On-Demand PublishingThis is a small independent publishing house for the kingdom and its inhabitants. All content is the responsibility of the publisher.
Subscribe: A Skilled Workman
We will aggressively work to help you determine what you want to make available and what services would help you the most in our joint pursuit of the widest possible sales. We will share any ideas we have with you.
You will have your work available immediately at a variety of locations and in various formats—as soon as the artwork is finished and any required proofs are purchased.
Yes, in most cases. Lulu, CreateSpace, and Smashwords all offer free ISBN numbers as you publish the pieces. If you want your own, you'll have to purchase them—and that will cast a couple hundred dollars or more.
In most cases they are promoted and distributed by you. The companies just make them available tot he larger retailers. Lulu and CreateSpace get the books on Amazon.
With CreateSpace you can get pro distribution to other online retailers and to libraries by going "Pro" for $39 a year). Pro also enables you to buy cheaper and get larger royalties.
With Lulu, you can buy the Extended Reach distribution that is free and gets you to Amazon (maybe). They also have professional marketing packages for two to three thousand dollars.
Smashwords has a premium status where they'll give you an ISBN and send your book to the iPad bookstore.
With Zazzle, it's available on their site and all promotion and marketing is up to you.
Copy: We produce a pdf exported out of InDesign CS5 for the content. Though they don't require it, our experience suggests that it needs to be flattened and exported as Acrobat 4. Beyond that, we use 300 dpi CMYK PSDs for bitmap images (someRGBs have slippedthrough and caused no rpoblem, but we are parnoid about stufflike that), and vector PDFs from Illustrator or InDesign for the other graphics.
Cover: PDF exported from InDesign in Acrobat 4 (no transparency).
Copy: They are much more fussy. In several cases, we've had to convert all graphics to bitmap to make them work. They flag anything less than 300 dpi — even screen captures. It's an auotmatedprocess for them, and you will ghet no saticsfaction trying to ask them how to fix things. They usually simply do not know.
Covers: They require a Photoshop PDF—flattened )no transparancy or layers. We design with INDEsign,export as a PDF, rasrterize in Photshop at 300 dpi GB, flatten the image, and Save As Photoshop PDF. Nothing else works, unless you work in Photoshop and try to do you type there also (which is a very bad idea typographically).
Copy: They basically do not handle graphics. Files are Word documents with very rigid and very limited formatting requirements. You can insert jpeg graphics, but they require low-resolution, small pixeldimensioned art.
Covers: A JPEG or PNG with limted pixel dimensions.
Artwork: Large 300dpi RGB PNGs. They can handle transparency.