in Apple Pages, converted to Word to use the Lulu uploader, fiddled with the formatting in Word to make it match my Pages layout, discovered that the Lulu-Word tool bites (completely different pagination and words-per-page from what I had uploaded), discovered that the Lulu setup can’t read Apple PDF, and finally printed the doc from Pages directly to a Postscript file. That uploaded beautifully and came out exactly as formatted.
And Wil Wheaton went the sanest possible route with his Sunken Treasure and Memories of the Future, and just found someone crazy (Will Hindmarch) to do all the layout. (C’mon, it’s Wil — I shouldn’t have to tell you to buy his books, you should already have them.)
So, honestly, there is no Best Way to put together your POD book, other than the way that gets it done with the least headache and the most satisfaction.
If you’re the sort that gets your bolts off fiddling with settings and typefaces and widows and orphans and justification and margins and all that — or you want to try and see how it suits you — then, yeah, do some googling for how-tos or just dive right into whatever desktop program you’ve got to hand. (If you don’t have InDesign, don’t run out and buy InDesign — you can really honestly do almost everything you need for POD with OpenOffice or Word. And the couple of things you can’t do, you’re likely not even going to notice unless you already own InDesign, anyway.)
If you’re the sort that’s more interested in the crafting of the work you’ve already done, and want to move straight to the part where you’re selling it, just use Lulu’s system, or beg, borrow, or steal a friend with the layout crazies to help you.
The Best way to get it done is to just get it done. And trying to decide where to start… well that’s not getting it done.
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