Post by Steve on Jul 25, 2022 23:45:21 GMT 12
Ok, the rubber is starting to meet the road - its not finished, but I have to start making some decisions around the size, and the binding. These decisions are important because it affects the price, but also the quality and feel.
A4 is cheapest, because you can get 4 pages per sheet in a digital print (which works on an A3 master sheet), but its a horrible size for a full-colour coffee-table style book (in my not-so-humble opinion). Digital printing is where I am at because that works for short-run. If I get about 1000 or so copies run off I can go with whatever size - but I have no intention of doing that, since I don't want 950 unsold copies of my book stacked in a room for my daughter to have to dispose of one day
I'm favouring an A4(ish) height, but 230-240mm wide instead of 210mm (A4) wide - this is more in line with the standard coffee-table book size - but more costly since you can only get two pages per A3 sheet. It looks better though because you can get a nicer layout and pages look less crammed. Given I will be using larger, full colour, images throughout, this is my preferred size.
One quote I got today would mean the hard-cover (case bound) book would have to sell for about $99, a soft-cover (perfect bound) book around $69. I suspect this was not a cheap place and am waiting for more prices to come in, but I was still horrified. Those sell prices leave a little fat for me, perhaps enough to take Nicki out for the odd cafe meal which is the least I can do given the years of work that have gone into this and the weeks, weekends, and nights I have spent in front of a keyboard or away across the country taking photos and researching instead of on the couch with her... but if those prices immediately kill half the potential book buyers then its all a bit pointless.
Case-binding is the stitched style that hard-cover books get - it means its easier to get the book to lay flat(ish). But its considerably more labour-intensive and so costly.
Perfect binding is the soft-cover glued binding like paperbacks get. It looks nice, but its gawd-awful to open out and will never stay open of its own accord unless you physically break the binding - which leads to pages falling out.
The prices I'm requesting are based on 250 pages which I think will be about right when I'm done. It might be less, maybe 200 - hopefully not more than 300. I'm not sure what it'll be until it is all laid out, and I can't lay it all out until I know the page size. There are lots of photos, and the text is of a slightly larger than normal font size to aid older eyes.
I'm going to prepare some sample pages over the next few days and post them here for people to take a look at - my intended size is the layout I showed a teaser of recently, and I'll mock up something similar in A4 as well.
If you have any experience in publishing and have thoughts I'd love to hear 'em, otherwise I have some questions:
------------
1. What size would you prefer?
2. What binding would you prefer?
3. What price wouldn't you pay? ie: is $99 too much?
4. Would you prefer a hard-cover, case-bound book or a soft-cover perfect bound?
5. If you want to reserve a copy, send me an email at nzvintageradios@gmail.com with the title "Radio Corp Book Reservation" and I'll let you know when things are close. I may set up something more formal for reservations over the coming weeks, but an email for now will let me know.
6. Are there other questions I should be asking?
Cheers, Steve
A4 is cheapest, because you can get 4 pages per sheet in a digital print (which works on an A3 master sheet), but its a horrible size for a full-colour coffee-table style book (in my not-so-humble opinion). Digital printing is where I am at because that works for short-run. If I get about 1000 or so copies run off I can go with whatever size - but I have no intention of doing that, since I don't want 950 unsold copies of my book stacked in a room for my daughter to have to dispose of one day
I'm favouring an A4(ish) height, but 230-240mm wide instead of 210mm (A4) wide - this is more in line with the standard coffee-table book size - but more costly since you can only get two pages per A3 sheet. It looks better though because you can get a nicer layout and pages look less crammed. Given I will be using larger, full colour, images throughout, this is my preferred size.
One quote I got today would mean the hard-cover (case bound) book would have to sell for about $99, a soft-cover (perfect bound) book around $69. I suspect this was not a cheap place and am waiting for more prices to come in, but I was still horrified. Those sell prices leave a little fat for me, perhaps enough to take Nicki out for the odd cafe meal which is the least I can do given the years of work that have gone into this and the weeks, weekends, and nights I have spent in front of a keyboard or away across the country taking photos and researching instead of on the couch with her... but if those prices immediately kill half the potential book buyers then its all a bit pointless.
Case-binding is the stitched style that hard-cover books get - it means its easier to get the book to lay flat(ish). But its considerably more labour-intensive and so costly.
Perfect binding is the soft-cover glued binding like paperbacks get. It looks nice, but its gawd-awful to open out and will never stay open of its own accord unless you physically break the binding - which leads to pages falling out.
The prices I'm requesting are based on 250 pages which I think will be about right when I'm done. It might be less, maybe 200 - hopefully not more than 300. I'm not sure what it'll be until it is all laid out, and I can't lay it all out until I know the page size. There are lots of photos, and the text is of a slightly larger than normal font size to aid older eyes.
I'm going to prepare some sample pages over the next few days and post them here for people to take a look at - my intended size is the layout I showed a teaser of recently, and I'll mock up something similar in A4 as well.
If you have any experience in publishing and have thoughts I'd love to hear 'em, otherwise I have some questions:
------------
1. What size would you prefer?
2. What binding would you prefer?
3. What price wouldn't you pay? ie: is $99 too much?
4. Would you prefer a hard-cover, case-bound book or a soft-cover perfect bound?
5. If you want to reserve a copy, send me an email at nzvintageradios@gmail.com with the title "Radio Corp Book Reservation" and I'll let you know when things are close. I may set up something more formal for reservations over the coming weeks, but an email for now will let me know.
6. Are there other questions I should be asking?
Cheers, Steve
