Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Adventures in Self-Republishing
    Adventures in Self-Republishing
    Adventures in Self-Republishing
    Ebook68 pages50 minutes

    Adventures in Self-Republishing

    By Jeff Hecht

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Adventures in Self-Republishing is a guide for authors who want to revive out of print books by republishing them in print or electronically. It describes options that depend on the format of the book, including whether or not it includes illustrations, how elaborate the type formatting is, and its use of reference citations. It explains the important differences among the major approaches to self-publishing: on paper using print on demand technology, and electronically using either PDF format or e-reader formats used by e-book readers. It explains the advantages and disadvantages of each republishing format for various types of books. The author speaks from experience in having learned the hard way what works and what doesn't. He also describes the types of services available to help authors republish, and the trade-offs involved. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJeff Hecht
    Release dateMar 20, 2016
    ISBN9781524296032
    Adventures in Self-Republishing
    Author

    Jeff Hecht

    Jeff Hecht has been writing about lasers and optical technology for since the 1970s. He is contributing editor to Laser Focus World, and a correspondent for New Scientist magazine. His other books include Understanding Lasers, Beam: The Race to Make the Laser, City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics, Understanding Fiber Optics, Optics: Light for a New Age, The Laser Guidebook, and Laser: Supertool of the 1980s. He graduated from Caltech in electrical engineering.

    Read more from Jeff Hecht

    Related to Adventures in Self-Republishing

    Related ebooks

    Language Arts & Discipline For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Putting Your Words In Order

      Jun 3, 2021

      Putting Your Words In Order
      5 min read

    • Article

      Getting It Out There

      Apr 1, 2021

      Getting It Out There
      6 min read

    • Article

      BookFusion

      Dec 13, 2022

      BookFusion
      2 min read

    • Article

      A Window On Your Words

      Jul 1, 2021

      A Window On Your Words
      6 min read

    • Article

      Shoot And Design A Pro-looking Photobook

      Dec 9, 2022

      SPONSORED BY Fast, powerful and precise editing software for PC, macOS and iPad affinity.serif.com/photo Creating a photobook is a joyous thing to do. Anyone can share images online or create single prints at home, but fewer people go the extra mile

      4 min read

    • Article

      BookFusion

      Dec 6, 2022

      BookFusion
      2 min read

    • Article

      BookFusion

      Jan 30, 2023

      BookFusion
      2 min read

    • Article

      Contact

      Jul 26, 2022

      Email your queries and your questions to letters@macformat.com I have been a subscriber to MacFormat now for about 15 months and as yet haven’t seen anything about personal finance apps. Having run Microsoft Money for 15 years or so, I found that I c

      2 min read

    • Article

      KISS: Keep It Simple Self-publishing

      Dec 1, 2022

      Could 2023 be the year you self-publish your first book? As technology advances, self-publishing is becoming a simpler process. However, the same technology creates more opportunities, which can make it feel complicated and confusing. Do we have to u

      6 min read

    • Article

      Enjoy A Better Ebook Experience

      Dec 19, 2022

      Enjoy A Better Ebook Experience
      2 min read

    • Article

      Write That Book For NaNoWriMo

      Oct 7, 2021

      Write That Book For NaNoWriMo
      7 min read

    • Article

      What’s Best For Your Book?

      Aug 5, 2021

      What’s Best For Your Book?
      5 min read

    • Article

      Help Me Buy… Photo Books

      Jan 20, 2022

      Back in the days of film, our most treasured photographs would often end up in photo albums, but in these digital days, it’s far easier – not to mention more professional-looking – to have your best images printed directly into a photo book. Freed fr

      5 min read

    • Article

      Mail Server

      Jun 1, 2021

      In response to Jack Kendrick, in issue 275 “Pyconfusion”, this attitude is something that bugs me, especially with Windows users who bash Linux, just because you have to sometimes use some grey matter to use it. I see it all the time on forums and Fa

      3 min read

    • Article

      What a Copy Editor Does—and How to Find a Good One

      Aug 8, 2022

      If you’ve been writing a manuscript of any kind—whether it’s a novel, nonfiction book, article, or screenplay—at some point, you need to start thinking about copy editing. You may have heard of copy editing but only have a vague sense of what it is.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Distribution Options for Indie Authors

      Feb 15, 2021

      The decision to self-publish a book means taking on all the responsibilities of a publisher. This puts the author in charge of not only the writing, but the distribution, marketing, and promotion as well. Amazon is the leading vendor for book sales i

