Ok, so when it comes to getting the book printed the first decision that you have to make is not who should print it for you, but how much money you have to spend getting the book printed.
Even if you go for an option like Blurb who has no set up charges at all, there is still the cost of ISBN numbers, cover graphics, editorial and proof reading costs. Some of these may be financial or they may be costly in terms of the time it takes to do, but one way or another you will always have to pay for this.
Then there is the cost of printing. Traditional digital printers will ask you to pay for the print run in advance. www.printondemand-worldwide.com charges only £97.50 for fifty 100 page books.
You also have to consider the add on cost of some of the distribution services offered by for instance lulu.com and lightningsource.com where you get to put your book in the catalogues of the book distributors like ingram that distributes to B&N.
Once you know what you can afford to spend, then the decision of who to use becomes that much more easier. You have fewer companies to choose from and then all you have to do is look at the sizes each of them do and decide which size is the best one for you.
The book industry operates with quite a few standardised book sizes and the range of designs vary wildly. Not only by sizing, but also things like what binding you want. It surprises my wife to no end that there are so few cookbooks with a coil bound spine (spiral bound) as you would be able to lay the book flat and still read the recipe. ( there’s an idea for you!)
To achieve better economies print on demand publishers have a more limited choice available than a digital short print company. Usually your book can quite happily fit, but it depends on how you have laid out your ebook already. Most ebooks are written in word and pdf’ed into a letter or A4 size and for a print on demand printer that should usually not be a problem. There are more limitations on pdf’s being submitted than if you send a word document. This has to do with typefaces (fonts) and how they are translated by the pdf’ing program. Usually it is best to read the instructions from the individual companies and take it from there.
Lightningsource.com and lulu.com are the top two print on demand printers and both offer services on top of simply printing the book whenever it is needed. Lightningsource will also make the titles available to all the major book distributors for about $12 a year per book. This would make your book available even in B&N and on the Amazon websites. Lulu offers a similar distribution service with the addition of access to the Lulu market place.
Lulu does not in fact insist on an ISBN number, but you would need one if you wanted to distribute the book to bookstores and through the book distributors.
Lulu does not appear to charge a setup fee, but Lightningsource does. So when you choose Lightningsource you need to be sure you can make back that investment. ( which is not all that much, depending on the type of book. Usually around £60–£80)
Both of these provide detailed instructions on how they need the books laid out rather than a straight forward “import” service.
If you decide to go with either one of these two, you are likely to reach a larger share of the book buying market than if you use any other print on demand service, but you should seriously consider asking my wife to do the editing, proofreading and laying out of the book for you. It would be much quicker and she has the experience to do it right.
Another service which is quite pricey per book copy but is incredibly convenient is blurb.com (blurb.com/uk for the uk prices) They focus mainly on picture books but are an excellent choice if you want to publish your blog into a book. They insist on users installing a piece of software that you can use to lay out your book project, but it makes the whole project much much easier to manage. They do not insist on ISBN’s, just like Lulu. Their services are very similar to that of Lulu, and if you want them to distribute the book through “normal” sales channels you will need to get an ISBN and a barcode to put on the back of the book.
The ISBN Agency will help you get the barcode for your ISBN as well, but I’ll come to that later on.
For these purposes, the cheapest service per copy will be a short run printer like www.printondemand-worldwide.com who will print you off as few as 50 copies. (£97.50 if the book is 100 pages) With any book printer you will need an ISBN number and barcode, and you need to lay out the cover and manuscript to their exacting guidlines. The cost benefit can quickly be out-weighed by the time cost of doing the work, but Print on Demand WW can help with that too through their fast-print.net self publishing service.
All printers that you are considering should never ask you to give up copyright to your material. Even customised products markets like cafepress.com, zazzle.com and spreadshirt.net (mainly clothing) should not have to do that, although some of them will insist on you confirming that you are the copyright holder of any materials that you provide.
Blurb.com will insist on retaining the copyright of the book layout, but the content you write remain yours to own.
There is some benefit to using pure printers because they are cheaper per copy of these books, but if you for instance want to simply provide a paper copy of your ebook, and you will only ever sell it online, you can get away without an ISBN by using lulu.com or blurb.com/uk. You would also be able to get your book out much faster with these two services - or cafepress or zazzle.
If you want to sell as many of your books as possible then lightningsource seems to have the biggest reach. I should say I know more about them than I do about Lulu. What I do know is that if you want to use your own ISBN numbers Lulu would only help you for $99.50 if you live in the US and territories. The rest of us would have to use their “published by Lulu” service.
I will provide a more in depth review of Lulu, Lightningsource, printondemand-worldwide and blurb.com later on in the book.
Next though, we need to look at how you make sure you make a profit from the paperback book.
