Initially, I had not paid much thought to the page size selection for the "Indian Computer Science (CS) & Information Technology (IT) Academic Reform (Past) Activism Blog Book" which will have important posts from this blog (https://eklavyasai.blogspot.com/). As A5 was the size I had first used for both of my earlier self-published books (with 6in. x 9in. being used additionally later on for alternate paperback self-publishing & printing platform company), I had thought of using A5 for this book too.
As I added the first article into my book manuscript/document, which is my paper (pre-print and not published in any peer reviewed publication) on how to improve practice of software development in Indian CS & IT academia, it became apparent that A5 is a totally inappropriate size choice for this book which is essentially a technical education related book. After thinking about other possibilities, I checked out A4 page size. Here are two versions of the in-progress document PDF: A5 size: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Oezq4Fvsx0uXYv8TERmFjWEmeBfKOV7Q and A4 size: https://drive.google.com/open?id=15FDEf_ddrLYqvke8rmwW80UcHMBaYMw0. A4 PDF looks suitable and so I settled on A4 page size for the book.
I considered using A4 size for the following reasons:
1) Pothi.com which is the first self-publishing (& printing) platform I will use to self-publish the book, supports A4 page size paperback books - https://publish.pothi.com/tools/price-royalty-calculator/ shows the various page sizes supported by Pothi.com for paperback books.
2) Techie readers who would like to read a paper (hardcopy) version could just laser-print the (free download) ebook version if the ebook page size is A4. A4 paper is standard size for laser printers. [While in the software industry (1984 to 2002), I have printed umpteen A4 size documents for reading while being based in various locations in India, USA and Western Europe. Some of these documents ran into 50 to 100 pages or even more. For such documents, a bigger stapler or paper clip was needed to hold the printed document papers together - but that was available. So I presume that even today in 2020, any techie who wants to print the ebook on a laser printer, may be able to very conveniently do it, and thereby easily have a paper (hardcopy) of the book!]
Note that only the cover page (yet to be designed) will be colour - the interior will be black & white. Submitting the ebook to a black and white laser printer will print the colour cover page in greyscale (black & white) with rest of the book being black & white anyway.
3) Two columns in A4 size document would make for easier reading but I am not going to invest time in making the book two columns. Besides, I have authored so many internal documents in A4 size without multiple columns, during my industry career, and I have read countless such single column A4 documents as well. So I think single column A4 page is acceptable for this book. BTW the first book like document (other than specification docs like functional spec & design spec) that I authored was in A4 size single column, if I recall correctly. It was a GUI (Graphical User Interface) design guide for business applications done for Mastek in SEEPZ, Mumbai sometime in the mid 1990s. I used Microsoft Word at that time too to produce this book like document.
As I added the first article into my book manuscript/document, which is my paper (pre-print and not published in any peer reviewed publication) on how to improve practice of software development in Indian CS & IT academia, it became apparent that A5 is a totally inappropriate size choice for this book which is essentially a technical education related book. After thinking about other possibilities, I checked out A4 page size. Here are two versions of the in-progress document PDF: A5 size: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Oezq4Fvsx0uXYv8TERmFjWEmeBfKOV7Q and A4 size: https://drive.google.com/open?id=15FDEf_ddrLYqvke8rmwW80UcHMBaYMw0. A4 PDF looks suitable and so I settled on A4 page size for the book.
I considered using A4 size for the following reasons:
1) Pothi.com which is the first self-publishing (& printing) platform I will use to self-publish the book, supports A4 page size paperback books - https://publish.pothi.com/tools/price-royalty-calculator/ shows the various page sizes supported by Pothi.com for paperback books.
2) Techie readers who would like to read a paper (hardcopy) version could just laser-print the (free download) ebook version if the ebook page size is A4. A4 paper is standard size for laser printers. [While in the software industry (1984 to 2002), I have printed umpteen A4 size documents for reading while being based in various locations in India, USA and Western Europe. Some of these documents ran into 50 to 100 pages or even more. For such documents, a bigger stapler or paper clip was needed to hold the printed document papers together - but that was available. So I presume that even today in 2020, any techie who wants to print the ebook on a laser printer, may be able to very conveniently do it, and thereby easily have a paper (hardcopy) of the book!]
Note that only the cover page (yet to be designed) will be colour - the interior will be black & white. Submitting the ebook to a black and white laser printer will print the colour cover page in greyscale (black & white) with rest of the book being black & white anyway.
3) Two columns in A4 size document would make for easier reading but I am not going to invest time in making the book two columns. Besides, I have authored so many internal documents in A4 size without multiple columns, during my industry career, and I have read countless such single column A4 documents as well. So I think single column A4 page is acceptable for this book. BTW the first book like document (other than specification docs like functional spec & design spec) that I authored was in A4 size single column, if I recall correctly. It was a GUI (Graphical User Interface) design guide for business applications done for Mastek in SEEPZ, Mumbai sometime in the mid 1990s. I used Microsoft Word at that time too to produce this book like document.
No comments:
Post a Comment