I told you a couple of weeks ago all triumphantly how I created a kissable cover and got around Amazon / Createspace’s arbitrary minimum-page requirements for having a proper spine on your book. I succeeded that time with my 100-page chapter book No Santa! 
But guess what??? When I tried the same magic again yesterday with an 88-page nonfiction book, Createspace stopped me in my tracks with their silly arbitrariness.
I worked long and hard to create a BEAUTIFUL (if I say so myself) cover, and submitted it along with my interior. Here’s what the full design looks like:
(Spineless Wonders is the first in what I plan as a series of Jewish, Bible-based science books that’s already available for Kindle here.)
Believe me, everything fit perfectly within the little template they give you.
But when I submitted all the files, Createspace’s gnomes went to work destroying all that is good. They must have detected that I was trying to get away with something. When my files were approved for proofing, I went in to take a peek… only to discover this message:
“The cover contained spine text that has been removed as we cannot accommodate the inclusion of spine text for books with less than 101 pages. Instead, we have murdered your design and substituted one created by 3-year-olds with a roll of colourful duct tape.”
They didn’t like the text, so they removed it – rather brutally, I might add. Here’s their revised version of the book cover.
They’ve basically just slapped on a similar colour right over where I had the spine text all neatly lined up, like a piece of tape.
Waah!
So now, it was back to the drawing board, to create a text-free spine. I’ve at least tried to make it fit with the rest of the cover so it doesn’t look like it’s just a piece of duct tape glued on, like theirs does.
But I’m also taking a quick trip over to LightningSource’s site – a place I never thought I’d find myself, because I’ve been so happy with CreateSpace. But there are rumours going around that they can produce higher-quality books, with text on the spine, for a lot less money. Hard cover, too.
I’ll be sure to keep you posted.
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