Into Print

Tag: print on demand

  • Library connections


    Make libraries your allies when self publishing

    Libraries are places where people meet books and their authors. They are often where young people first develop a liking for particular books, and perhaps particular authors. There are many different types of library and the most important for authors who are publishing their own work are: public libraries (for books with general appeal e.g. fiction, children’s illustrated), academic libraries (for books aimed at students or teachers) and legal deposit libraries (who have a right to a free copy of all books published in the UK).

    Meet your public in public libraries

    More interesting is how you can make libraries your allies when promoting your book. They are directly in touch with the reading public and the professionals and volunteers who work in them are book-loving and book-promoting and on your side. Authors are exotic attractions. Not everyone has written a story, let alone a book. Libraries want to attract families out for a weekend visit by putting on events and other attractions (hot drinks and home-made cakes often feature). 

    So look out for libraries that are holding story-telling events and inviting local authors to take part. You can use the occasion to promote your book and the library will often provide a table for you to sell your books during the event. At Into Print we ship authors’ books into the libraries or direct to the author to provide stock for sale to the public.

    Libraries are also great spaces for book launches. If you collaborate with your library, it may help with event organisation and invite a local audience – a book club or school depending on your book genre – to add to your own efforts at launch promotion.

    Photo of Angela Taylor sitting at author table in a library setting. Angela is signing a copy of her book
    Angela Taylor at a library launch of Izzy’s Quest for Gold.

    Reach teachers and students

    Academic libraries are the allies of authors who have written a student text book or a scholarly work. The academic librarian’s job is to obtain the books that their clients (students and teachers) need to do their work effectively. At Into Print we do our best to assist the librarian by providing as much information about your book as possible. We’ll encourage and help you, as author, to write short and long summaries, and a list of helpful keywords. Timing can also be important so it’s good to use the calendar so that information about your book is in front of the right people at the right time. You may wish to send copies to your contact list in advance of publication so that, on publication, you’ve got academic recommendations and reviews lined up to bolster the credentials of your work.
    

    Knowledge bank

    At Into Print we publish in the UK under the Paragon Publishing imprint and so we send a copy of your book to the British Library, and to the other legal deposit libraries on request. We do this on your behalf and at only the cost of doing so i.e. the print cost and the carriage cost. It’s a small amount in the debit column of being in the business of publishing and you get the satisfaction of having your book on public record.

    Connect with librarians

    So be nice to librarians. They can easily order your book – their databases are supplied with full searchable details. Also, the librarians’ trusted library suppliers are connected to Into Print’s print on demand service. In institutions of learning and in large businesses, librarians source digital versions of your book (also on their databases) and account for any in-house copying of printed works. This copying is enabled by large-scale licensing agreements with collecting agencies. Into Print will connect you to these agencies so that you will benefit from any such use of your work.

  • 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.