CreateSpace, Lulu, LighteningSource...preferences?

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AnnaPappenheim

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Note that neither CreateSpace nor Lightning Source provides software which typesets your books for you. You really do have to do this yourself or better yet, pay someone experienced to do it for you. I've seen SO many self published books ruined by poor or missing typesetting, and it makes such a difference to the final quality of the book.

If you ever buy physical books then chances are you have seen books from Lightning Source (not "Lightening"). Most of the big publishers use them, and many smaller ones too. Not all for POD, as they do offset too.

CreateSpace books are ok, but they do have their issues. I am pretty sure that Lightning Source offers wider variations on its POD: colour and weight of paper, for example, which make its books look better.



If you use POD the price of the books remains fixed no matter how many copies you order: it's the nature of the technology.

To get a reduced price based on an increased order you need to use offset printing, which means you have to pay for a print run.

Offset printing has large set-up and clean-up costs, but a very low price per copy printed. Those set-up and clean-up costs are divided among all the copies you print, so the more you print the cheaper each copy becomes.

The point at which it's cheaper per copy printed to pay for an offset run depends on the sort of book you're printing (large, highly-illustrated books are more expensive to print than novels). It's going to be a few hundred copies. And most self published books just don't sell that many, so it's not often worth doing. Which is why few self publishers opt for an offset run, and why digital books have revolutionised self publishing.

That's all good advice, thank you very much!

I think I may end up hiring someone to do the type-setting. I won't have a great deal of time for revisions on this, and it sounds challenging to get right. And if it's not right, it won't look professional.

I'll have to go to a bookstore soon and look around at the printing. That's good to know about LightING Source-- and thank you for the spell correction! :)

I've read that too, that LS does a better job with print than CreateSpace. At this point, I'm thinking of using both.

That was really helpful about POD vs. off-set printing. I had read about off-set printing, but with the information overload I've been putting myself through, I'm a little foggy on things before reading them a second time. So now it's solidified in my mind-- thank goodness because I have much more to learn! :) It makes sense too, that off-set printing would be less expensive. An ebook and POD is a definite for me, while off-set printing… I'll have to get further along in the process and then decide if I have the time and money to do the wheeling and dealing marketing it would take for ordering a bunch of books to be worthwhile. Poytner (from the book I'm reading) recommends ordering 300-500 print books to send out as review books. BUT… I'm not quite sure what the scale of my little operation here will be yet…

This nonfiction history book must be released at the start of the year, and it has a very narrow audience. The book after this one, though, has a wider target audience. The first book may be a good learning-the-ropes book. The second endeavor could potentially be more ambitious. We shall see, I guess!
 

RevanWright

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Glad I was able to help!

You noticed the pages were thin, and it sounded like there were limited options on this. Is this because it was POD? Maybe that's just the standard for POD…? They didn't stand out to me the way that they did to you, by the way, but I'm not sure if that's just because I was viewing them on a video vs. in person.
I'm not sure. It's probably just me being nitpicky. They do seem a bit thin, and you can see text through to the other side, but once I got it under regular lighting and actually tried reading a chapter, I didn't really notice at all.

Why can't Ingram Spark do RGB? Why only CMYK in the cover art? Is this just the case with their POD books, or is this also the case with their off-set printing books?
It's not just Ingram, unfortunately. All major presses deal with CMYK (or so I've been told). CMYK is the standard physical print color set, while RGB is the standard digital color set.

Did you paint your cover, and then photograph it? I was happy to see you used photoshop, as that's very familiar to me. You said you have Photoshop 6; I have CS5.1. Hopefully mine will be effective enough.
I painted it digitally in photoshop. I've got a Wacom drawing tablet/pad hooked up to my computer. I used Photoshop's default 'oil wet medium flow' brush to paint it. Pretty much a digital oil painting.

By the way, can you get them to shrink wrap the books they send out?
I have absolutely no idea. It'd be nice if they did. :)

And thanks for the compliments! But you're actually ahead of me on sources and reference material. I went in virtually blind, like I said. I've been learning as I go, which is probably why I've had so many problems. That's just my nature, though. Leap in headfirst and start swinging, and everything I crash into or mess up by doing this, I'll stop for a moment while I'm trying to fix it, and learn about it.
 

AnnaPappenheim

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Wondering if anyone knows if Ingram Spark does off-set printing as well. I think (from looking at their website) that they don't, and if I decide I want that I will have to go through their Lightning Source division. I emailed them yesterday, haven't heard back yet. It is a weekend though!

---
RevanWright:

I had a look at the books I'm currently reading, and with both, if held up to the light, you can see the print on the other side of the paper. Just thought I'd let you know!

And good to know about the standard physical print color set, thanks!

I like the cover art! Our book is a totally different genre-- no idea what the cover art will be yet! Intimidating to think of!
 

SBibb

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Why can't Ingram Spark do RGB? Why only CMYK in the cover art? Is this just the case with their POD books, or is this also the case with their off-set printing books?

A lot of printers use CMYK because of how the color prints. If you have the image set in CMYK before hand, you'll have a better idea of what the resulting print will be. Otherwise, it can be a bit unpredictable.

The difference is that CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) are referring to ink, and the colors are reflected. RGB refers to Red, Green, Blue, and is emitted light. The result is that you can get different colors easier on a monitor (and naturally brighter) than once they're printed.

And that's one reason why printers ask for CMYK. It's a pain, but if you start in that color mode, then theoretically, you should have a better idea of what the final print will look like.

That being said, I still do most my cover work in RGB, since my main focus is on ebooks, and it gives me a greater color range. It does mean that I sometimes get to fight with a print color when I make the print cover.
 

AnnaPappenheim

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A lot of printers use CMYK because of how the color prints. If you have the image set in CMYK before hand, you'll have a better idea of what the resulting print will be. Otherwise, it can be a bit unpredictable.

The difference is that CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) are referring to ink, and the colors are reflected. RGB refers to Red, Green, Blue, and is emitted light. The result is that you can get different colors easier on a monitor (and naturally brighter) than once they're printed.

And that's one reason why printers ask for CMYK. It's a pain, but if you start in that color mode, then theoretically, you should have a better idea of what the final print will look like.

That being said, I still do most my cover work in RGB, since my main focus is on ebooks, and it gives me a greater color range. It does mean that I sometimes get to fight with a print color when I make the print cover.

Thank you SBibb for explaining all of that!

Good to know you still use RGB for the ebooks. That's a good idea! My main focus will be ebooks too.
 
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