Book Publishing - how to publish your book!

Ok, you're probably wondering why book publishing is discussed on a site that primarily deals with business cards? Well, just as business cards are one part of a company's general print requirements, then books/booklets and just as importantly getting your book published, is an important issue for many people.

The early stages.

Ok, you've come up with a great idea for a novel, or found a new way of quitting smoking or losing weight etc. and you've spent the last couple of months typing away in Word, sourcing some great colour images, getting your family and friends to proof read and suggest amendments, researched the legalities of copyright and getting your ISBN number, and have finally reached the point where you decide it's time to bite the bullit and approach your local friendly printer to get a costing for the printing of your new venture. "Ouch! How much!!?? But I only want a couple of hundred copies to test the water with. How come it's so expensive?"

This scenario is much more common than you might think.

The traditional method. (skip this section if you're easily bored).

Your local printer will need to cost the book based on the following:

Ok, for our purposes let's say the book's finished size will be A5 (half of A4) or more precisely 148.5mm wide x 210mm deep and we require a test run of 200 books.

Let's also assume that your finished manuscript will produce an A5 book totalling 300 pages. We 'plan' the book by diving by 4, which gives us 75 pages of 2 x A5's printed side by side, and obviously printed on the reverse. (4 x A5 pages per printed sheet). The actual pagination (numbering of the pages) is done on the computer and the pages are imposed (planned together) to give us our final printed sheets in the correct order. Ok, that's the pre-press work done, nearly! For each of the 75 sheets a sheet of film must be produced which is then used to create a 'plate' (the metal, sometimes plastic or paper) that carries the image and is used on the press to produce the final printed sheet. To give you some idea of the costs involved, if you were to take a file into a bureau (A4) and have a piece of film made this would cost around the £10 ($20) mark. A standard metal printing plate is not cheap also, so you can see where this is going. Ok, most modern printers these days use CTP (Computer To Plate) which takes the film part out of the process, so costs are definitely cheaper these days from a few years back.

Right, the plate is on the press, the operator runs the 200 sheets required and then has to stop the press, change the plate and run the next 200 sheets. This carries on for all 75 sheets. The cover is normally printed on different material, so the press also has to bet up for this. Once all the sheets have had time to completely dry they are put through a booklet-making machine which produces the finished stapled (stitched) or bound book.

As you can see, producing a book is a very time-consuming excercise. Now if the order had been for 2,000 books, instead of just 200 then it would actually be cheaper to use this standard method (lithographic).

But I only want 200 books, what are my options?

Well, we're in the 21st century now and things have moved on quite a bit from the early days. It's only a few years ago that your daily newspaper was typeset by a guy manually putting blocks of type in a galley. These days the whole paper is put together on computer with images sent via bluetooth from all corners of the planet, as events unfold.

The advent of digital publishing has changed the world of print also. It's now possible to get 1, 2, 20, 200 or 2,000 copies of your book, printed, folded and stitched, at the flick of a switch. Including the cover! How neat is that? The main advantage of this new technology is that should you wish to change something in the copy, then there's no need to scrap the film and plates as there are none to begin with. The whole process is computer-driven direct to a digital booklet-maker! This is the basis of on-demand publishing.

Sounds good. How do I find a good supplier?

Well, faced with the above scenario myself I did a lot of research into the subject and it is a bit of a minefield. What I can tell you however, is that it's good news for someone wishing to publish their book these days. There are now companies who specialise in taking care of every aspect of getting your book into print and dealing with all the other related necessities involved with the publishing process. Your book will be printed, published to various sources and providing you select the right supplier, and this is very important, you should retain 100% rights to copyright. Please check this out before signing anything.

The only company I have found that cover all the bases and at a price I can afford is Trafford Publishing who have become one of the most respected and efficient companies in the on-demand publishing field. I have recommended numerous clients to their service and have heard only good reports.

Even if you decide to go elsewhere the site is worth a visit as you will learn so much about the processes involved. There's a free publishing guide that can be seen [here].

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