I?m sure most of us want to get our tomes published professionally
and then lap up the rave reviews that are bound to follow... However,
for those who wish to self-publish, there are some good options out
there. Even if you ultimately hope your work will be accepted by a
publishing house, there are reasons you may wish to produce a bound copy
of your work beforehand. For instance, Jason Snell, editor of Macworld magazine,
decided that rather than hand the first readers of his novel a bundle
of manscript pages, he wanted to hand them something that felt more like
a book. You can read his write up on this process here.
- CreateSpace
- A subsidiary of Amazon.com, CreateSpace makes it easy to self-publish, providing many services that would be difficult to get access to otherwise. Quality print on demand, e-book publishing, marketing, and graphic design services are available. Scrivener for the Mac supports CreateSpace publication specifications with version 2.1.
- Lulu
- Lulu remains perhaps the most popular self-publishing solution on the internet. You can upload a book in PDF format (it supports certain other formats, too), choose the specifications, and order as many?or as few?as you wish.
- BookBaby
- BookBaby is a leading eBook publishing company for independent authors. BookBaby makes it easy to sell your eBook through the world's biggest retailers, including Amazon Kindle, Apple's iTunes Bookstore, the Sony Reader Store, NOOK by Barnes & Noble, and more. Best of all, you get paid 100%. BookBaby takes nothing. Need eBook formatting, cover design, short run book printing, or web hosting services? No problem. BookBaby makes publishing your eBook easy. BookBaby is part of the AVL Digital family of businesses, which also includes Disc Makers, CD Baby, and HostBaby.
- Blurb
- Blurb offers a similar service to Lulu, except it provides software to create the book you will upload. I saw a sample of some the books created in Blurb at the 2009 Macworld Expo, and was very impressed with the paperback (it?s also great for picture books). The main drawback is that its import features seem somewhat limited, supporting only the Microsoft Word format (although you can paste in text from pretty much any program).
- Do It Yourself
- Of course, if you?re feeling adventurous and have a bit of time on your hands, you could even try a spot of bookbinding yourself. Hamish MacDonald describes how he binds his own books here, and the results are breathtaking.