KDP Covers and Affinity Publisher v2

A few things on doing KDP covers in Affinity Publisher:

1. Layer styles are where you style text for anything not text-ish, like leading, kerning, and so on. Layer styling doesn't kill the text into a graphic the way it does in some packages.

2. The document dimensions you give Affinity Publisher at setup are the trimmed dimensions, not the absolute dimensions. KDP is supposed to recognize the metadata in the PDF that tells it this, but surprise, it doesn't. So subtract twice the bleed from both the height and width of the absolute cover size (from KDP Cover Calculator) before feeding this into Affinity Publisher's page size.

3. Use frames to set component sizes. If you still need alignment lines, snap them to the edge of a frame, then move them. The delta value will give you the amounts you want.

4. Almost always, you want Duplicate Layer and not Copy Layer.

Does this suggest that Bikini Body is approaching publication? It does. I have prototypes of the paperback and hardback versions ordered. If they check out, we're good to go.

Toolchain Changes, Addendum

Two significant tool chain changes since my last post. 1. My day to day writing tool has become IA Writer because 2. My day to day writing machine has become a new (to me) M1 Mac mini. I'm pretty much done with Linux.

Also, I finished Bikini Body back in mid-August, and it's back from E.C., so I'm working through the change list. :). I expect to release Bikini Body soon. I'm also tentatively pulling together the plot threads of Nina Cohen 4: tentatively titled Ghost Light.