I’m going to show you how to turn your illustrations into a picture book and how  to create a template that will include the bleeds and the safe zones,

I’ll tell you what kind of pages you might want to  include like a copyrights page, a title page, and end  papers. I’ll also show you how to add text  in interesting ways if you fancy being a little bit more exciting with your text and maybe like  put text on a curve or like wrap the text around a shape, and I’m also going to talk a little  bit about isbn’s whether you should buy your own or whether you should use the KDP free version  so I’m going to talk about different options.

Let’s look at is the size the KDP actually lets you  print .  Go to this page:

you click trim size specifications it will tell  you the different size options that you have so

regardless of where you’re planning on getting  your book printed make sure that they do the

size that you want to do for a start as you can  see there are different sizes for paperback and

hardcover and then it also says the minimum and  maximum number of pages as well for a paperback

the minimum number of pages is 24. now the hard  cover the minimum number of pages is 75 pages

so unless you’re doing a graphic novel you’re  probably not going to be looking at doing a

hard cover so paperback is the option that we’re  going to go with the size that I’m going with is

going to be 8 by 10 inches now they do this by  width and then Height so yeah one thing that I

would definitely recommend is having a look at  some different picture books just to kind of

work out what kind of size you want to do it at  so you can have a look at some different picture

books that you have or maybe like go to a library  and just like measure them or like just check

what sort of sizes they are I think you might  even be able to find like dimensions of picture

books maybe on some different shop websites but  yes as you can see all of these picture books

are various different sizes we’ve got some that  are landscape we’ve got some that are portrait

and these two are portrait but like slightly  different sizes we’ve got some that are square

so you’ve got a lot of different options for what  size you want right so now you’ve chosen your size

you need to make sure you add on the bleed which  is usually 1/8 of an inch yeah including the bleed

around your illustrations just means that when  your book gets trimmed you’re not going to have

like any weird like white borders um or anything  like that and your illustration is gonna go like

full bleeds to the edge of the paper so that is  what the bleed means and there is this page on

Amazon that explains the bleed as well then if you  click on this this is some examples of page sizes

with and without bleed so like I said I’m gonna  be doing this one here this one here which is 8

inches by 10 inches and so the page size with the  bleed is 8.125 inches it’s basically adding on 1/8

of an inch yeah so we’re gonna set up a template  for a double page spread yes your template is

going to be the width doubled and then we want  to add on 1/8 of an inch to all four sides I’m

using Photoshop I’m actually using an old version  which is CS5 but you could use any software that

you have like Affinity photo or anything like that  so I’m creating a new document I’m doing eight by

ten so first of all I’m going to change these to  inches because the width of mine is eight we are

timesing that by two so it’s 16 plus 1/8 of an  inch on the left and the right so it’s going to

be 16.25 inches yeah so we just need to times the  width by two because we are doing a double page

spread so a left Page and a right page the height  we don’t need to times by two the height is then

going to be ten plus the 1/8 bleed on the top and  the bottom so the height is going to be 10.25 I’m

actually going to do 600 DPI but I would recommend  doing at least 300dpi and so make sure that when

you’re creating your artwork that you created at  a good resolution if you’re doing that digitally

um and if you’re doing it traditionally make sure  you scan that in at a good resolution because this

is going to be a printed book I’m going to click  CMYK for printing and that is all of that so now

we’re going to add the margin so we’re going to  add the bleeds and the safe zones and the gutter

um if your rulers aren’t there you can use  Ctrl r or command r depending on if you have

a Mac or Windows right so is that my rulers  up in centimeters so we want to change that

oh there we go so go over to edit preferences  and units and rulers I think this might have

this might be in a different location if you have  a more up-to-date version of Photoshop but yes

just find the bit that says units and rulers and  then you want to change this to inches so like

we said we want to add 1/8 to all four sides so  we’re going to add the margins for the bleed so

that’s 0.125 of an inch now you can either do this  by like you know adding a new guide and putting

this in or you can use your ruler basically kind  of like eyeball it but yes so you could just

eyeball it and use your rulers so for example  if we drag this out so that’s the edge and we

want 1/8 so that’s about there and we can do that  from the top and bottom as well so basically I’m

just use looking at the first marking on the ruler  and just lining it up with that so I’m gonna do a

new guide and I’m gonna do 50% vertically so that  will split that page into half so now I’ve got a

left page and a right page yeah that’s the bleed  margins added so that section will be trimmed

off but now we’re also going to add a safe zone  because sometimes you just get errors and things

get trimmed a little bit extra so generally in  printing you always have like a safe Zone as

well so the safe zone is an extra half an inch  for new guides so vertically that would be 0.625

