Self Publishing

[robertdfeinman]

I decided to create a paper copy of my web site essays recently and started to consider the best way to do this. My first idea was to just print out the web pages. Then I thought about opening them in Open Office making a few formatting changes and then saving as a PDF. Then I would print the PDF's.

Both these ideas would end up creating about 300 pages on an inkjet, and if I wanted to do two side printing a lot of fiddling with the paper.

I'd gotten a self published book as a gift and it was very professional looking so I then decided to explore this option. The site used was lulu.com. The prices are low and there are no infringements on one's copyright.

So, I've spent the last couple of days creating a single file with all the essays included. I still needed to do some minor editing (mostly changing margins), but the process was fairly routine. I won't say the same thing for the Open Office interface, however. Why one should alter the top paragraph style on a page to change the page number in the footer remains a puzzle.

I'm just about finished and uploaded a trial PDF file to lulu to see how the process works. Everything is straightforward. A 300 page hard cover, 8x11" book costs about $10. I think this is less than the paper and ink option for printing myself. In addition there are no minimum order requirements.

Coincidentally there is an article in today's NY Times on this topic where they seem to favor blurb.com. I looked at this service when it started up and it had unacceptable claims on submitted material. I don't know if this is still true, but I'm not giving a printing service the right to reuse my content in any way they see fit.

Anyway my point is that those needing some nice looking printed material should examine these services. Everything from flyers to coffee table books is available. You can even sell copies on the site and set the retail price if you want to make a profit.

I should add that prices for color books are much higher than B&W, but a nice photo gallery would still be under $50.

 

[Sparrow]

I’m doing a project using Blurb at the moment, I didn’t see anything in the copyright that was unacceptable, but I’ll check again now you’ve mentioned it, which bit are you referring to?

 

[robertdfeinman]

From Blurb site

From Blurb site

From policies and legal page on blurb site:

A. License to print your Books. You hereby grant to Blurb a non-exclusive, worldwide, fully-paid and royalty-free license (a “License”) to reproduce and distribute your Book Content for the purpose of printing the Books that you order or that you authorize for purchase by others, and for any other related purpose that you authorize (including the use by other Members as a contribution to their Books).

B. License to use your Book Content for optional Blurb features. In the event that Blurb offers any optional feature, such as allowing others to see an electronic preview of your Book(s), and you decide to use such option feature, you hereby grant to Blurb a License to reproduce, distribute and publicly display any Book Content that you designate as required for Blurb to provide such optional feature.

C. License to use Other Content. You hereby grant to Blurb an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty free license (with right to sublicense) to create derivative works, reproduce, distribute and publicly display the Other Content that you post on our website in any and all media (now known or later developed) throughout the world.

Notice the parts of emboldened, especially. Blurb's model seems to be to make money by marketing material uploaded to their site, while others just act more like traditional printers and distributors.

Blurb also doesn't permit revisions, while lulu does.