Are any Nano winners taking advantage of the Createspace offer for a proof of their novel? If so could you explain how to get your novel out of Scrivener and into the PDF format that Createspace requires?
createspace.com/Products/Bo … p#content4
I guess what I’m asking is how do I export from Scrivener into an embedded 5 x 8 PDF with the margins Createspace requires? Any advice is appreciated. I’m not very formatting savvy it seems.
What you are doing at that point is very clearly page layout, and page layout is not Scrivener’s mission. So you will want to compile your novel to produce some suitably formatted file (e.g. RTF) and open the result up in some program which is designed for page layout. Ideally, if you are really going for a finished look, you would do this in InDesign or QuarkXpress, but you can do the required in a word processor like Word. You are for sure going to want to be working in a program that can also present to you accurate previews of how the spreads are coming out anyway, because you need to see how the thing is going to look for real. That’s what I figure anyway and that is the way I proceeded with my partner’s NaNo novel from year before last (having it printed, though not through Createspace).
It has been a while since I dealt with font-embedding issues with pdfs. Does anyone know how OS X handles font embedding when it comes to print-to-pdf function? Maybe embed-all is the default there. I vaguely recall using some option in Adobe Acrobat to ensure that all fonts were embedded in a pdf. If you are only using a subset of the default 13 fonts (used to be 13 anyway), then you probably would not have a problem, regardless.
–Greg
Ahh, thank you gr. I see things are a little more complex than I thought. After researching Indesign and Quark I see what goes into creating print ready documents. Looks like people are having success with Apples Pages as well. Maybe after next years Nano this years will be ready to print 
Thanks again.
Go to CreateSpace’s website. They have tools for you to use. I’m an ML and will be attending a CreateSpace webinar on Dec. 15. We (the MLs) are supposed to then be able to answer all such questions after the webinar. Until then, there are supposed to be tools on the site with instructions. However, I have heard a lot of people complain that they can’t find anything on the Createspace site. I’ll post what I learn after the 15th.
The epub version is supposed to be a one step upload but I have not played with Scrivener’s epub compile. However, You do NOT need the high end programs like In Design, Quark etc. This I do know.
Apollo16
After you’ve attended, Apollo16, let me know and we can see if we can put together a Scrivener export format that would suit this if that is at all possible (it may not be, depending on the requirements), and if you are interested, of course.
Thanks,
Keith
Sounds good! Two caveats… (1) their webinar lives up to the hype and is useful and (2) I don’t have to kill myself because I’m attending a webinar. 
Apollo16
Didn’t really mean to suggest that you /need/ a high-end page layout app to do the job. Laying things out in Pages or Word will certainly serve the purpose. At a minimum, you could probably get by with setting margins and inserting page breaks in various places.
From what I can see on the Createspace site, though, the only format you can upload your typescript in without paying them $$ for page layout is PDF and that needs to be a print-ready PDF, so you have to do the page layout.
They do, of course, offer for-pay services which would allow you to pick from a menu of choices (font, etc.) and just upload your content without having to lay it out yourself. They are going to charge you for the layout work, though, presumably.
BUT maybe there is more to the NaNo offer than I know?*
–Greg
P.S. When we printed my wife’s NaNo novel, we quickly discovered that it can be a lot more prep work than you might think, because once you go down this road, you start wanting everything to be right and to be just so and to fix all the typos and etc. So that is when it starts to eat up time. I also admit to being a typographic junkie, so the opportunity to do cover and book design and layout work . . . well, there was no stopping me.
I found the creatspace resources. There are pre-formatted templates and instructions for creating the proper PDF types. Here’s the link:
createspace.com/en/communit … /resources
Thanks everyone.
There’s also MMD->LaTeX->PDF. This is the route that I use, with the excellent 6x9book format (for lulu, not createspace).
If there isn’t an MMD format for the createspace size, one could probably be made starting from the 6x9.
There is also the epub route for direct to Kindle via CreateSpace. I’ll know more next week.
Apollo16
They have moved to a new model. They have word templates that you paste your manuscript into and then make them pdfs.
They are only accepting pdfs. They take the pdf and then convert it for you to epub for a FEE.
The thing to do is to download all the word templates and replicate them in the compile window.
createspace.com/en/community/docs/DOC-1323
The epub route is faster and cheaper if you go directly through Amazon (i.e. you do not have a paper version).
The webinar was 50 minutes of sales pitches. (As a POD provider… it isn’t a bad deal but really… I need a drink and I ain’t talkin’ water.)
Apollo16