anyway yes so make sure you add in all your safe  Zone you might also want to add in like an area

for the gutter as well so again put in like half  an inch away from the from the middle of the page

okay right I’m now going to do my blue peter  moment because I have actually started setting

this up already so I am going to open my one that  I’ve done previously but yeah so here is what I

have been working on already but yeah as you can  see as well you can still see my margins here

and everything that is important is within the  safe Zone yeah so if you’ve created your artwork

without the bleeds then something you can do is  just use the Clone tool yeah just use the Clone

brush clone all the way around the illustration  to just give yourself a little bit extra room and

make sure all the important bits stay inside the  safe Zone as you can see I’ve added some text and

this is text that I’ve done to sort of go around  the shape of the wave because I just thought that

seemed I don’t know kind of fun so to add text  you can either come along here and click this

t or you can press t on your keyboard yeah so you  can just click and you can add text and that will

just be in a straight line if you want to add  it in like a funky shape the way I do it is I

use the pen tool and all I’m going to do is I’m  just basically going to kind of copy this shape

so I’m just making some clicks with the  mouse and I’m just kind of dragging it along

and I’m just copying the shape and I’m just  if you kind of click and hold and drag sort

of changes the shape a little bit but  yes you can create a shape like that

then click on the text tool and click here  and then you can start typing oh you might

find as well that you start typing and then  it kind of stops so you just need to drag this

little thing here and just drag this circle all  the way to the ends go back to your text tool

and click there and then we  can carry on right so the waves

crept closer and closer you can change the fonts  you can change the size yeah one tip I’d say with

text is make sure your text is readable make  sure there’s nothing behind it that kind of

makes it hard to read the fonts that I’m using  I actually bought and I think I actually bought

it off creative Marketplace but there’s various  different websites you can go to find a font and

quite often you can just type in a sentence or a  couple of words and it will give you an example of

what the font looks like so that might be a good  way to test out some different kind of styles of

font so something I should mention is that the  first page of your book will be a single page

like so rather than a double page spread so you  can either if you want to make like a separate

template or you can basically just still use like  the double page spread template but just use half

of that so the first page it’s on like the right  hand side so you’ve got like the back of the cover

here and then the first page is on the right hand  side so if you’re designing that then you’d use

the right hand side of the page for that but yeah  so just remember the the first page of your book

is going to be a single page now this book the  first page is actually also the title page so

that is something that you could do you could  make the first page of your book the title page

yeah the title page in this case it simply  has the title the author I think this is the

author and the illustrator and then it also has  the Publishers on that as well and some artwork

end pages is another thing that you could add to  your book now with paperbacks you don’t always get

end pages so for example that one doesn’t have any  end pages and you’re more likely to have end pages

with a hardback book and that’s just because  the end Pages get glued down to the hard cover

so when you’re when you’re doing a paperback  book you don’t often have anything printed on

the back of the cover you can do but I don’t  think that’s an option that KDP offer so if

you want to have end Pages you have to kind of  think about how you’re going to do them because

like I mentioned the first page of the book is  going to be a single page and not a double page

for in this paperback version of sweep what  they’ve done is they have this tiny motif of

leaves here and then they’ve done the end papers  here on the next page you might just want to have

a single page for the end papers so if you have  like a pattern or something just doing that on

a single page rather than the double page that  could also work the end papers are just kind of

like optional things but I just think it adds like  quite a nice touch okay so I’m now going to do the

copyrights page and I thought I would also add a  this book belongs to where the owner of the book

can write their name and I just thought that that  would make it a bit more interesting so I’ve just

added a rectangle because I want my text to be  within within this rectangle now I’m just gonna

pick a sort of normal font and I’m obviously going  to change the size a lot let’s just choose Ariel

for now we can always change it if we want to pick  it one for the copyrights page again I’ve just had

a look to see what other people are doing yeah  this this one the copyrights page is at the front

and they’ve also done a dedication there as well  so that’s something else that you could do yeah so

lots of the copyright Pages they all seem to kind  of follow the same kind of formats so they’ll say

first published the place it was published the  year and who who it was published by and then

they’ll do a text copyright an illustration  copyrights and then they will all usually say

something along the lines of All Rights Reserved  also on the copyright page you put your ISBN

number with the ISBN number KDP do actually give  you a free version but with the free version you

can only sell your book through Amazon so you  wouldn’t be able to sell your book anywhere else

yes alternatively you can actually buy your own  ISBN number these are kind of expensive so it’s

