Making a book & self publishing

[thekitchendesigner]

I'm putting together a book about a particular car, made mainly from owner photos, alongside general info and articles etc.

Ive struggled a bit with the printing and production side and getting good enough quality and price. Ive found a local company who give a good price, but i'm not happy with the appearance.

This is a book to be sold and i have just under 150 names who want one, which is ever increasing.

I would like it to be in hardback format, preferably with a jacket, to look something like these photobooks you see on photobox etc etc. but at a 'proper' self-publishing cost.

What would also be helpful is some simple software or tool to help me define the layout ready to send to a printer, as ive tried in publisher and then printing each page as a PDF - this will get messy after anything up to 100 pages!

Just wondering if anyone here has any helpful advice or might even be able to help??

Cheers, Mark

 

[The Pines]

I'm putting together a book about a particular car, made mainly from owner photos, alongside general info and articles etc.

Ive struggled a bit with the printing and production side and getting good enough quality and price. Ive found a local company who give a good price, but i'm not happy with the appearance.

This is a book to be sold and i have just under 150 names who want one, which is ever increasing.

I would like it to be in hardback format, preferably with a jacket, to look something like these photobooks you see on photobox etc etc. but at a 'proper' self-publishing cost.

What would also be helpful is some simple software or tool to help me define the layout ready to send to a printer, as ive tried in publisher and then printing each page as a PDF - this will get messy after anything up to 100 pages!

Just wondering if anyone here has any helpful advice or might even be able to help??

Cheers, Mark

This is the kind of specialist, niche info that doesn't justify a print run.

Could you not just offer the whole book as a PDF, and charge them £5 a copy??? They can download from somewhere like Clickbank, of just get them to paypal you a fiver and then you send the PDF as an email attachment in return?

What's the car???

 

[thekitchendesigner]

I thought the idea of self publishing was to publish what you want??

Its for a group of owners & enthusiasts on a forum, and the purpose is to make a collectable book, not a PDF.

 

[The Pines]

I thought the idea of self publishing was to publish what you want??

Kind of. The real beauty of self-publishing is in finding a niche market, and creating information to cater to that niche. The info is considered far more important than the pictures, structure, etc

Its for a group of owners & enthusiasts on a forum, and the purpose is to make a collectable book, not a PDF.

Collectable books are very expensive to run to print. How many books will you print? At what price? How many will you sell?

 

[Brian McIntosh]

Hi Mark,

There are a number of companies that will let you do short print runs and have downloadable software so you can do your own designs. There are sites like lulu.com you could try googling self publishing books. If you need any help with the photos give me a shout.

 

[thekitchendesigner]

Hi Brian,

Have been scouring google but havent found anything useful as yet. A few of the retail sites have the software, but its only linked to their order system

I have looked at lulu before, but from what i recall they dont offer the right thing and prices are high.

It seems there are a fair few smaller publsihers that will do what i need, but they dont offer (understandably) and way of me laying it out easily

Cheers, Mark

 

[Trainer Bubble]

Have you considered cafe press ?

 

[Humphrey]

Have you tried http://www.bookprinting.org.uk/

 

[SusanP]

Cox & Wyman printers, in Reading, are supposed to be good in the self-publishing field. You might also find information in The Bookseller magazine.

 

[trilby274]

Thought I would put in my 2 pennyworth. We do 'vanity' publishing, mostly for private clients obviously. I think the price will very much depend upon what you want the finished article to be. Coffee table or bookcase? We can work from most file types (including pdf from Publisher) providing the originator actually talks to us first and carries out the advice given. The type of book you are describing is what is known as Case Bound and is a specialist job, however most printers will have a contact whereby the case binding can be outsourced.

If the book is to be in full colour throughout, then for 100 or so copies, digital printing is probably the order of the day - but that could depend on the size of the pages.

With more details, I could probably get you a price - but it will not be cheap. Somebody mentioned about £5 per copy but to be honest, I don't think you would get a quality job for that.

 

[compuclean]

Hey Mark.

I've used Lulu.com to self publish The Laughter File. This is a 214 page, black and white softcover book with colour front and back covers. Production cost is approx £4.50 per copy.

If you were to use Lulu for a photobook (which I know they've done but I've never tried), in hardback, I would guestimate that the production cost would be closer to £15.00 (that's before you put your markup on it). They do do sleeves too.

Now, when I made The Laughter File, it was dead easy - create the book in MS Word, export it as a pdf, upload it to Lulu, they printed it. All I had to do was make sure that my page setup was correct - margins, etc. No specialist software to download and learn.

Might be helpful for you to go onto the Lulu forums?

Hope this helps.

 

[miniman]

If you are looking for something relatively image-heavy (which I think you are) then Blurb (you will have to Google it - I don't have enough posts to put a URL in!) is well worth a look. The quality is excellent and the software you download to construct your book with is well considered and simple to get to grips with.

HTH