4 replies to this topic

[dsl]

I'm sort of toying with idea of printing some maps for completely personal use, most likely in an atlas/book form. Does anyone have any experience with publishing on demand services or recommend an alternative route for that type of publishing?

Also, anyone have any templates they use for book/atlas formatting that they would be willing to share?

Thank you!

David

[Michael Karpovage]

David,

I do have publishing experience in using a print on demand online firm for my new mystery thriller novel Crown of Serpents. I did alot of research before choosing the right outfit. I use Lightning Source at http://www.lightningsource.com/ I highly recommend them.
I do not have to stock any books, that is the beauty of it. When a customer orders my novel off of Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com that order goes directly to Lightning Source for printing of the book. And LS then ships directly back to the consumer. Some notes I took---
Distribution:
1. If you offer your book to booksellers through them the standard wholesale discount is 55%. This leaves you with 45% of the list price less the cost to print as your selling margin.
2. Lightning Source is a printing source which has several distribution partners (selling wholesalers who use LSI for a printing source), such as Barnes & Noble, Ingram, Amazon and others who participate and order from their catalog to fulfill orders. You can also have copies of your book printed and shipped directly to you for self-distribution and selling.
3. LSI will not sell the books for you or promote them other than by their catalog. You must drive all sales to your own site, which includes assuming the cost of advertising, and all costs associated with the production of the book, including the ISBN, barcode, costs of set up and revisions.

David, for your case, to print something personal for yourself, LS also works fine too. Basically, YOU act as the publisher. YOu have to set yourself up as a company and have to supply the final designs for your materials in a special PDF format. You must foot all of the costs to produce the layout of the book, editing, cover art, interior page design, etc. You pay for the initial set up proof - something like $40-70 after sending your print-ready CMYK PDF. And they send you a printed entire bounded book proof in return for you to make any final corrections. Once you as the publisher approves of your content then you only pay the cost of actual printing of the book.

I just looked at the maximum sizes for large paperback or large hardback perfect bound books and it is 7 x 10. Pretty good size. My novel is a traditional paperback at the 6x9 size. If you wanted to give me a buzz I could tell you more information on how my book works and actual costs associated with my book.

As a design and marketing professional with over twenty years experience as an art director I handled all of my own cover art in Photoshop and then created the interior design pages using InDesign. It was incredibly smooth, but I knew what I was doing. If you don't then anticipate shelling out a couple hundred bucks for the interior design work and extra for the cover art when you hire a designer.

Again, I can't emphasize enough that you will be the publisher of your work, so if there is a typo or something out of whack, it won't be the printers fault, it will be on whatever art layout you provided in PDF format. That's why it's essential to proofread very carefully before giving the green light. But the beauty of on demand is if you catch a mistake or want to change something, then all you need to do is upload a new PDF, pay that minor cost for a proof, and bam! you are back on course with a new revised edition.

I know that Nick Springer (owner of CartoTalk) used Lulu.com to print his Annual Atlas. I spoke to him about that early on when I was doing my research. Lulu.com is also great but I remember their shipping costs were rather high and deterred me from going with them. I also liked how LS set me up with an Amazon.com and B&N.com online consumer account for free too since they are owned by the same company. I'm not what lulu does but ask Nick for further clarification.

Thanks,

[frax]

If I remember correctly - Nick has been looking into an alternative to lulu for the second annual, I am not sure what that was based on, and what he has found...

[pghardy]

I'm sort of toying with idea of printing some maps for completely personal use, most likely in an atlas/book form. Does anyone have any experience with publishing on demand services or recommend an alternative route for that type of publishing?
David

I've used Lulu (www.lulu.com) successfully for two projects:

• With my wife we edited the autobiography of a fascinating 92-year old engineer living locally. The results ended up as two paperback volumes and a CD - see http://www.pghardy.net/donald/. For this we got ISBNs and meet the stricter layout criteria for being able to be have the books orderable through Amazon.
• Closer to a map/atlas, is that I've used Lulu to get in print my own folk music tunebook. This is A4 size and ring-bound (so that it opens flat and stays on a music stand!). See http://www.pghardy.n...tina/tunebooks/.

I found Lulu relatively easy to use, and capable of good quality output, printed as needed in different places around the world. The main stumbling block was the need to use Adobe Acrobat for producing the PDF file to upload - it objected to ones from other PDF software.

So, I've not used it for maps, but I give a general recommendation for Lulu.

[dsl]

Thanks for all the information!

I haven't really started on anything, but thought I would look into it, so I could get a sense of the sizes that could be used.

Cheers,
David