I think about 80 or 90 pounds for one depending on  where in the world you live or you can usually get

sort of discounts if you bulk buy them which  is good if you’re planning on self-publishing

several books um or several different formats of  your book but if you only want one then just weigh

up the pros and cons yeah and decide whether  or not you want the option of doing like the

wider distribution but yes if you do buy your own  ISBN number then you’d put the ISBN number on the

copyright page as well if you don’t have an ISBN  number then you could just put first published

and then you could just put the dates so first  published in 2022. to do the copyright symbol

hold down alt and then type zero one six nine  and then that will give you the copyright symbol

right so this is our copyrights page and now I  just need to buy my ISBN number if you’re going

with the free ISBN then you can just skip that  part and leave that blank so there’s different

companies that sell ISBN numbers in different  countries so I’m in the UK so I’m going to use

this one here but as you can see one ISBN is 91  pounds or you can get 10 for 169 pounds or if

you want a hundred which I don’t think I want  100 right now um but yeah so I’m gonna just

do this add it to my basket and you then need  to actually register so this is the page that

you get and it wants to know your publishing  name yeah so it says consider your publishing

name carefully this is the name you will use to  publish your work and represents your Brand as

a publisher yeah it can be a chosen trading name  for example Bluebell publishing or your own name

so to upload your finished book to KDP you have  to save the pages as individual Pages rather than

spreads so I like to create the template and see  how everything is going to look like as a spread

first of all because then you get an idea of how  the book goes together but in order to upload it

you have to then save it as individual pages so  I save a copy as a tiff I do a tiff because the

quality is better than a JPEG and jpegs if you  continually save over them they end up getting

compressed and they lose quality so I save it as  a tiff and then I use the crop tool and I’ve got

this sort of snapping setting on so that you can  see when I get to the middle of the page it kind

of automatically snaps to the center of the page  so I save a left Page and a right page separately

and yeah you have to do this for the whole book  and then you will make your PDF so to make the

PDF I used Bridge yeah so first of all make sure  like the size of your PDF is the same size as your

page and then just select all of your inside  Pages including all like the copyright pages

and the end pages and everything the only thing  that you don’t need now is the cover because

that you will upload separately yeah so just  put the pages all in order as individual pages

and then make sure the quality is high and you  don’t want any margins and then just save that

as your PDF and then it’s time to upload it to  KDP so either register or sign in to KDP and you

just need to fill in your name your address date  of birth those sorts of details you click create

and then here’s where you fill in all the  information about your book so you want to

fill in your name and any contributors so if you  worked with another author or an illustrator you

can put those details in there and you can also  save this as a draft throughout the process and

you can like come back to it later the description  this is the product description that the customer

will read so you could include the blurb and  also just any information about the book maybe

why you created it and also who would enjoy it it  says keywords are optional but I would definitely

fill them in you can do a little bit of research  see what similar books are out there and then I

just kind of tried to describe like the themes  of the book The themes or the content yeah just

describe like the content of the book so I put  in Ocean picture book marine life children’s

book Illustrated ocean children’s book Seaside  book for children so yeah I’ve just did sort

of various different combinations to describe  what the book was like yeah so categories can

be a little bit confusing but have a look and see  what other people are using as their categories I

put it under juvenile fiction because it’s a  picture book so I did juvenile fiction marine

life I also did fairy tales and folk lore as well  yeah just do a little bit of research see what

kind of similar books there are to yours and just  see what keywords and categories they’re using so

then with the ISBN you can either tick the for  the free one that KDP gives you or you can use

your own yeah you take the use your own enter in  your own number the imprint is the publishing name

that you chose so whichever company you bought  your isbn from you would have filled in like the

publishing name and then you need to choose your  size so obviously again make sure it’s the right

size you want to make sure like we said before  that you have a bleed yes you want to select the

bleed option because is otherwise you’re either  gonna get something chopped off that you don’t

want chopped off or you’re going to get white  margins cover finish you can go with matte or

glossy I went for matt just generally I prefer the  kind of finish of matt picture books but you could

always order a sample copy and then like see which  version you prefer and then where it says uploads

the manuscript that’s where you upload your PDF  of all the inside of the pages and it takes a

little while to load so you upload your cover  separately and I used the template that they

provided you don’t get much of a spine with the  paperback books so I didn’t put any writing on the

spine I had my artwork and again all the important  bits were within the margins and then I just added

my title my name the author’s name and the blurb  as well and oh and then the other thing I added

was the barcode so the barcode has got my  ISBN number on it and actually the barcodes

you have to pay for separately so that’s an  additional charge along with the ISBN and

you get that from the same place yeah so then  you can upload your finished book cover so it

gives you a preview which is really good so just  check it through see if you’ve made any mistakes

if you have you have to upload everything again  so you have to make your PDF again which can be

a little bit annoying but sometimes it happens  yeah and then at this point you can save it as

a draft and then you can order a proof copy then  once you’re happy with your book go back and then