Free Books

What Digital Printing Can Mean For Self Publishers

Up until the arrival of digital technology book runs probably weren't really viable until a minimum run of 500 books which meant a probable investment of over $5000. With our recent investment into a high quality HP Indigo digital printer we can now do print runs as low as one book. Books on family history or on a town or region's history, that had only limited appeal outside the family or region were either too expensive to produce or had to be done using substandard technologies eg. photocopying and/or substandard binding methods eg. stapling.

It is now an exciting new world for people who wish to print a book. Never before has it been so possible to print your own book. This is really exciting stuff.

Sadly very, very few aspiring authors and particularly those with books that publishing houses perceive have limited potential, or only a niche market to sell to, will be able to get a contract from a publishing house. Publishing houses in Australia have become incredibly economically conservative and seldom take a risk on an unproven author. Publishers may reject hundreds of books for every manuscript they show interest in. Seldom are mainstream publishing houses the answer for aspiring authors.

Up until some relatively recent breakthroughs in technology and niche quality book printers like ourselves the unknown author was faced with only a few daunting options:

Doing it yourself by yourself including ISBN, copyright, barcode, editing, layout, designing a cover, finding a printer; arranging storage, arranging marketing, publicity and distribution; creating a website, arranging electronic payment, receiving orders, packaging and postage, invoicing, collecting accounts etc. etc. or give up.

It has been almost 20 years since we helped our first author/self publisher and it was quite a task back then. It wasn’t until the arrival of the personal computer that self publishing really became viable. Now with more powerful computers, better software, the internet, email, direct to plate and digital printing technologies self publishing is a much faster process and far cheaper.