Friday 20 January 2012

More about the Book in English.

First of all, to all of you who have signed on to the infoletter, or passed on the information and the link: Thank you! I am really, really happy to get this much response and support on my quest for numbers. A lot of time and effort went into writing the thesis, and it feels enormously good to see that other people are interested in this work, and willing to pay for a book about it.

Also my thanks to you who left comments with suggestions about the publishing procedure and alternatives.

Should you be interested in the German version, this is available through all the usual ways to get hold of a German book - either from a distributor in your country, or from a German shop. You can also order it from my webshop, which is probably attractive if you think about getting some textile tools or supplies at the same time.

Personally, I must admit that the e-book has never gotten me onto its side - I just prefer a bunch of printed and bound paper. I do, however, know how helpful an e-book can be, and I will think about this both for the German and the English version. It is, however, not the first option for the English version.


And regarding the voices who recommend self-publishing or print on demand... thank you for helping me think out of the box. Unfortunately, several reasons speak against using a pod service for this book - and not the least of those are your finances.
A publishing house puts out money for a book to finance an appropriately-sized print run. But they also handle law questions, distribution channels, advertisement, review copies, layouting, proofreading and editing, and thousands of other pesky details. Yes, it would technically be possible to do a pod run and "cut out the publishing house" - but we are talking about a 400-500 page book here, with colour pictures at least for parts of the book. This means it either needs to be all black and white, or it's unaffordable. And while the publishing house also needs to make some money (back) from the book, using its distribution channels and structures also means that a lot of things will be cheaper than if I tried to get it via POD.

There are books perfectly suited to using Lulu or some similar service, but my thesis is not one of them: I did the calculations and all the maths for the German version, and trust me... you do not really want me to go pod with this. It would cost you much more than if I'm going with a publishing house.

1 comment:

Cathy Raymond said...

Personally, I must admit that the e-book has never gotten me onto its side - I just prefer a bunch of printed and bound paper.

Me too. Particularly for a book about costume, where photographs can be an important part of the information being transmitted.