Book Publishing

[DickOLeary]

I'm interested in publishing a photo "coffee table" book that would be sold through a local retail store. I made a prototype that I published thru Apple ifoto but I have to find a more reasonable (price) means of publishing. I'm planning a first run of 25 and increasing if sales justify. Does anyone have experience in this area. Any suggestions appreciated.

[robert_baker]

www.mypublisher.com has worked really well for me...ocassionally they have great specials....For a client, I ended up doing 100 books cuz the coupon was 50% off. I actually made a little money on that project.

[DonLashier]

I researched this recently and came to the conclusion that you can't really make any money with POD, particularly if not selling direct, but still POD might be useful to determine market potential.

Here's the list of links I compiled - all are POD except MR's article and 100 Books.
http://www.lashier.com/home.cfm?dir_cat=69813

Some of the PODs do have quantity discounts, but usually fairly small. If you're willing to bet that you can sell 1000 copies, the 100 Books method brings the cost to 1/3 or less of POD.

- DL

[ShaunOBoyle]

I've been printing my books at sharedink.com, nice quality hard cover binding, and the print quality is good, better than anything I had done at shutterfly or mypublisher. They use the HP indigo 4 color offset press, so precise color matching and calibration isnt possible, but I have had 20-30 books printed by them and have been quite pleased with the quality. The problem is that if you want to sell the book you will need to charge in the order of at least $100+ to make it worth your time and effort. My guess is that these printing services will become more cost effective over time, but currently the only way to make books that are cost effective enough to expect to sell many is to print a run of several thousand at one go, refer to the michael reichmann article linked at Don Lashiers page.