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NEWSLETTER

 

:. POD SERVICES .: Table of Content: Print On Demand The basics of what we do Some common questions and misconceptions .: How low can I go? .: What formats and sizes are available to me? .: Can I print in colour? .: Will you be my printer or publisher? Products & Prices Printing and Consultancy Contact us Download Pod book price guide .pdf Download Openmute Pod services .pdf Print On Demand For most small organisations, printing high quality books based on their activities is not an option. Set up costs are too high, it is prohibitively expensive to store the large runs that are a prerequisite of printing professionally, and marketing (let alone selling!) the title globally is usually of another order of trouble altogether. But after years of development in the corporate sector, a more flexible option is now available. Print On Demand printing houses, integrated with internet platforms for submission, storage and revision, are enabling small to medium sized entities to engage in high quality publishing. Beyond printing your books, this new type of printer also offers help in the area of distribution and sales. Through links with established portals like Amazon (where titles can be listed and made searchable), books’ visibility is maximised and translated into revenue. Should you want to sell your title, this means there isn’t even a requirement for a website. From generating the ISBN to listing it on Amazon, marketing it through associated channels and getting you paid on a Paypal account*, networked automated systems have made specialist services available at a fraction of the price people have come to expect. If you’re not interested in sales, Print On Demand may still be attractive due to the possibility of printing very small runs; if you are, but are concerned your title may not sell, the possibility of starting with a very small order and proceeding in response to the title’s progress may be attractive. *Paypal Paypal is an electronic payments system which cuts out many of the charges associated with buying and selling products internationally. Apart from paying from, and accepting money into, credit cards as was the case with its first offering, Paypal now offers multi-currency reserves and integration with bank accounts. All you need to use it is internet access, an email address, and access to a credit card and/or bank account. For more information and examples, see http://www.paypal.com or http://www.paypal.co.uk Back to Top The basics of what we do OpenMute operates a set of basic consultancy services relating to Print On Demand, all of which are listed below. They range from us simply acting as a relay point for documents clients have formatted themselves (Mute’s account with its POD printer Lightning Source obviating the need for clients to set their own up) to designing and handling all clients’ documents and readying their book for web sales and marketing, or conducting workshops in website maintenance with themselves or their colleagues or staff. We have structured these ‘products’ in a modular fashion so that you can pick and choose from a structured set of options, perhaps starting with one service to gradually use others in much more ambitious projects, or to keep your engagement at a one-off. Our products and pricing structure is based on our own experiences using these technologies (from learning on Mute magazine, we know the time and other resource requirements of each module), however we will keep them under constant revision so as to be able to respond to client feedback and needs, as well as any price changes at the printers’ ends. Back to Top Some common questions and misconceptions How low can I go? The pricing structure of the Print On Demand printers we use employs certain base ‘benchmarks’ as starting points (although variations to this rule do exist). This means that in our case the unit cost of a 108 page perfect-bound book is in the area of £1.80 (or £1.34 for bulk orders), with increased pagination costing around a pence per page, but decreased pagination making no difference. However, it is good to know that you can go down if you don’t have the desire to make a big, fat book... The lowest you can go is 48 pages. (This is for a paperback book, where spine text becomes impossible with any less than 80 pages. The highest paginations offered are in the range of 700-850 pages!) In terms of the units themselves, you can go as low as you like, providing you are willing to pay the set-up costs (around £60, depending on the size/pagination of the document), and those for proofing (around £20-£30). Please note that OpenMute’s pricing policy reflects the pricing policy of our primary printers, Lightning Source (who we use because they are cheapest and because they have distribution points in the UK as well as US). Other companies, such as Lulu.com, operate a different pricing policy, indexed to publishers’ sales. If you would like to work on this principle, but would still like to use OpenMute consultancy services, please let us know; we can use any printer and/or distribution and sales system you choose! What formats and sizes are available to me? Much like with pagination, most POD printers use certain categories of format to structure their pricing. This means you have a series of options available to you which, together, offer a lot of variety. Please go over the ‘Lightning Source On Demand Offerings’ sheet attached to this document as a PDF for further information. (Or, as with the above, go to Lulu.com for theirs.) Can I print in