Kickstart Your Book: A Guide to Estimating, Designing, Printing and Shipping Your Crowdfunded Publishing Project

by Don Leeper

Overview

If you're an indie publisher, artist, or organization interested in publishing a book, crowdfunding is the way to go, unless you're already a traditional publisher with long-established industry resources. The list of advantages to crowdfunding is long and comprehensive, crowned by the fact that when you crowdfund, you do the marketing for your book before you print it. Mounting a crowdfunding campaign is a lot of work. But it's no more work than marketing after printing, with the added benefit that you have a much better idea of how many books to print.

While crowdfunding resolves a lot of the challenges in independent publishing, some remain. One is the need to bootstrap your knowledge of book printing sufficiently so that when you get the first copies of your book back from the printer, it is exactly what you expected and wanted. Traditional publishers have experienced staff navigating the myriad choices available in papers, printing technologies, and bindings. These folks are used to working with the requirements of book printers. While there is no need for you to learn all the ins and outs of book printing, you need to know at least the basics, and you'll want to know how to use printing techniques to make your book special.

That's the purpose of this book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781949793901
Publisher:	Tasora Books
Publication date:	06/15/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	150
File size:	35 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Don Leeper is founder of BookMobile, a provider of digital publishing services to independent publishers, university presses, literary publishers, associations and small to medium-sized trade publishers. Long involved in book design and production management, in 1996 Leeper started BookMobile's digital book printing service, providing SRDP, POD and galley printing. During the first ebook era in 2000, Leeper founded Pagewing, a venture-funded company whose mission was to help publishers bridge the gap between print and ebook workflows (RIP 2002). In 2005 he started Itasca Books, a book distribution and fulfillment service. In 2008 he restarted BookMobile's ebook services, which converts ebooks and distributes them to resellers. Leeper has spoken to many publishing, museum, author, literary and digital printing groups on the subject of the technological transformation of publishing.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Preface: Crowdfunding Is The Better Way to Publish Independently ix

Introduction: Crowdfunding vs. Traditional Book Publishing 1

The Challenges of Traditional Book Publishing 1

The Crowdfunding Alternative 1

Chapter 1 Creating A Budget 5

The Title P&L 5

The Title P&L, Modified for a Crowdfunded Project 6

Tackling the Book Trade in a Title P&L 10

Chapter 2 Designing Your Book 13

Choosing Which Type of Printer to Use 13

Option 1: Page Layout Programs 15

Option 2: Hiring a Pro 19

For Illustrated Books: Optimizing Image Quality for Printing 24

Chapter 3 Planning And Executing Your Campaign 33

TAKK: Explorations of Nordic Café Culture 34

Webb: The Big Race 36

Moss: Volume One 41

Selected Book Printing Embellishments 45

Chapter 4 Printing Your Book 55

Three Kinds of Book Printers 56

Printing Choices 63

Stages in Working With a Printer 75

Chapter 5 Fulfilling Your Backer Rewards And Post-Campaign Sales 89

Fulfilling Your Backer Rewards 89

Selling Through the Book Trade 90

Selling Direct to Consumers 93

Chapter 6 Creating And Distributing eBooks 97

eBook Economics 97

Two Kinds of eBooks 99

Ways to Create eBooks 100

Distributing eBooks 101

Conclusion 109

Appendices 111

Appendix A Calculators 113

Appendix B Printing and Publishing Services 123

Appendix C Crowdfunding Websites That Support Publishing Projects 125

Appendix D Binding Specifics 127

Appendix E Budget Worksheets 130

Appendix F Preparing Full-Color Images for Printing 135

Index 149