Uploaded March 2019 | Updated September 2026, 32 minutes ago
Over the last year, I've been working on writing a music book of trios based on melodies composed by Turlough O'Carolan. I decided to use Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) print-on-demand technology to see what would come back as a proof. I was originally going to use Amazon's CreateSpace, but it seems as though that resource is no longer available. This video has my initial thoughts on what they sent, and I talk about my music book a little bit. The proof came in just 3 days with standard shipping, which I thought was fantastic.
I have to say that this music book was HARD to write. I'm glad I did it, though, and I've learned so much along the way! I'm hoping to release it sometime around March 22 or so. :D
Most KDP videos I've found focus on text-based books, and not sheet music books. Sheet music is a lot bolder and bigger than regular text, so I wanted to make this video if there were any other people curious about what it might look like.
Overall, I think the paper quality was good. I'd prefer it to be slightly thicker, but in order to get thicker paper I'd have to print the book as if it needed color ink instead of black and white. It would make the book about 3 times more expensive to print. The regular white paper is as good as most of my music books, so I think it will be okay. There is some bleed-through that I can see, but I don't think it's prevalent enough to distract the reader from reading the music notes on the page.
I have not tried the cream-colored paper, but based on what I see with the white paper, I think the cream-colored paper would be too thin for sheet music books.
The cover was tricky to make. You need to have your PDF be the exact size that they need for the book. For some reason I thought Amazon would be able to take any to-scale, super high resolution PDF and shrink it down to the book size. That's definitely NOT what they do, lol. It needs to be the exact book dimensions + bleed area, and the front, spine, and back cover are all together on one giant piece of paper/PDF. They have helpful guidelines to follow based to help you determine the spine width on how many pages and the paper type your book has, but it ended up being a lot trickier and time consuming than I thought it would be.
I used high-resolution images in my book, but they do look a little pixelated from the printers. It's not too bad, and my book is about music, not pictures, so I'm fine with it. The music notes look great, but I had exported them from my music program directly as sheet music PDFs, not images. I suspect that if the sheet music were actually images instead of the line-art PDF files that the music program generated, they might have looked pixelated, too.
If I had an entire book of black-and-white photos, I might suggest trying to print with the color ink and paper instead of the black and white ink. If my whole book were pictures and they all looked like the ones I show in the video, I don't think I would be very happy with it.
But for sheet music, I think I give this a thumbs up! I'm excited! Yay!
Thank you for watching, and I hope you have a good rest of the week! =)
~ Katy
P.S. YouTube's end screen linked card things don't seem to be working atm, so it looks empty. I realize this looks funny. I've set them up, so hopefully they start working again soon! :o
------------
Download/stream my "Tune Collection" album:
fanlink.to/TuneCollection
Download/stream my "Ghost Ship" single:
fanlink.to/GhostShip
Hashtags:
#KDP #KindleDirectPublishing #MusicBook #Violin #Fiddle #KatyAdelson #Music #IrishMusicBook #TurloughOCarolan
Software and equipment used:
Full list of all my basic violin equipment:
katyadelson.com/about/violin-equipment-and-recommendations
Violin gear:
Violin: 1899 Ernst Kreusler “Copy of Antonius Stradivarius” violin from Germany
Bow: CodaBow Luma
Strings: Evah Pirazzi Violin Strings (with a ball E)
Rosin: Salchow Rosin
Shoulder Rest: Bonmusica Shoulder Rest
Software used (for Macintosh):
Final Cut Pro for video editing
PicMonkey.com for the ending cards
Camera:
Canon 70D + 18-135 mm kit lens
Sony RX100 V
Over the last year, I've been working on writing a music book of trios based on melodies composed by Turlough O'Carolan. I decided to use Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) print-on-demand technology to see what would come back as a proof. I was originally going to use Amazon's CreateSpace, but it seems as though that resource is no longer available. This video has my initial thoughts on what they sent, and I talk about my music book a little bit. The proof came in just 3 days with standard shipping, which I thought was fantastic.
I have to say that this music book was HARD to write. I'm glad I did it, though, and I've learned so much along the way! I'm hoping to release it sometime around March 22 or so. :D
Most KDP videos I've found focus on text-based books, and not sheet music books. Sheet music is a lot bolder and bigger than regular text, so I wanted to make this video if there were any other people curious about what it might look like.
Overall, I think the paper quality was good. I'd prefer it to be slightly thicker, but in order to get thicker paper I'd have to print the book as if it needed color ink instead of black and white. It would make the book about 3 times more expensive to print. The regular white paper is as good as most of my music books, so I think it will be okay. There is some bleed-through that I can see, but I don't think it's prevalent enough to distract the reader from reading the music notes on the page.
I have not tried the cream-colored paper, but based on what I see with the white paper, I think the cream-colored paper would be too thin for sheet music books.
The cover was tricky to make. You need to have your PDF be the exact size that they need for the book. For some reason I thought Amazon would be able to take any to-scale, super high resolution PDF and shrink it down to the book size. That's definitely NOT what they do, lol. It needs to be the exact book dimensions + bleed area, and the front, spine, and back cover are all together on one giant piece of paper/PDF. They have helpful guidelines to follow based to help you determine the spine width on how many pages and the paper type your book has, but it ended up being a lot trickier and time consuming than I thought it would be.
I used high-resolution images in my book, but they do look a little pixelated from the printers. It's not too bad, and my book is about music, not pictures, so I'm fine with it. The music notes look great, but I had exported them from my music program directly as sheet music PDFs, not images. I suspect that if the sheet music were actually images instead of the line-art PDF files that the music program generated, they might have looked pixelated, too.
If I had an entire book of black-and-white photos, I might suggest trying to print with the color ink and paper instead of the black and white ink. If my whole book were pictures and they all looked like the ones I show in the video, I don't think I would be very happy with it.
But for sheet music, I think I give this a thumbs up! I'm excited! Yay!
Thank you for watching, and I hope you have a good rest of the week! =)
~ Katy
P.S. YouTube's end screen linked card things don't seem to be working atm, so it looks empty. I realize this looks funny. I've set them up, so hopefully they start working again soon! :o
------------
Download/stream my "Tune Collection" album:
fanlink.to/TuneCollection
Download/stream my "Ghost Ship" single:
fanlink.to/GhostShip
Hashtags:
#KDP #KindleDirectPublishing #MusicBook #Violin #Fiddle #KatyAdelson #Music #IrishMusicBook #TurloughOCarolan
Software and equipment used:
Full list of all my basic violin equipment:
katyadelson.com/about/violin-equipment-and-recommendations
Violin gear:
Violin: 1899 Ernst Kreusler “Copy of Antonius Stradivarius” violin from Germany
Bow: CodaBow Luma
Strings: Evah Pirazzi Violin Strings (with a ball E)
Rosin: Salchow Rosin
Shoulder Rest: Bonmusica Shoulder Rest
Software used (for Macintosh):
Final Cut Pro for video editing
PicMonkey.com for the ending cards
Camera:
Canon 70D + 18-135 mm kit lens
Sony RX100 V
