[scribus] LSI book cover builder program on Sourceforge

[john Culleton]

On Tue, 30 Aug 2011 08:57:36 -0400
Fred Zimmerman <wfz at nimblebooks.com> wrote:

> Right. People who want to design without the templates certainly have
> that option, or they could  buy his ebook on Scribus production and
> use his spine-calculating tool, or they could engage the services of
> John or a thousand other excellent book cover designers.  This is
> just an option.
> 
> The program cues off the templates because 1) that is what Lightning
> Source's formal written instructions tell users to do 2) the
> templates have LSI bar codes used for LSI's internal tracking
> purposes. It's recognized that this is fragile because LSI might
> change their templates, but, if they change their templates, that
> probably means that they are also (slightly) changing the underlying
> spine, etc. calculations, so either way the program logic would have
> to be adapted.


A fair number of experienced people have been bypassing the LSI
template for some time now. They may also be using other printers who 
don't even offer templates. LSI may be happier if you use their template
but they don't require it or charge you less if you do. When you
multiple source the book using e.g., Createspace and/or 360 Digital
Books etc. the LSI template can't be used with those other printers in
any case.

Another factoid in this whole discussion: If you don't use Scribus
1.5.0 as the last step (my technique) and also don't want to spend a few
hundred on Adobe Distiller then you can actually submit your cover as a
Tiff file. That way you can sidestep the PDF X/10a:2001 recommendation
which is almost a requirement for B/W interior book covers and is an
absolute requirement for books with color pages in them.  I have read
posts on other groups from publishers who use Tiff for B/W interior
book covers on LSI and get results that satisfy them. Scribus can of
course produce Tiff as output.

For books with B/W interiors printed via LSI you have these choices:
1. Use their template and make sure the final product meets PDF
X/1-a:2001.
2. Ignore their template and produce a cover sized file meeting PDF
X/1-a:2001 (my technique)
3. Create a Tiff file. 

All these methods work.

BTW my template program consists of a web page and a perl program. If
anyone wants to borrow from either that's OK by me. You can simply view
source on the web page and thus obtain the html code (very simple as it
happens) and if you want the perl program just ask me and I will
furnish it. My web host supports Perl so that is why I chose that
language.
-- 
John Culleton
Wexford Press
"Create Book Covers with Scribus"
http://www.booklocker.com/books/4055.html