[Publishing Tips] Preparing a PDF for Your Printer - November 18, 2008
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Publishing Tips Newsletter
presented by Five Rainbows Services for Authors & Publishers
affordable solutions for writing and publishing projectsPreparing a PDF for Your Printer
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Need help deciding how best to publish your book? You can email Walt@FiveRainbows.com or call him toll-free at 866-341-3705 to discuss your project. Initial consultations (email or phone) are always f*r*e*e.
You can sort them out by using the f*r*e*e How-to-Publish Quiz at FiveRainbows.com. You may be surprised by the answer!
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Walt's Notes
Anybody experimenting with Facebook as a tool for gaining publicity for books?
I’ve had a Facebook account for almost six months but never really did anything with it. Finally, over the past couple weeks, I updated my profile, linked my blog posts and Twitter messages to it, and began searching out how many of the people I know are already using Facebook.
I very briefly tried MySpace last year but just never felt like it was a good venue for me. Too much of the young-and-hip atmosphere to suit me. I’ve had a LinkedIn account for almost 18 months; I found it quite useful at first but, over the past six months, it seems to have become more annoying and less, well, professional. I’m on Plaxo but, other than updating my profile, linking to some friends, and linking my blog posts to my profile, haven’t really done much with it. I am pretty active on Twitter and enjoy that micro-blogging platform.
There are just so many social media outlets available that it seems to me one has to carefully pick which ones to spend time on. You could easily spend most of your day doing nothing but updating and connecting on a slew of social media sites. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time for that.
Anyway, I’m trying to beef up my Facebook account and find ways to get involved in the community atmosphere there. If you’re on Facebook, send me a friend invite and mention the Publishing Tips newsletter – I’ll be happy to accept your invitation.
You can find me on these social media sites:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Walt_Shiel/625511872
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/slipdown
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/waltshiel
Plaxo: http://waltshiel.myplaxo.com/Feel free to join me on these platforms, particularly Facebook and Twitter. If enough of you join and “friend” me, maybe we can set up our own Publishing Tips group!
Moral: It’s very easy to lose sight of the really important aspects of life while keeping very busy on things that really don’t matter in the long run. The trick is deciding which are worth taking time to pursue.
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Preparing a PDF for Your Printer
Is there only one solution to creating perfect PDF files for your book printer? No, there are several ways to get there from here, but the best solution may depend on the specifications your printer expects.
And the only way to know that for certain is to ask your printer.
While some printers and “self-publishing” companies will accept almost any format and are not very particular about how a PDF was created, others are quite stringent. Actually, that’s a good thing as the result will almost certainly be better.
Most printers will be happy to tell you what settings to use to create a PDF for their printing equipment to ensure the results are as good as that equipment is capable of producing. But there are some basics you must consider:
Fonts: You must be sure that all fonts used in the document are embedded properly in the PDF file. Even if your printer has the same set of fonts, they may not be the same version. Variations between your fonts and the printer’s fonts can cause pagination errors in the book, which is why most printers will only accept PDFs with properly embedded fonts.
It is also possible that you are using a font with a license that prohibits embedding, particularly if it’s a font purchased a decade or more ago with another software package. If you run into a license restriction during PDF creation (you should get an on-screen warning), you will either have to choose a different font (pagination problems again) or make sure your printer has that exact font already. This can become a serious problem if the font is an obscure and/or expensive one. So check those font licenses carefully when you buy them.
Graphics: Make sure you use graphics that are properly sized and with the required resolution. For most printers, graphics need to be 300 dpi (dots per inch) at the PROPER size. For example, if you plan to print the graphic at 3 in. X 4 in. in the book, it must measure 900 pixels X 1200 pixels. Less than that will result in a degraded image. You can determine those settings in most image processing software programs.
If you need that 3 in. X 4 in. graphic but the image you have is only 600 pixels X 800 pixels, you should never try to resample it upwards get 300 dpi at the 3X4 printed size. That will certainly degrade the image. Either get a higher-resolution version of the graphic to work with or rescan it (if it was scanned from a printed image). Also, don’t try to print out the lower-resolution image and then scan it at a higher-resolution – again, that will result in a degraded image since the additional detail just wasn’t there to start.
Be careful when creating the PDF file, since standard settings just might include downsampling below 300 dpi. Check all the settings carefully to make sure none of them allow downsampling below 300 dpi.
Color Space: For full-color book covers, virtually all printers today use a four-color process – cyan, magenta, yellow and black (referred to as CMYK, “K” is for black). Your computer monitor and desktop color printer use a three-color process (even if your printer has six or eight ink colors) – red, green and blue (called RGB). Before placing a graphic on your book’s cover, make sure it has been saved in the CMYK mode (or “color space”). For book interiors that include full-color images, the same requirements apply. For black-and-white (aka grayscale) interiors, convert all images to grayscale before placing them in the book (you may find you need to adjust the contract and brightness after converting a color image to grayscale) – this will ensure they look their best and keep your file size smaller, too.
Making the PDF: The best and most reliable way to create a PDF is to print to a generic Postscript printer driver using the “print to file” option and then run the Postscript file through Adobe Acrobat’s Distiller using one of its standard profiles. You can download the generic Postscript drive free from Adobe’s website. However, you will have to buy Acrobat to get Distiller, and it is not cheap. I recommend against using any of the direct-to-PDF print options available in most programs these days. Some will work fine; some won’t. Some allow you to make all the correct settings; some don’t. Most will work fine for a book interior without color, but not for your color cover.
If you print with LSI, they now require that PDF files for covers be created with Distiller using the PDF/X-1a:2001 standard (and that can easily be determined from the PDF document’s properties). They also highly recommend the same for book interiors, and won’t guarantee the results for anything else.
Bottom Line: You might have thought creating a usable PDF was easy with few things to worry about. Sometimes, you can get away with that mindset but, often, you will run into problems with the results. It is far better to take the time to learn how to create PDF files the right way, which will ensure a trouble-free book-printing experience.
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Do you have a question or comment on the above or something else related to publishing, writing or book design and marketing? Email me at Walt@FiveRainbows.com and I may include it, with my answer, in an upcoming newsletter.
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November 19th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
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