Easy and cheap book printing

Since the subject is on books of late and a lot of jewelers are
small operations and very into “do it yourself” kind of things I
would like to mention a service I know of.

It is called Create Space and is a subsidiary of Amazon.com. They
offer “print on demand” services for books and make them available
on Amazon.com, your own website and possibly other places too
depending on the service selected. The cool thing is that it is set
up to be as simple as possible and it is VERY low cost relative to
traditional publishing methods.

I have not used the service myself but I have been considering it
for a while.

They charge no set up fees as long as you make your book available
for sale. They will give you and ISBN number for the books you
publish with them.

You submit the book as a formatted PDF (not too hard for somewhat
computer savvy people).

They print the books as there are orders for them so I do not think
that there is any cost to you the publisher unless you sign up for
the “Pro plan” which seems to cost $39 and gives you a higher
percentage cut of your book’s sale price.

Amazon then takes a cut of the sales price of your book (this is how
they make money it seems), they have a calculator that tells you how
much based on the sales channel, size of the book, number of pages,
whether it is color or not, etc.

A couple of simulations I ran:

An 8x5 inch 150 page B&W book (I think all covers are color) with a
retail price of $16.00 would leave the author with a royalty of
$8-$5 depending on the sales channel without the pro plan and with
the plan a royalty of $10-$7. The coolest part is there seems to be
no cost and you are not bound to them if you want to publish some
other way in the future. If you want to buy 10 of these books
yourself for your own use or to give to friends they will cost you
$4.50 each, or if you have the pro plan $2.65 each. These prices do
not seem to change a lot with quantity.

A full color book with bleed (pictures that go all the way to the
edge of a page) of 100 pages and a size of 8x10 inches with a retail
price of $35 (think pictoral history of your work or other things
which could increase sales of your jewelry!) you would get a cut of
$14.25-$7.25 per book depending on sales channel. With pro plan it
becomes $20-$13 as your cut and to buy the books yourself runs
$13.75 each OR $7.85 each with the pro plan.

More info can be found here
http://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/

I have no affiliation with Amazon or Create Space nor I have used
their service yet but it seems really cool and I am all for more
good books on metalworking and gems!

Regards,
John Dyer

John and others:

I have used the company that is now called CreateSpace for several
years and their work is very satisfactory most of the time. I also
have my book printed by another company called Lightning Source which
distributes through Amazon but also through Ingram Books which is one
of the largest book wholesalers. My net on each sale is even better
than the prices you reported for CreateSpace.

I would also urge you to purchase a block of ten ISBN numbers so that
you become the Publisher of record in Books In Print. If you get
the number from CreateSpace they will be listed as the Publisher
although you will still own the copyright to the book. The process
of publishing your own book is relatively easy but there are some
traps that you should avoid.

I would suggest strongly that you order the book “Aiming at Amazon
by Aaron Shepard, which will go through the whole self publishing
process. There are several other books that are important resources
if you want to get into the self publishing business. Feel free to
contact me offline if you have any questions where I might be able to
help.

Hope this helps,
Fred Sias
www.woodsmerepress.com

I would also urge you to purchase a block of ten ISBN numbers so
that you become the Publisher of record in *Books In Print*. If you
get the number from CreateSpace they will be listed as the
Publisher although you will still own the copyright to the book.
The process of publishing your own book is relatively easy but
there are some traps that you should avoid. 

I am a fan of lulu. My understanding of amazon (createspace is owned
by amazon) isbn’s is that they are not ‘real’ ones, that amazon made
a deal to have large blocks of isbn’s to issue, but that they can
lapse, and thus be re-issued to people publishing books, so it is
not in fact a unique and forever number, which sort of undercuts the
meaning of the isbn number. At least that is what I understand.

best
Charles

Thanks for posting about this, John. The logistics and all other
aspects, extraneous to the writing itself (not that I’ve actually
gotten around to that either), of doing a book or books has always
felt like a large, cumbersome monkey on my back, distracting and
discouraging me from taking the idea very far. Of course, doing the
work, living the life, percolating and evolving to the point where
the brew is mature and ready for serving is an ongoing process, so
there hasn’t been any urgent need to publish yet, but it’s nice to
know there is a do-it-yourself option waiting. Further up and
further in…

Dar

Hello all,

Sorry for not getting back on any previous posts about this subject.
I mentioned what I feel to be a cool service and then got so crazy
busy I haven’t been reading my Orchid digests so I don’t know when my
post appeared or what was said about it.

So, sorry if I missed anyone or anything! It will probably be a bit
crazy for me until after the Las Vegas show so if any comments are
intended for me please email me directly.

Thanks and happy smithing!
John Dyer