Have the book perfect-bound on 60 pound offset paper. The text printing should be black. The cover should be in 2 color while the cover stock should be 10 point coated, one side only. Look for a printer that can print a book. Only a few of them can! Get at least three or four price quotes. The unit cost of each book will vary depending on the volume of copies you print. 5,000 books, for example, will have a much smaller per book cost than will printing of 500 books. The reason is due to the high cost of setting the machine to print. Once the press is running, you simply pay for the paper and materials. Don’t have 5,000 books printed, however, simply to save on your unit cost. If you don’t anticipate selling that many books, don’t order that many. Judge how many you think you can sell and then have that number printed. You can always do a second printing cheaper than the first since the set- up charges will not repeat unless you make changes to the book. What price do you set for the book? Much depends on the market and your own costs in printing the book. Go down to your local bookstore and see what the range of prices are on books of your size and style (soft cover). If the average price is $12.95, this will tell you what a competitive charge would be. Now, contrast that with the unit cost of your book which is the total printing, typesetting and graphic arts charges for your books divided by the number of copies. If your unit cost is, say, $3.50 per book, you’d like to ideally charge about three or four times the cost on the open market, which would be around $10.50 to $14.00, for which the $12.95 average price fits quite nicely. You must copyright your material and it is recommended that you also register your book and obtain an International Standard Book Number (ISBN). To do this, you must write to a couple of organizations. First up is the Copyrights Office. If you write to: Register of Copyrights Copyrights Office Library of Congress Washington, DC 20599 and ask for the copyright registration forms and the booklet entitled "Copyright Basics". This will give you explicit instructions on copyrighting your material. Copyright protection now lasts for your lifetime plus fifty years. While we’re on the subject of copyrighting, you can also obtain a Library of Con-gress catalog card and number for your book. Libraries around the country often use this number to identify books and order them. You can obtain information about this process by writing to: The Registrar, CIP Division Library of Congress Washington, DC 20540 International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) are another type of classification system for a book. Libraries, bookstores and wholesalers all use this number system for ordering books. As a self-publisher, you will be assigned a number prefix which is part of the ISBN. There-after, for future publications, you will assign your own ISBN based on the pre-assigned codes you’ll receive. To get more information about this, write to: ISBN Agency R.R. Bowker & Company 205 E. 42nd Street New York, NY 10017 Ask specifically for the "ISBN System User’s Manual" and the "ISBN Log Book" when contacting the ISBN Agency. All of this work, including copyrighting, ISBNs and Library of Congress cataloguing is crucial in establishing your book as a professional entry. You have a far better chance of having your work noticed if it is officially filed. Just because it’s a self-published work doesn’t mean it isn’t a good book and worthy of attention. This work en- hances your image and your potential as a serious writer. Publishing yourself can be a rewarding experience and launch a whole new career for you. If you like to write, book publishing can be a worthy goal.
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