![]() Do- It- Yourself Book Press – No Media Kings. By Hamish Mac. Donald. UPDATE: Hamish has started a DIY Book podcast! Get the latest news and analysis in the stock market today, including national and world stock market news, business news, financial news and more. You can borrow all kinds of media at your local public library, from audiobooks, to albums, to films on physical discs. But some libraries, like the Los Angeles. If you’ve been using your computer to manage the apps for your iOS device, that time has come to an end. The latest update to Apple’s iTunes removes its access to. Find listings of daytime and primetime ABC TV shows, movies and specials. Get links to your favorite show pages. Back in 2. 00. 0, I wrote an article for this website about how to produce your own book. Things have changed considerably since then, both in the technology available to individuals and in the services available in the marketplace. It’s all good news for us independent publishers. The original article was called “DIY Book Production.” Aside from being a clunky term, you now have more power than that: You can be your own press. I now produce my own books at home from start to finish, and in this article will explain what I’ve had to learn and acquire in order to do that. Generally, self- publishing involves an inverse relationship of work to money: The more work you’re willing to do, the more money you can save; the more you want to just skip to an end product, the more it’ll cost you. Self- pub: Four times more options than in 2. When I self- published my first novel, double. Zero, in 1. 99. 9, I wanted to create a book to sell in stores. A big folded- over photocopy sandwich didn’t appeal to me, but I really didn’t know how else one could make a book, so I laid out the pages and the cover, then paid Coach House Press to do the production work. There may have been other ways to do it, but having written a book about Y2. K, I didn’t have the time to find out. Now, though, there are four main options available: Offset printing. Print- on- Demand. Hand- bound hardcovers. Perfect binding. Here’s a summary of each (with special emphasis on the ones I like!): Offset printing. Offset printing is a high- volume printing method that uses large machinery to transfer text and images from metal plates to rubber pads then finally to paper. Coach House Press is a sterling example of a traditional press who care about their work. Their price was also the best I found — cheaper by $1,5. Cynthia pipes in: I second that recommendation wholeheartedly. The moment I walked into Coach House to discuss the printing of Some Words Spoken, my nervousness dissolved. They are crafty elves who understand the feeling and flavour of books. One of the largest parts of the printing cost is the set up of the colour press. Once it’s up and running, leaving it to print 1,0. We printed extra covers and stashed them, so when our books sell out (!) and we need another 5. We’ll only have to pay for the black and white guts of the book, and the binding. The colour of the cover might shift when it goes to press. Your pretty proof from the designer might not match the final product. Make sure you get a proof from the printer and make any colour adjustments at that point. Once they’ve burned printing plates, it’s too late for you to be fussy. Pro: You get a lot of books. A large run of books is not much more expensive than a short run. Con: You get a lot of books. Expensive. In 1. 99. I paid $3,0. 00 for a run of 5. Because of the mechanical set- up costs, a short run of books is practically as expensive as a long run. You probably don’t want thousands of books. Even 5. 00 is an awful lot to move. It’s a one- shot deal. What you need: Print- on- Demand. Newer digital printers don’t need to be mechanically adjusted to switch between jobs, so Po. D publishers can print copies of work as needed. I’m fussy about how my work looks, and the one Po. D service I looked into seriously (the reputable Cafe. Press) involves turning your pages into funny- sized PDF files and uploading them to the invisible maw of a webpage. I’m generally comfortable with Internet anything — online banking, making purchases, auctions — but I’m used to revising and reviewing and revising and reviewing until I like what I’ve created; I didn’t feel confident about what I might get from this method and took it no further. So my discussion of Print- on- Demand ends here. Pro: Less expensive than traditional printing. No stockpile of unsold books. Con: Bookstores won’t carry them. Each has to be ordered at a retail price, which stores won’t pay. Stores also can’t return them if they don’t sell, which is the practice they’re accustomed to. The price per book to you, the author/publisher, is often close to the retail price. The cover templates they offer are often yeechy. Some Po. D shops promise and charge for marketing and promotion they have no intention of delivering (listing you in a vast catalogue, for instance, does not count as promotion). The way these businesses pitch themselves plays on the emotions of frustrated yet ambitious authors. What you need: Ultimately I’m happy I didn’t go this route, because instead of tying my work into a company’s Po. D service I learned the following two methods, which have been a fun breakthrough in my career. Hand- bound hardcovers. It’s easier than you might think to create a hardcover book of your work. There are endless fun ways to adapt the handmade book process, too: For Christmas 2. I made all my own presents — journals, photo albums, even a pop- up stage with a wee cartoon actress for a friend of mine who’s in the theatre. These were a real hit. Don’t ask me what I’m doing next year to top it!)Pro: Complete autonomy: You can do it all yourself and retain complete control. Easy start- up. Can be done with common materials. Produces a result that’s personally satisfying and has a quality feel to it (a hardcover book!). Easily adaptable to a wide variety of creative projects. Hand- made work occupies a premium space in people’s minds if it’s done well. Con: A time- consuming process. Stitching can be tricky at first. Longer books involve some unwieldy sewing. Difficult to put your title and name on the cover (block printing, silkscreen, and Japanese Gocco printmaking kits are some options, but I haven’t tried them). There are good explanations of the process here: DIY Planner – Bookbinding. Toby Craig’s book assembling photojournal. To be honest, though, it took me a while to get the hang of “saddle- stitching” pages together. I found it hard to follow even the best of diagrams. I finally got it when I read Peter and Donna Thomas’s excellent Making Books by Hand. Now that I have the hang of it, it’s actually fun, almost therapeutic, to sit and stitch a book together. Producing a novel this way, though, is not so much fun. Where my wee book of short stories or a journal contains ten or twelve “signatures” — sewn- together groups of pages — my third novel makes up twenty- six signatures. That’s a very, very long thread, and a lot of bits of folded- up paper to keep organized while sewing them together. Here’s how to do it yourself: For these next two sections, I’m going to divide the materials section into two options: “Minimum” and “Press”. The minimum requirements will allow you to get started and learn without much initial investment, if any (depending on how much craftsy material you’ve got lying around the house). The “Press” materials are in case you decide, as I did, that you wanted to produce store- quality books at home, without having to go out and pay for commercial print shop services anymore. What you need: Minimum. Press. A completed, typeset manuscript printed out. A finished cover design. A sharp blade and ruler. A rotary- blade guillotine. Your pages will be much more even using one of these. Hard paper board for the covers. I was using matting board like you’d get from a framing shop until I found large grey boards in an art shop that cost a fraction of the price. Bookbinding board is available, but the board will never be seen, so it doesn’t need to be fancy. I’ve tried corrugated cardboard, but it’s too puffy; it doesn’t feel like a proper hardcover. An awl for punching small holes in your pages. Or you can also sink a needle into a piece of dowelling. I use a model- maker’s drill, which is like a watch screwdriver with a 1mm drill bit, and drill through all the pages before folding them. You can also get eggbeater- like hand- drills that will accept a small bit, but I found this harder to control and snapped several bits. Heavy thread. You can run it across beeswax to make it easier to work with and less likely to tangle. Paper. Regular copy paper will do, or you can use an ivory stock for an antiquey look. Heavy paper or paper- backed cloth for wrapping around your cover. Ordinary cloth can work but lets the glue leak through, which looks spermy. PVA Glue. I thought this must be something special when I bought it from a paperie, then discovered is the same old stuff that we peeled off our hands as kids.
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