How to publish a book
by Andy
This handbook is something of an experiment, for us and for NESTA, in publishing a book in print and online and rallying a community of practice around it. Here’s how we did it:
- First, gather the content together in a collaborative space, such as a wiki or Google doc. Don’t worry about formatting too much, but get the copy neat and tidy and make sure all the links work.
- Next, work out a paper size, basic design ideas, colours, ideal page length, budget and price.
- Then, transfer it into Word or another word processing package, and start assembling a first draft. Make sure you use proper “Styles and Formatting” (Heading 1, 2, 3, Hyperlink, custom styles etc.): discipline about marking up the content here will save you days later on.
- Commission a designer to create mock-ups of the book and a parallel website. Create a style guide too, specifying how all the styles in the Word doc should be printed in the final version. Also, ask them or a front-end developer to turn the style guide into a CSS style sheet for the website.
- Obviously at this point there’s a lot of to-ing, fro-ing, proofreading, editing etc. (Laws, sausages and books: it’s best not to see how they’re made.)
- Once you have a final draft, you can either do the layout in Word or else in a DTP package like Quark Xpress. Make sure you include print resolution imagery, and preserve the links and styles.
- Proof the final copy in print so you have final, corrected text for everything. Once you’ve finished, produce a final print-ready PDF, and also optimise the images and produce a web version.
- Export it as HTML (so all the links still work) and use this to develop the website version. Then ask someone to build you a website from the proofed copy, CSS style sheet and mock-ups. You can use a platform like Wordpress, or code it from scratch. (We used a simple Drupal system.)
- Send the print-ready PDF to a publishing company like Lightning Source, or deal direct with printers yourself. They will print copies for a fixed unit price whenever you send them the order.
- At this point, you can also export the content for e-book readers like Kindle, if you want.
- Use Paypal or another system (again, a publishing company can help) to let people order the book from your site online. That way people can buy the book directly from you.
- Have a big launch party, invite all your friends, and force them all to buy it.
And if that’s all too complicated, the nice folks at OpenMute can sort it all out for you or you can use an online service like blurb.com or lulu.com too.
