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Making a book of my webcomic - Artwork/Book sizes & Printing - Part 2

This is the second video in a series about how I make books of my webcomics

In the previous video, I gave some background about how I started my webcomic, how I add the images to my book with the help of Google Photos and Google docs.

You can check out part 1 here - https://www.tomrayswebsite.com/2022/01/making-book-of-my-webcomic-how-i-add.html

In this video, I wanted to talk more about how my webcomic transformed from something I was just posting on my website to a thing that I could find multiple uses for. Now when I drew the comic I knew it was going to be something I would publish as a book, put on multiple media sites that people use, and sell at shows and pop-ups if I wanted to.

Now each webcomic is being turned into several things.

(You can check out my Amazon books here - https://amzn.to/3qzSNdL)

How did I choose a size for my book?

Since I started making these the 3 books I published of my webcomics have all been different sizes.

When I was just posting it on my website I just kinda picked a size that was a large tall rectangle like a comic page and went with it. No real thought behind it.

This wasn’t a problem at the time but I wasn’t thinking ahead about how the comic would transform to other sites and mediums. Eventually, I decided to find a route for me that was smarter not harder to make these books.

Resizing my webcomics over time

I also started posting my comics on webcomic sites, Tapas.io, and Webtoons.

Tapas.io the images can be a maximum of 940px wide. Webtoons also had a max-width that was 800px wide.

I was also posting it on Instagram and the original size I used for the webcomic would get cut off on the top or bottom. 

So I messed around with the size to find one that works to post it on Instagram but still in kind of a page format. Not a square but a short rectangle.

So now I had 3 different size requirements to think about!

What dimensions do I currently use for the comic?

I ended up with this  1000 px wide by 1200 px high, so a little wider than the webcomics sites.

I draw the comic in a program on my tablet called Medibang paint at 300 dpi which is a good pixel rate for print.

Google photos sizing trick

I back up my comics up to google photos and that turned out to be a good thing because I found a trick I could use to size them for the webcomics sites.

When I open up the albums I save my comics to for constructing the book I can actually use google photos to resize the image in the browser really easily and fast.

I open the most recent image, right-click, open in a new tab, and in the address bar there is a size in the URL. I change the URL in that section to w940 or w800 and hit enter and download it. 

I can actually change that to any size lower than the size of the image and it rerenders the photo like it would in photoshop or gimp.

I don’t even remember how I figured that out but I’ve been using it for as long as google photos has been around.

Creating the book cover

I don’t know why but this part I always get the most anxiety about. Maybe it’s because it’s the way the book is going to be represented? This is going to be what I show people and say, this is my book that I made!

I download the cover template and really just figure out the layout from that. It shows me where the ISBN barcode is going to be and what the bleed area is.

Also, KDP has a cover-making tool built into the upload process. It does a check to tell me if I made any mistakes that would mess up the printing.

How do I distribute the book?

One of the questions I got asked when I started recording these videos is - Is KDP print on demand or do I have to order prints of the book if I want to sell them?

Yes KDP paperback books are on-demand printing they are only made when people buy them on amazon. 

No storage. Sell directly on amazon and they make them when they are ordered and they ship them for me directly from the printer to the person that ordered the book.

Next video...

So in the next video, I’m going to go over more about what happens after the upload process, and also making the print book available as an e-book. 

Plus since my book is a webcomic there is the ability to make the e-book one of those swipeable books where it will read frame by frame.

You can check it out here - Part 3 

https://www.tomrayswebsite.com/2022/01/making-book-of-my-webcomic-publishing.html

Hope you are enjoying these!

Let me know if you have any questions or comments about what I talked about.

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Location: Madison, WI, USA

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