The interior paperback design for Tendrils to the Moon differs significantly from the ebook format.
Before I wrapped up the first draft, I got the idea of depicting a shadow moving laterally over a curved surface, which is what a waxing Moon looks like, at the start of every chapter. I designed each little Moon in PowerPoint, then screenshot them, cropped them in Paint, and pasted them into the .doc file.
Once I converted to the ebook format, however, I realized the white background of the waxing Moon pictures looked hideous in the ebook. So I got rid of them. For the paperback, I chose a white page to print on, and I brought back the pictures. They're very simple, but they're a nice touch, I think. I like how they give the reader a sense of progress as more and more of the Moon is covered in shadow. And maybe a sense of foreboding, too, like the doomsday clock in the Watchmen graphic novel.
Because I didn't use the footer in Createspace's 5.5x8.5-inch interior template, I lowered the bottom margin a quarter-inch, saving about 20 pages. For the header, I went with Book Antiqua font size 10, alternating my name and the title on every odd and even page.
The chapter headings and the title page use the Sitka Subheading font, the same font that I used for the title on the cover and the spine. In retrospect, I think I should have put my name under the title on the title page, instead of above it.
One thing I wasn't happy about was that the link to my blog got split between two lines. It looks like there's a hyphen in the link, when there shouldn't be one. I caught this after Createspace approved the files, and I didn't want to go through another 2 days of waiting after resubmitting the files, so I accepted the mistake. Plus, I think forcing the link onto one line would have stretched out the line above it.
A setback I suffered when I uploaded the interior file to Createspace's servers was that it was shortening each page by about one line of text. In isolation this is no problem, but it rendered the table of contents incorrect. I retried uploading the interior file several times, and the problem kept occurring. I got around this by converting the .doc to a .pdf, which freezes text, and uploading that to Createspace's servers.
As always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply to you as soon as I can. Also, the paperback version of Tendrils to the Moon is on sale at Amazon for $8.99. The ebook is still a mere 99 cents.
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