Publishing hard copies of things

pulelehua

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Another "please can I have your advice" thread.

Jumpin' Jim is looking at maybe marketing my Ukulele Etudes (!!!!!!), but I think he's going to want an actual book with an actual CD. At least that was the implication from his reply.

Does anybody have a good source on doing that professionally and cheaply?

(Obviously I'm ridiculously excited about this, and would like to do it really properly if it goes through. If you're the finger-crossing type, and would like to send some positive thoughts my way, I would very much appreciate it.)

:D:D:D

Thanks in advance. As usual. This has been an odd process. I've sent out SO many e-mails trying to stir up interest, and have only received about 3 replies. But one was from Jumpin' Jim, and one was from Taimane Gardner (who likes the etudes :) ), so I guess I can't complain TOO much.

John
 
You might try a copy center, especially one inside a big office supply store like Staples-they might copy and bind the pages for you. Make sure you see samples of the binding, the paper, and the card stock they will use for the cover. And you'll need a cover design! They might also duplicate CD/DVDs.

FedEx Office also provides online binding and publishing services, but I can't tell whether they are available in the UK.

Best of luck with your venture!
 
I'd have to disagree on the copy-center idea for one reason in particular. Most of those copy-centers use color laser printers. The toner eventually falls off the page, but, the color output fades very quickly, even when most of the ink is retained. Genuine four-color print process is better for a book. It costs more, but moist fingers won't do nearly as much damage and having Pantones CMYK color-matching means that anything you use in the way of color illustrations and photographs will be predictably good.

Keep in mind that I have many years of both photographic and publishing experience. I have also bound books and calendars (spiral and glue).
 
Jim has replied that he'll only market a physical product. Which is fair enough. But he did say he'd be interested in looking. Apparently, the John King Classical book is doing really well lately, and mine would add to that corner of the market.

Well, I'm looking at full-colour cover and back. It's fine if the inside pages are greyscale. There are only 30 pages inside, 27 of which are scores. I have one colour image which I don't mind being greyscale (it's a small picture of my custom MP). I looked at Lulu.com, and it would be $6.30 per copy. I'll also need to provide Jim with a CD, so there will be production costs there, which I haven't looked into. I assume gluing a little CD holder into the back is pretty straight forward.

Annoyingly, the PDF version wasn't designed for hard publishing, so the pages don't work out exactly right. I need to add a title page, and I think a blank at the back. Need to look at that, but it probably means nothing produced until I get back to England at the end of the month.

AND, I have no idea how much Jim will expect to make, or how much I should expect to make, but those are lines crossed once I have a physical product, methinks.

Thanks for your replies!


John
 
You might take a look at Serif Software (UK-based). I use their "PagePlus X4" for layout and design of Ukulele Player Magazine. I also use MoviePlus X5 for a lot of our video content. They have some great info on layout of books and preparation for color separations and the software works with Adobe RGB and CMYK.
 
You might take a look at Serif Software (UK-based). I use their "PagePlus X4" for layout and design of Ukulele Player Magazine. I also use MoviePlus X5 for a lot of our video content. They have some great info on layout of books and preparation for color separations and the software works with Adobe RGB and CMYK.

I'm ok on the layout and design. I've been selling the etudes already as a PDF. It was all designed in Adobe InDesign.

It's just the actual physical production and binding which is new to me, as I had designed it all to be used in electronic form and/or to be printed at home (I assumed most people wouldn't be binding it at home ;) )
 
As far as binding goes, it's pretty easy to do - assuming you want the comb binding, I did it for a few years selling copies of my fictional books before they were picked up by a publisher and they looked okay for what they were, Other kinds of binding, well, I have no clue on that respect.

Jim Belloff used comb binding for The Daily Ukulele so it's a possibility! Good Luck!
 
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