Interesting book 'Ekco Sounds'

[Aerodyne]

Some good points have been made in this thread. Re 'print on demand' I can claim some knowledge because that's how I had my last book printed. Anyone can set up as a publisher -it is finding the market that's the hard bit. In my case, there was a small but ready market in the forums and I was able to advertise my book on my website. To save money, I set and prepared everything to the 'print-ready' stage - gutters, bleeds, text and fonts, illustrations, everything as a pdf file for the printer to use directly. I designed the cover - tricky to get the spine thickness correct and I needed to choose the paper thickness for the book block, i.e. the whole of the insides of the book, before I could finalise the front, back and spine.

Print on demand is not what I'd call cheap and there was a 'gradient' in cost dependent upon the number of copies printed for the run. As it happens, I had to have two or three runs to answer the demand; the book sold well and I more than covered the costs but the fact is such work is never done for profit and if I were to attempt to work out an hourly rate for the many months of work I strongly suspect it wouldn't cover the heating and electricity costs. Not the point, though. I enjoyed writing and publishing. I have no plans for more, however. Been there, done that, as they say. By the way, I don't consider my books as 'vanity publications' because they were written to fill a gap in the market, albeit a small one. If I were to produce a book of poetry, now...
Tony

[Yorkie]

Thanks for the info Colin - most interesting and encouraging to know that it's now possible to have future print runs of the required number to meet demand. It's evident that a great deal of time and effort goes into publishing these books which are never going to have a wide circulation, so it would be a shame if their full potential can't be realised. The scanning technology is very impressive. When we go to Paris on Eurostar we go down by train from Hull to King's X and we've usually got a couple of hours to kill till we need to check in at St Pancras, so we usually walk to the British Library, next door to St Pancras. Always a wonderful place to spend an hour or two. It has a decent café and the good thing is that you can leave your luggage in luggage lockers FOC, which you can't do at St Pancras or King's X.

[Yorkie]

...By the way, I don't consider my books as 'vanity publications' because they were written to fill a gap in the market, albeit a small one...
Tony

Vanity Publishing' is a bit of an unfortunate term and widely misunderstood.

A vanity press or vanity publisher is a term describing a publishing house in which authors pay to have their books published, rather than a publisher paying the author. It has nothing to do with the normal meaning we attribute to the term ‘vanity’ though it's often considered a pejorative term, implying that an author is only publishing out of vanity and that his or her work could not be commercially successful. In other words, a work published by a vanity press is typically assumed to be un-publishable elsewhere.

Not so.

With vanity publishing, authors pay to have their books published. Because the author is paying to have the book published, the book doesn't go through an approval or editorial process as it would in a traditional setting where the publisher takes a financial risk on the author's ability to write successfully. While a commercial publisher's intended market is the wider general public, a ‘vanity publisher's’ intended market is the author and a very small number of interested members of the general public, often catering for special interest groups. In some cases, authors of a book that is vanity published will buy a substantial number of copies of their book, so that they can give it away as a promotional tool.

Incidentally, as an author/pulisher Tony will know better than me, but I seem to think that if a book is given an ISBN number, a certain quantity have to be given free for libraries.

I'm not sure about that, or how many, but it could be a heavy cost burden for a 'vanity publisher' to stand.

[Alan Douglas]

Used to be, and I assume still is, that to get a copyright here you send two copies of the Library of Congress, but there are no further copies needed. I have the copyright on vol.1 of my series on 1920s radios, and the publisher did the applications for the remaining two volumes.

[AlanBeckett]

These?

http://www.abaa.org/details.php?dcx=647275208&aid=bkfndr#

Alan

[Yorkie]

Used to be, and I assume still is, that to get a copyright here you send two copies of the Library of Congress, but there are no further copies needed. I have the copyright on vol.1 of my series on 1920s radios, and the publisher did the applications for the remaining two volumes.

Whoooeee Alan, you certainly had to do your research to put those three splendid tomes together - well done on that!

[Aerodyne]

It is certainly the case that copies of books published have to be given free to libraries. In my case - three books published under my own imprint, over a 12 year period - I had to provide six copies of each for libraries. If you don't do this of your own free will, they get on to you pretty quickly and twist your arm with legal threats! How do I know that? Well, having heard or read somewhere that two copies were all that was required, I'd sent out free copies to two national libraries of the last book I published, only to receive a letter demanding a further four. The letter came at a stage where I had practically exhausted the supply of books - sold 'em all, in other words - with no intention for yet another reprint. The result was that I was able (just) to meet this demand by sending the very last four books in the box, leaving me without a copy for my shelves. I do have the proof copy, which is unbound, and that's all I have.
Tony

[Joe]

Interesting stuff.

What is the legal definition of 'Publish'? I were to write something, have it printed and bound and then sell it what has it got to do with anybody else. I can't see how it differs from posting on these forums or even sending somebody a very long letter.

Obviously there is more to it and I ask out of genuine interest rather than being argumentative.

- Joe

[camallison]

These people http://www.writersworld.co.uk/publish.asp have a good guide to publishing your own book, maybe they give a clue. My own (uninformed) take on it is that, if you take out an ISBN number when you publish, then the free copies are an obligation. I stand to be corrected though.

Colin

[Alan Douglas]

These?

Yes, but they're still in print, no need to pay that for a set.

I'm not up to date on copyright laws now. Back in the day, you sent in an application, paid a fee, sent two copies to the Library of Congress, put the proper notice in the book and that was it for 28 years. You could renew for another 28 years. A great many things were never renewed, such as the early Sams radio/TV schematic folders, and are now in the public domain. If you didn't put the little copyright symbol in the book you had no copyright (so any service manual or owner's manual with no symbol is automatically public domain now).

That's all changed now but I suppose you have to provide the two copies if you want an ISBN. The publisher handles all that for me so I don't think about it.