300 pixels/inch instead of default 100 pixels/inch is needed for GIMP (2.8) to import Pothi.com book cover PDF image files with good quality

Last updated on 27th July 2022

I decided to publish this post on this spiritual blog as I think it may be useful to readers interested in spirituality who are considering to publish or have published their own books. Note that for the same reason, in the past I have published posts related to self-publication of my books on this blog. As an example see: Using a size template in GIMP for paperback cover creation,  https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/2019/06/using-size-template-in-gimp-for.html , 16th June 2019.

I also decided to provide sufficient background as I felt it may help the above mentioned type of readers.

Somewhat recently one of the two self-publishing platforms I use - Pothi.com - raised minimum price of printed books on their platform. This resulted in three of my four print(ed) books on Pothi.com not becoming available publicly (book sale page is not shown to users other than me) as their new minimum price was higher than the previously set price of these books. So I had to change the price of these books to the new minimum price (as I want zero royalty).

One of the additional issues was that the book cover had to be changed as it had the old price. I chose to simply remove the price info. from the cover page (back cover part of cover page, to be precise). And I decided to do it for all four of my print books on Pothi.com.

I should also mention that the free ebook versions of three of my books on Pothi.com continue to be publicly available.

For three of these four print books, I had the jpg file for the cover page that I had last submitted to Pothi.com (and which was accepted by them after review). So I could make the required modification in the jpg file very easily using Microsoft Paint on my Windows PC, and then go through the Pothi.com process for submission of the new cover page and change of price to new minimum. That process went smoothly and now these changes are under review.

For the fourth book: "Who am I? I am I - Ultimate Existential Reality Answer; Vedanta; God and Science conversation" [free Pothi.com ebook link: https://store.pothi.com/book/ebook-ravi-s-iyer-who-am-i-i-am-i-ultimate-existential-reality-answer-vedanta-god-and-science-c/ ], I could not locate the jpg file for the cover page that I had last submitted to Pothi.com. So I decided to download the current cover page file which was in pdf format from Pothi.com website's author dashboard. Note that I had this pdf file on my disk but as I was going to modify the pdf file, I chose to download from Pothi.com as that would surely be the latest version.

Now I do not have software like Adobe Distiller to modify pdf files. Instead I use GIMP (free software) with my installed version of GIMP being 2.8. So I loaded the cover page pdf I had downloaded from Pothi.com into GIMP using the default values that came up in the 'Import From PDF' dialog (see below pic).

[On PC desktop, to open pic in larger resolution (if available), right-click on pic followed by open link (NOT image) in new tab/window. In new tab/window you may have to click on pic to zoom in.]

The resultant image in GIMP editor was not crisp with text being distinctly fuzzy! Expand pic below to full resolution and then see the text, especially small font text like ISBN number. This text is fuzzy in the full resolution pic (though in the blogger automatically compressed pic below it may not look fuzzy).

I had forgotten about GIMP's default resolution for PDF of 100 pixels/inch being low and that 300 pixels/inch was the better choice. 

But Google search gave me this info. though I had to traverse an additional link to get the related article: https://www.gimp-forum.net/Thread-PDF-files-import?pid=13176#pid13176 , giving the solution for my problem. Specifically all that I had to do was change the resolution at import time, from 100 pixels/in to 300 pixels/in. GIMP pdf import of same file at 300 pixels/inch is shown below. Like in above case, expand pic below to full resolution and then see the text, especially small font text like ISBN number. This text is crisp in the full resolution pic.

Now modifying the cover page file to remove the price info. was as straightforward in GIMP as it was in Paint on the jpg files, which was to just copy-paste rectangular selection of blank area to left of price info., on top of the price info. Export command has to be used in GIMP to save as PDF. With that the modified PDF was ready. See pic below showing roughly the same area of cover page as above pics but with price info. blanked out.

I uploaded the new cover page to Pothi.com and changed the price to new minimum price. So now I am awaiting review result from Pothi.com. On successful review, the sale pages for three of these printed books will be shown publicly. [The fourth is already being shown publicly as its price is not below the new minimum price (for hard cover books).]

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27th July 2022 update: All four of my print books on Pothi.com are now available for the public. These four print books and three free ebooks (same content as equivalent print books) on pothi.com can be viewed here: https://store.pothi.com/search/?q=Ravi%20S.%20Iyer .