colour? Part of the reason why POD printers manage to price their printing so cheaply is that they are essentially like very fancy photocopiers. Though these themselves have recently evolved to offer full colour, photo-like reproducibility, Print On Demand is still lagging behind. Thus, though you can go full colour (‘CMYK’) on your covers, this is not available for the actual pages of your book. Will you be my printer or publisher? We don’t print books on site and can’t come to you with a ‘POD printer’. Mute is not itself a ‘Print On Demand’ printer, but rather a publisher of magazines and provider of printrelated consultancy services. (POD technology may simplify and cheapen things from the user’s perspective, but this belies the level of technological investment required to run and maintain it, so Mute still takes its own and clients’ files to another company much larger than ourselves.) Your status as a publisher is not affected in this process: we stay independent and so do you – for both of us, our POD printer is just that, a printer. It is important to note that, by the same token, we don’t possess any absolutely unique knowledge that you cannot acquire yourself. To this end, we encourage you to familiarise yourself with the offerings of our POD printer Lightning Source (at http://www.lightningsource.com, or you can visit comparable company Lulu at http://www.lulu.com). This will enable you to assess whether they need the kind of help we can give or can perhaps go it alone. Back to Top Products & Prices Printing and Consultancy a) Printing As described in our synopsis of Print On Demand, the pricing of POD printing is rather complicated. Beyond the basic fact that it offers cheap and flexible printing, your options with POD vary depending on size, format, pagination and number of copies ordered. Our basic price position is that we charge printers’ costs + 10%, with reductions for bulk orders. But since each client’s particular situation is ultimately different, we must ask for you to get in touch with us with your individual query and/or to research the comparisons at Lightning Source and Lulu to reach a tailored and precise answer. b) POD print handling and initial consultation (first publication) Consultation on print options and pricing Provision of support Print handling. This means taking your files and guiding them through the web submissions/revisions process of which the basic steps are: Sending a PDF to the printer Getting the printer to supply you with a proof Publishing the title Creating a library entry on Amazon NB The client is responsible for supplying a fully printready PDF file in keeping with the printers’ specifications (listed on website and available from OpenMute) COST: £150 companies / £75 non-profit distributing bi) Request/generation of ISBN number for books COST: £20 bii) Web promotion *Using up to date internet channels to promote your title, including: Adding the publication to Google Books Creating an Amazon entry Integrating Google ads into your website Formatting your PDF for the Web, with bookmarks and key words for better responses to searches etc. Creating entries into ‘social bookmarking’ efforts like Delicious (http://del.icio.us) COST: £150 c) Ecommerce PayPal Paypal set up and site purchase button Multi-currency set up Credit card set up d) Full Ecommerce Paypal or bank payment service Multi-currency set up Account payment system, including invoicing and pay later functions Adding multiple products Shipping notification Subscriptions NB First product added by OpenMute, subsequent products to be added by client and payments administered by client. COST: £500 e) NDS (Network Distribution Service) This is a free service, which OpenMute is running to supplement Mute magazine’s distribution. It provides an alternative distribution network where publishers and other small organisations can set up distribution arrangements with local ‘agents’ globally, and negotiate commissions payments for selling their wares. Although free, OpenMute encourages participants to keep the service useful and sustainable by: Adding their own contacts to extend the network of outlets available to all users Recruiting new agents to add to the existing list Providing stock to be sold through the network Keeping their account in credit Providing and maintaining their own product information Adding pictures of their product Adding a short description of their product Adding the price for shipping to four regions (UK, North America, Europe, ‘Rest Of World’/ROW) f) Training and workshops Individual ½ day session COST: £50 Group and organisational training also available, please contact us for costs. g) POD design and publication production Please contact us for costs. h) POD integration for organisations (Production, web promotion, organisational integration, financial models, strategic planning) Please contact us for costs. i) Copywriting, proofing, editing Please contact us for costs. j) Creation of Publication/book website Features include: Publication building tools PDF generation Ecommerce Low graphic content versions for accessibility Google search optimisation Collaborative working and workflow Google ad sense Web statistics Publication marketing tools, email lists and contacts database Please contact us for costs. Back to Top Contact us If you would like to discuss any aspect of the process with an OpenMute member, please call or email us at the following address asking for Pauline, Laura or Simon. OpenMute Unit 9 The Whitechapel Centre 85 Myrdle Street London E1 1HQ T: (0)20 7377 6949 E: services@metamute.org Back to Top