I was wondering if anyone had any experience with this?

Someone from one of my writers groups is putting together a book of memoirs - I may be involved with the proofreading - the group has put out anthologies in the past printed by the local university press.

Anyway - the university press has given a very good quote for the printing costs but the MS has to be ready (formatted) for them to work with - and the cover design.

I have no idea as to the technicalities involved - can anyone help?

Well that's a question and a half, sarah. The info below is adapted from some notes I made when hubby and I did it a couple of years ago. PS. I assume they are not insisting on Quark. If they are, she's stuffed.

Hubby did mine with MS Publisher for the internal text, and Adobe Photoshop for the cover art. The printer accepted it so long as it came out in a pdf file. If you don't have either of those, then try SerifPagePlus SE, which is free, online, and for a small £amount, v.9 comes with pdf output).
Also for the cover art the layers must be embedded before they go off to the printer.

Some things to consider:
In the cover art format: Spine width and overlap.
Also page centred text.
And outputting the internal pages as ‘sequential pages’, printed on A4, which will be ‘perfect bound’ (glued to the spine), with a Litho printed cover, and trimmed to size, rather than ‘pamphlet’, where two pages of text (four sides) are printed per A4 page and then the whole thing is stapled in the middle, and a basic, colour or b/w photocopied cover.


NaomiM

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Always print it off, text and cover, and make a mock up at home before sending the file off to the printers. It is very easy to get the page centering out of synch. and the pages in the wrong order.

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Depending on what system the printer is using, you may find you'll have blank pages at the end, as the book sizes go up - I think - in multiples of: 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128....each A4 page is printed, front and back with 4 pages of text, and the book is put together from the centre outwards.
Or they may be using new technology where each page is printed in sequence then trimmed to size and glued at the spine.

Thanks Naomi - that is really, really helpful

Much appreciated!

Sarah

Hey Sarah,

You should also double check the resolution of your files. Images (ie your cover) should be hi-resolution, which is a minimum of 360 dpi. That's at the size you use the images - so if you have a tiny image that's 360 dpi and enlarge it, the dpi will be reduced and it will look lo-res when printed. Text has to be even higher resolution (it's something ridiculous like 1020 dpi min) but if you use do-it-yourself publishing software, it should give you automatic options to output to these when you create your PDFs. PDFs are definitely the preferred method of file format nowadays for pretty much all printers.

Oh - and remember the gutter. If you're having this perfect bound (ie like a standard paperback) then there will always be a 'hinge' at the spine edge of the front cover - usually 2-3mm, but it depends on the size of the book and the binding, as hardbacks have a bigger gutter - where the cover is glued onto the front page. So when you're planning your cover & page layout, take that into consideration as you won't be able to read anything printed in that area - and it can make text look off centre.

Hope that helps,
Caregan

Thanks Caregan - that is very helpful.

Sarah

Dear goodness, Sarah. I didn't understand a word of what was said above. I was thinking of using Lulu. Surely that isn't so technical, is it? If it is, I'm SUNK.
Oonah

I personally use Lulu. It's pretty good and they do all the cover artwork for you (although they can be picky on file size sometimes). Lulu are great, because you don't have to pay anything to put your book online, but you can buy an ISBN code to sell it on Amazon, or in book shops if you like. I used it for my first novel and it went all right.

I've just used Lulu to produce a limited edition (3 copies) book for my son's birthday. It's a story I've been writing for him and his sister. I put it on one side to work on my next Porfiry book and he's been nagging me to get on with it, so I secretly finished it and downloaded the files to lulu, including illustrations by his sister. The tricky part, I found, was doing the cover. You have to supply the cover images as jpg files, so you need some kind of programme that will produce those, or convert other graphic files to jpg. And the images have to be correctly proportioned. I managed to do it through Paintbox pro, though with a lot of swearing. I have since discovered that I got the title wrong on the cover! If I ever run off any more copies I will correct that.

Mainly though, as a non-tech person, I found Lulu incredibly easy to use. The books haven't arrived yet. Should be here next week, hopefully in time for his birthday, which is a week on Thursday.

Thank you both. I suppose my real concern is that I have nobody to promote to. But as a last resort of vanity I will probably use LuLu

I wouldn't say using lulu is vanity at all. It doesn't cost you anything to put a book up on there, though you have to pay to use additional promotion tools, but that's optional. Still, good luck with whatever you decide to do.

I didn't mean vanity as an insult - that's what self publishing is known as I think... Sorry if I got it wrong. I admire anyone who is corageous enough to get something out there. I don't really think I have what it takes is the truth.
Thank you for answwering the thread.

That's ok. I think I probably misread what you said. That was probably my bad.

I really appreciate every reply. I have a horror series, a story series and poetry to get out there but I'm just so scared of failing, I won't try - nonsensical girl! That's me

Hey, don't be afraid of failure. At the end of the day, Fail is just an acyromon for First Attempt In Learning. That's my useless fact for the day! Keep at it, it'll come through.