Message-ID: <BC95E0F6747C4AE49A4D89529A1D9399@JensenPC> From: "Don Jensen" <dnjkenosha@wi.rr.com> Subject: Re: Self Publishing Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 10:29:45 -0600
There are any number of ways for an organization to go when it decides
to publish a book on local history.
Some perfectly good suggestions have appeared here already.
But it is clear to me that there is a good bit of confusion too. First
the term self-publishing has been used
rather loosely and that obscures the basic facts of what is involved.
I’ve done books in several different
ways – from actually getting a regular publisher to accept my
manuscript (the publishing house taking all the risks, doing all the
production,
creating a book from my manuscript, selling it and paying me royalties)
to doing it completely on my own, from original
research and writing to selling the finished books.
Usually a local society’s history is not something a regular
publisher will accept. He needs to sell, at a minimum, at least several
thousands books to warrant his risk. Selling several thousand copies is
not too likely for a local history book, unless
you are planning to take 10 years to recoup your costs, which
doesn’t work for a regular publishing house.
So that gets us to self publishing. But let’s break that down
to the three
basic components: Manuscript, Book Production and Printing/Binding.
There is a fourth, Selling, which I will
mostly ignore here, since most organizations have an idea of how they
will sell their books.
MANUSCRIPT: Pretty straightforward. Everyone understands this. Decide
you want to create a book. Decide how
to tell your story (one chapterless short book, told chronologically, or
a longer book broken into topic chapters, or
however you choose to arrange your story.) Then do your research,
gather your illustrations, write the text
according to your plan. Again, I think everyone more or less
understands this process.
PRINTING/BINDING: Let me go to the last step in the process, for again,
this is mostly understood already.
It involves taking electronic images of each page, imprinting them on
paper, then collecting and fastening the the pages together,
maybe saddle stitch stapling for booklets or “perfect”
binding or coil binding or whatever. Any local printing house
or even Kinkos and Staples can do this, in small quantities or large, at
a fairly reasonable cost.
Unfortunately, too many people don’t realize the middle step is
the key, both to saving costs and having a good looking, saleable
book. When you hire a self-publishing house, this is what they do and
what costs the most.
BOOK PRODUCTION: This, basically, is taking a raw manuscript and
getting it ready to go on the press.
It involves designing the book that will result. It covers everything:
choosing a readable, pleasant type face and size, line
length and spacing between lines,. .figuring out chapter titles or
section “breaks,” the relationship between text and head
sizes. . .
how the text will be laid out on each page, how much copy will be on
each page and how the text will break on each page so as
to avoid “widows” (ends of sentences, only two or three
words a the beginning of the next page). . .how many pages there will be
(it’s important), how and where to handle illustrations (in a
cluster in the middle of the book, or after or before or within each
chapter, or
where they fit best within the texts, or imbedded in smaller size within
the text, or combinations of these. It would involve designing
and creating covers, title pages, forewords, tables of contents and an
index (an index is essential in a history book). And that’s
only a partial list.
Ignoring these steps will result in an amateurish book that readers will
be hesitant to buy. A good book has both good content
and an attractive and interesting presentation. A good book can easily
sell for $19.95 or $24.95. A bad looking book may be
hard to sell at $4.95!
Anyone who has done computer desktop publishing will recognize most of
the Book Production steps. With some luck, you may well
have a local volunteer who has done a fair amount of desktop publishing
before and who can take on this rather laborious but critical task
of Book Production, taking the process to the final press-ready step.
If you don’t, then you probably should spend the money and have
one
of the professional self-publishing companies do the BOOK PRODUCTION for
you.
But at least be aware that the book production step is there and,
probably, is at least as important as actually writing the text and
gathering
the illustrations!
don jensen
Kenosha History Center, BoD
From: sara m steele
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2011 1:22 PM
To: localhistory@listserve.uwec.edu
Subject: Re: Self Publishing
CGAHS does short specific topic publications of 50 to 60 pages loaded
with photos. We use CoakleyTech at Madison and have had a very good
experience. We are able to send this short a manuscript PDF as an email
attachment.
sara
On 2/13/2011 4:36 PM, Sara Nuernberger wrote:
I am interesting in hearing from anyone who has self-published a book
for their historical society. We are currently putting together our
final draft for a book on the history of the one room schools in Taylor
County that we are interested in self publishing.
Has your organization done this?
Did you use Lulu or another of the online publishers?
Where you happy with the quality of the book?
Was it easy to use their service?
Was it more cost effective to self publish so you could order a
smaller quantity of books?
Thanks you.
Sara Nuernberger
Board Member
Taylor County Historical Society, Medford