Update on Gerard’s book
It’s a continuing saga.
I’ve gotten very far. The book is edited and formatted. I’m 90% finished with designing a website for selling the book, including deciding on all the methods for taking money. I have a book cover. I had decided on a publisher to do an initial print run of 300; hopefully I could sell more and do another run, but I’d start with that.
Note the past tense in that last sentence. I had decided on a publisher after doing a ton of research, and the company I chose seemed wonderful: responsive, polite, reasonable in price, and they even sent me free samples of paper types and a book or two they had published. Looked good.
Yesterday I was ready to order my test copy, and if that went well I’d order the print run.
Today I learned that within the last week the company has suddenly gone out of business. So it’s back to the drawing board on that.
This project is taking close to a year longer than I thought it would. But I still hope to issue the book at some point in June. We’ll see.
Did you consider AMZN’s book printing service? It is on-demand printing; no inventory.
Cornhead:
Of course I did. First of all, the quality of its print books is said to be inferior. More importantly, print-on-demand is far more expensive. Lastly, in addition to that, Amazon takes an enormous cut. To make even a small profit on each book I’d have to charge the buyer a very high price, mch higher than if I were to do a print run. Something like two and a half times the price for the buyer. Way too high.
You might have already talked to this company, but my wife is having a short run of an autobiography printed with this company:
https://www.formaxprinting.com/
We got a quote on hardbound, full color, coated paper and it seemed reasonable.
We’re just getting ready to send the files to them and have a proof copy printed. I’ll know in a couple of weeks what their quality is.
Waaaaaay beyond my ability, but as a recent observer, it looks like you are taking your time, know quite a bit about what your are doing, and getting everything setup correctly.
Brian E:
Thanks. I’ll take a look.
Karmi:
Well, I’m trying. There just have been so many unexpected obstacles and delays.
It’s been a few years, but I remember a conversation between an author and a friend on the difference between print and electronic publishing. The print process took a year. The only exceptions were very, very topical books that had much higher production costs.
The author had just gotten a call from a company based in India which wanted to do the e-publish setup for him. The cost was very reasonable. The turnaround was 72 hours, which the sales person was embarrassed about. She felt sure they could get the turnaround to 24 hours, soon.
Neo:
Dumb comment by me. Of course you did.
Cornhead:
That’s okay. You never know. But I did research it a lot and was surprised at how complicated the decision was.
I remember Gerard and honor his memory. A gentle soul, a kind heart. I will be buying his book as soon as it is available. Thank you for all the time and effort you are putting into this project.
Neo:
We are a patient bunch. When you are ready, just post with the how-to order details.
I strongly suggest getting a few rehearsal orders to test “real world” order processing. From my experience there are solid reasons to get a few friendlies to place orders as being from the general public but actually be ready to give feedback and have great patience should a minor glitch show up, help check and fix any error paths that might arise.
Be happy to volunteer for being a beta tester.
Thanks to you for all you are doing.
I look forward to the book.
IngramSpark was recommended by a creator I follow who recently self-published a book. It was printed in Columbia, SC. It is a substantial looking 6″ x 9″ paperback. The paper, layout and print quality are very good, including many dozens of black and white photographs throughout the text. She used Amazon Kindle Direct for the eBook version.
Looking Up is the book if you are curious.