So Tartarus is finally off to Createspace to be reviewed. What a pain that was.
Eventually I had to give up on uploading Word files and just export it to a PDF, which Createspace actually imported with all the relevant formatting.
For the cover, I used Gimp.
- Download the .PNG template from Createspace
- Create a transparent version of the template (create an a layer mask from the greyscale version of the image and then adjust levels).
- Put the transparent template as a layer above the background colour, then build the rest of the cover on top. That way you ensure that you won’t be putting anything where it shouldn’t go.
- Temporarily disable the template layer and export the image as a TIFF file.
- Use ‘tiff2pdf’ to convert the TIFF file to a 300DPI PDF file using zip compression. Then upload it.
In a few days I should find out whether that actually works!
Edward M. Grant 
Thanks for documenting all this stuff. It’s good know these things in advance–maybe I’ll be able to avoid some frustration…
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Yeah, I was hoping it would come in useful for other writers, and for me when I forget how I did it this time :). I should put together a single post covering the process from beginning to end.
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