Pocket Book Size (4.25" x 6.87")

I thought maybe an image says more than many words:

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Quote from my initial post:

Does anybody know other self publishing sites/services similar to lulu that also offer a classic Pocket Book size of 4.25" x 6.87"?
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What makes 4.25" x 6.87" special is that the ratio of width and height is the golden ratio 0.618...

4.25" x 7" is only a difference of 0.13" in height (3.3mm) but it destroys the largely unconscious message of harmony inherent in the golden ratio...

Imagine the photo above with the book 0.13" (3.3mm) higher... it would no longer be beautiful.

What I tried also was the slightly bigger 4.37" x 7" that IngramSpark also has, either by blowing up or by adding more white around the existing design. The result was not all that bad, but in comparison all the magic was gone.

Also, the book as printed at Lulu has 60# paper, while IngramSpark only offers 50#, so the book would be thinner, which again destroys the harmony, given I already planned for 250 pages.

The text inside is about 9 words per line, 23 lines per page, 244 pages after the usual preambles, so all in all 9 x 23 x 244 = ca. 50'000 words.

50 is also 250 / 5, the golden ratio is related to 5-pointed stars, the planet Venus (goddess of beauty) returns every 8 years to almost the same spot in the sky, and in between stations at the 5 corners of a 5-pointed star.

In those 8 years, also sun and moon return about to the same spots, which is why the precursors of Venus/Aphrodite in Mesopotamia, Inanna and Ishtar, were depicted with the symbols of sun, moon and Venus (as 8-pointed star).

8 years are 99 = 50 + 49 lunar months. The Olympics in ancient Greece were alternatively every 50 and 49 lunar months (i.e. approx. every 4 years). When you ask the Chinese I Ching oracle, you start with 50 yarrow stalk sticks and put one aways right at the start to get 49. The USA has 50 stars on its flag, and it started with 13, also a number symbolically strongly related to the same themes.

My parents died earlier this year, my mother Jan 2, after a breakdown on Friday the 13th of December and after which she did not eat any more. My father was still quite fit at the time, but lifted my mother at night to help her to go to the backroom, injured his back heavily, had an operation in late January, which went wrong, plus other issues with no chance for real recovery showed and he decided to go; actually they had promised each other only to leave together, which was legally not possible, so he was also gone on Feb 19th.

Now, the day I got the two proof copies of the book, early in spring, I also got the official documents from the local district court that confirmed me as their sole inheritor. This links the two books and my two parents closely together, and also to "heritage". I had already started to design the book cover in January 2019, and that was far from an easy birth, in retrospect also somewhat influenced by death approaching, even though my parents had still been on holidays in the USA in May 2019 and even on 12 December 2019 my parents would go out to town and live normally.

This may explain why this book is for all that it appears bound to be 4.25" x 6.87" on 60# paper.

How I will distribute it in the end will be decided when the book is ready, which may be even this year, but most likely will only a few more years into the future.

Maybe IngramSpark will allow this format then, or maybe there will be some other way, that is still open. Maybe if I ordered quite a bunch in advance, that would be possible, maybe directly via LightningSource, I don't know. And the book "industry" is moving, not sure where. In any case, it is unlikely that book stores will return to past times where they had more than just a handful of books besides apparel like bags and so on (at least where I live, maybe that is different in the US).

But sure, for other future book projects I would almost certainly start with IngramSpark, with a size they have. But the above is not the usual book project, why may exactly be why it has a real chance. A bit like Cindy Crawford's mole. About 30 years ago I had a book on typography which said something along "you should know the rules and follow them strictly, but for each design also break one or two of them". Anyways, not like I would understand it all, as writer and artist if you are not driven and go with that flow, what else would you do.

PS: I actually do have another book in mind, which I might do in 5" x 8", since that is a size that both IngramSpark and Amazon KDP offer today (Lulu does not) and of all the sizes that IngramSpark offers this is one of about three that comes somewhat close to the golden ratio:

8" / 5" = 1.60, 5" / 8" = 0.625

(Pocket size in comparison: 6.875" / 4.25" = 1.6176, 4.25" / 6.875" = 0.6182; the golden ratio would be 1.61803... resp. 0.61803...)

But I learned quite a few things in this thread, thanks everybody!

I am the last person most people would want as a reviewer, and at any rate between der kinder and different projects [indoor / outdoor on top of writing] I doubt I could deliver on time.

I have no need to check the Lulu Press download as I have a different business strategy in mind.

The divided by part dates back to how many pages at size X were to cut from a printing sheet of size Y, and the other numbers used to determine that are 8, 16, and 32. Some standards have been in place for a very long time, and the divided by 4 is pretty easy to follow whether Lulu Press says to do so now or not.

Your total page count is front and back of the piece of paper at size X including blank pages.

The interior PDF is already pretty standard with margin sizes and trim sizes designed to keep the cutting machines from taking too much even if slightly out of synch, the allowable tolerances. You also have to embed fonts, which is standard. This is true regardless of which service you choose even if some of the size offerings are slightly different.

As for cutting out those in the middle who simply add cost without adding value that's already possible, it's simply a matter of choosing to do so and adapting one's expectations. Those who do the approving are checking the cover and interior files to make sure the self-publisher is intelligent enough to follow the instructions to format and upload a book that will print correctly.