      4 min read

    • Article

      Publish Or Be Damned

      Jan 17, 2021

      Publish Or Be Damned
      4 min read

    • Article

      How To Self-publish A Book

      Jun 12, 2020

      How To Self-publish A Book
      2 min read

    • Article

      How To Choose

      Jul 7, 2022

      How To Choose
      4 min read

    • Article

      Career Advice

      Feb 21, 2023

      Career Advice
      3 min read

    • Article

      5 Great Photobooks

      Jan 5, 2021

      5 Great Photobooks
      2 min read

    • Article

      Independent Printing

      Feb 12, 2024

      For many indie authors, the idea of publishing a book is exciting. But it can also be nerve-wracking, especially when it comes to the printing of the book. Offset printing is a printing technique in which ink is transferred—or offset—from a printing

      5 min read

    • Article

      CALIBRE Manage Your Ebook Collection Efficiently

      Jul 2, 2019

      Fed up with lugging paperback books around with you? Running out of shelf space? The solution – of course – is to digitise your library. When it comes to collecting, managing and distributing ebooks to your various ebook reading devices, there’s no b

      8 min read

    • Article

      Create Your First Photobook

      Feb 22, 2018

      Create Your First Photobook
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Adventures in Self-Republishing

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Adventures in Self-Republishing - Jeff Hecht

      Executive Summary/Abstract

      Authors can revive their out-of-print books by self-republishing them. The idea is to take advantage of the tools used for self-publishing new books, but the two process differ in important ways. Most crucially, authors typically do not have a full complete digital file as published, so they must produce the digital copies needed for self-publishing. This book describes your options, and walks you through the steps required.

      When you start without a complete digital file of the whole book, you must look carefully at formatting options. Producing a fully electronic book requires generating a new word-processing file and doing a new layout of the book. In some cases that may be attractive. However, you can save much time and trouble by recording images of the printed pages and distributing them either as digital PDF files or in print.

      The rest of this book will describe the process and the options available, and warn you away from pitfalls I experienced first-hand.

      Chapter 1 

      Introduction: Self-publishing and self-republishing

      This book is a guide to self-republishing—do-it-yourself republishing of a book no longer available from the original publisher. It's based on my own adventures—and misadventures—in self-republishing four nonfiction books on science and technology, and on other information I've gathered. Self-republishing is not a way to get rich, but it is a way to keep your books on the market where they can earn you some money and keep your ideas available.

      Self-republishing is built on the concept of self-publishing, but it differs in crucial ways. Most self-publishing services are designed for newly written books, so in a sense you have a head start because you don't have to write the book. However, self-publishing services typically require digital files as input, and generally authors do not have a fully formatted digital version of the final printed book.

      If you an electronic pack rat and carefully maintain your digital archives, you may have saved PDF page proofs of books published in the last 10 to 15 years. These can be a good starting point, depending on how many changes you made and on whether or not you kept any record of the changes, but that will require extracting a formatted text file and updating it with any post-proof changes, as will be described later.

      Otherwise, your best starting point is a clean copy of the original printed book, which you can send to a service that scans the book to produce PDF image files. You can distribute PDF copies, or use the PDF images to copies using a variation of photocopying technology called print-on-demand (POD).  The type in POD books is not as sharp and clean as in a conventionally printed book, but unless you're very fussy, you'll barely notice the difference. Many conventional publishers use POD to keep slow-selling books in print. PDF copies are harder to sell, as will be described later. Unfortunately, converting scanned books into the digital formats optimized for display on electronic readers such as Kindle and Nook can be a complex, time-consuming and costly process.

      Your self-republishing options depend on the format of your book. By that, I mean the blend of plain text, illustrations, and specially formatted material such as tables and references. Some important types are:

      • Text-only: most often novels, with no internal illustrations.

      • Text with supplemental illustrations: often nonfiction biographies or histories, with a few photos, often grouped together and printed on glossy paper.

      • Text with formatting: A typical example is a nonfiction book with references, with or without photos.

      • Heavily formatted and illustrated books: technical books or textbooks with many illustrations and diagrams, often with formulas or other heavily formatted material such as charts and tables.

      • Children's picture books, graphic novels, or other books where the art is integral to the book.

      In general, the more complex the layout of the original book, the more complex it is to self-republish.

      There are three major distribution formats for self-publishing and self-republishing:

      POD paper copies, PDF files, and special formats for dedicated electronic readers, such as MOBI for Kindle and EPUB for Nook or iPad. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages.

      POD books are paperbacks printed on demand from image files, usually stored as PDFs. Many conventional

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1