Into Print

Category: preparing text and images

  • Poetic power – poetry publishing parameters

    What is the role of poetry, what use is poetry, does anyone read poetry? There’s always a debate in the literary sections of newspapers and websites about poetry. It incites a conversation, splits the nation, causes contemplation. 

    At Into Print we debate the most appropriate book format, fonts, paper and images to present poets’ work in the best possible way when poetry publishing in print. It’s a similar challenge to working with fiction but with the extra parameters and strictures that poetry can impose on writer and page designer.

    There’s a lot of poetic activity: performance poetry, small presses creating minor publishing hits, poets collaborating with musicians, festivals celebrating past poets, theatre groups dramatising their lives. Mainstream media has no problems with poets like Tempest, Cooper-Clarke, Armitage and Zephaniah. Their work is on school reading lists, they make TV documentaries and their opinions are sought on topics of the day.

    Poetry publishing for all

    There’s also a huge output of poetry from contemporary authors on blogs and in print. Three poets to appear in print recently with the help of Into Print are Matthew Ansell, Steen Andersen and Barry Williams.

    Ansell recently released his book Uncovering Autism: A Book of Poetry to express to people what it is like to have the condition. Andersen is a Danish author who writes poetry in Danish and English. Dream Passages takes the reader to a dreamy, half-remembered, faded but familiar world. Irish author Williams rhymes about his personal relationship with work, sport, politics and people close to him in his A Book of Poetry.

    Reading the poems of these authors leaves no doubt that poetry has the power to enlighten and entertain. Entertained, one feels open to enlightenment and, once enlightened, inclined to try to make things better. Powerful stuff.

    At Into Print, we analyse a poetry manuscript to make suggestions about format, font size and leading – for example selecting a page width to accommodate all, or most, lines without breaking them, thus enhancing the reading experience.

  • Academic book – increase reach

    Academics write books to circulate their research and to popularise their subject of study. There are established academic publishing routes for the academic book but these do not rule out the parallel use of self-publishing channels. It’s possible to publish an academic book through an online publishing platform, even to publish as open source on a research website, AND to use print on demand to publish with a cover price and to earn sales income for the author or authors.

    Publishing an academic book as open access in PDF or EPUB format – to further the cause of learning or to fulfil a contract (e.g. for the receipt of a grant) – shouldn’t preclude a print edition with a cover price. Authors should check that they are retaining rights to publish such editions and not handing over those rights to platforms that don’t have any reach in the book trade.

    Publish everywhere – translation, multiple edition

    Also, authors should hold on to translation rights so that they can respond positively to interest from publishers who are willing to go to the expense of translating their work for new regions. Or authors may collaborate with a translator (perhaps a fellow academic in another region) to publish their own work in another language.

    Publishing a print edition through the book trade widens the availability of an academic book to individuals, including students and teachers with no access to academic publishing networks. It also provides easy access to a hard copy for librarians, through their usual electronic searching and ordering services.

    Joint Efforts for Innovation: Working Together to Improve Foreign Language Teaching, reporting on research carried out at the Faculty of Education of the University Automoma de Barcelona, was published under an open access license. Into Print produced the print edition for general sale and the interactive PDF for upload to an appropriate open access platform.

    Reaching out

    Often ‘paid for’ may reach the parts that other book services can’t, including librarians and bookshop managers on campus. Sometimes a ‘free’ edition may not be accessible to a potential reader, either because there’s a platform of some kind hosting the edition which is itself inaccessible or because of geographical reach.

    Academic authors can call on a service such as Into Print to take care of the production – the correct resolution for illustrations and photography, the clear layout of tables, the correct presentation of footnotes, references, bibliographies, indexes and contents lists. The text can be in non Western languages and character sets, such as Arabic or Tamil. A good example is Marianne Bentzen’s Neuroaffektive Bilderbuch which has been published in a number of languages.

    This production workflow takes your book smoothly through to PDFs (of cover and internal pages) for you to approve for print and distribution. Distribution is to 17,000 libraries and book resellers. They will all receive an alert to the new book, its content and the intended audience.

    Knowledge production

    Some authors may not be academics themselves but possess knowledge in their professions that teachers and students would find educational. Into Print can point to some successful text books and provide guidance about writing books for a school or higher education audience.

    Into Print also creates interactive PDFs and EPUBs so the same document can be repurposed for open access electronic versions, which will contain live hyperlinks to external URLs and to internal bookmarks. So working with Into Print can result in free and paid for electronic editions, and print editions.

    The print edition becomes available for short print runs, for example to put in delegate bags at an academic conference, and to fulfil orders through the book trade.

    In a best possible scenario, the book finds its way on to a curriculum as a recommended student text and achieves a measure of financial success, as well as increasing the sum of knowledge in the world. Win-win.

  • How Print On Demand enables self publishing

    Print on demand (POD) enables authors to supply their book to the book trade, which is made up of booksellers, wholesalers, libraries and library suppliers. Print on demand has been designed so that authors can price books competitively for the customer (the reader) and offer the book trade an acceptable discount and a timely delivery service).

    POD is lean and just in time manufacturing which works for both author and bookseller. So the author can concentrate on the fun of creating content and invest any budget in book promotion. Authors don’t need to tie up resources in the heavy lifting. POD takes care of the manufacturing and the logistics.

    In other words, POD makes and ships a book when an order (demand) is received. Zero demand = 0 book. Demand for 1 book = 1 book, demand for 2 books = 2 books etc. The press prints from a library of PDF artwork, which Into Print prepares in industry-standard typesetting software.

    The POD press references the PDF artwork to print the sheets, cut them to size and bind the sheets into a cover board to make a book. The factory line packages the book(s) and sends them out to the purchaser – usually a book seller.
    

    Print on demand widens availability

    The print on demand ecosystem goes much further than just printing. It includes electronic ordering from book wholesalers and retailers. When a bookseller gets a customer order, it sends an electronic message to the POD factory. The message contains the unique ISBN associated with the PDF artwork for that book title. The order triggers the printing and binding of that book, its packing and shipping to the bookseller’s address.

    When you work with Into Print, we hold your hand and show you how it works; so you can decide how to use it most effectively for your book project. Fill in our form to request a free quotation.

    Photo of author Kevin Marsh signing copies of his thriller The Witness. Kevin took pre-orders and assessed the number of books required for the launch and placed a print on demand order with Into Print specifically for the event.
    Author Kevin Marsh signing copies of his thriller The Witness. Using print on demand, authors can order just the right number of copies for pre-sales and launch events.

    Print on demand is economic and green

    POD means:

    • no risk selling for authors.
    • you don’t have to commit to buying stock in order to drum up business.
    • instead we create a package of materials for booksellers to help them convince readers to buy your book, and only after a reader has bought your book, do we print it, on demand.
    • worldwide exposure and availability.
    • booksellers everywhere get data about your book.
    • no need to ship long distances.
    • instead we print and ship from our nearest factory e.g. Australia for Australia, New Zealand and Australasia, USA for North America, UK for UK and some parts of Europe. Partner factories in Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, Russia, South Korea, India and China, make delivery even more local.

    Print on demand also facilitates other author activities:
    

    • low cost fulfilment of legal deposit copies.
    • organise a launch event and ask Into Print to ship a box of books into the event venue on the day before.
    • take delivery of a small quantity and send out to reviewers with a signed copy and personal letter.
    • sell some books to a specialist bookseller and invoice on your agreed terms; Into Print ships the copies directly into the bookseller.