Book

Yourself

UPLOAD

Innovative options
enable you to publish your
own text and pictures.
By Kevin Kelly

Approximately every minute, someone in the world publishes a new book. We are in a golden era of publishing and broadcasting. These days the mechanics of making a book are almost as trivial and as easy as starting a blog.

Illustrations by Parse/e Design

While mainstream New York mass-market publishers struggle to sustain their traditional system of distribution through bookstores, the choices for self-publishers continue to expand and mature.

You can now create a book in paper, in hardcover, in color or black-and-white, as a downloadable PDF, or as an e-book. Smart self-publishers will try to exploit all these options.

The two basic ways to manufacture a book are to print a bunch, or print them one by one on demand.

The advantage of printing on demand is that you print a copy only after you sell it. This eliminates the costs of storage and of unsold books, and also self-finances the printing.

However, while the cost of print on demand has fallen significantly, it’s (and likely always will be) cheaper per unit to print up a bunch of books. And sometimes, you really do want a bunch of copies — for a conference, a book club, Christmas presents, or for a best seller.

Make: 53