EXUDE (Part 2): Making an Amazon KDP-Sized Book Mockup for Print
Authoring and designing my first book for Amazon KDP, EXUDE, continues 🙏🏽
( Here’s Part 1 in case you want more project background)
Though designing EXUDE in Adobe InDesign has been a relatively smooth process, the experience has been made possible, in large part, by way of a physical mockup which I created by:
- trimming down paper size to match Amazon KDP’s (with-bleed) specifications;
- and matching EXUDE’s page count to date (which, at the time of my initial mockup, was 160 pages).
Watch the clip below for a peek at my mockup 🎥👇🏽
Additional benefits
Having a physical book mockup handy as you work through your writings (and designs) is helpful in other ways beyond creative ideation and layout progress.
The most valuable support has for me has been what I’m calling “the book’s experience.”
THE BOOK’S EXPERIENCE is what you feel when holding and reading a book in your hands, but ‘experience’ isn’t limited to a book’s physicality — it also involves AFFECTIVE EXPERIENCE, as in the FEELING you get when you turn the pages, anticipating what’s next, or flipping back to something you saw or want to revisit, and so on.
No software or application in the world can replicate this robust experience; full stop period.
One more reason a book mockup is instrumental
A mockup also allows me to get a better physical sense how the volume (and limitations) of content feels and looks like in my hands.
Watch the vid 🎥 shared above to get a sense of this more clearly.
Authoring and designing EXUDE continues to be an unfolding adventure.
Though I’ve laid out countless publications for clients in the past, this EXUDE project is the first time I’m doing all the content and design work for my own publishing purposes. And so I’m learning a lot along the way, not just about self publishing under an independent label (how to get that all going and such) but more specifically about myself, both as a creator and as a creatorpreneur.
But more on those learnings later …
For now, I’m enjoying the whole challenge and can’t wait to share more of it with you.
Yours in creative expression,
