Publish And Be Damned
Now this is a cracking idea - from the press release:
“On-demand book creation service lets writers publish their book for under �70
Publish And Be Damned (www.pabd.net) is the first service in the UK to offer a series of on-line book creation tools that allow writers to publish at a tiny fraction of the cost of other self-publishing methods. The tools are provided free of charge but authors are required to purchase at least 10 copies of the final book. This allows a writer to see their work in print for as little as �65.90.
The service works by providing a series of automated tools so writers can select their book cover, lay-out the book and have it printed on-demand. Using these tools, the book creation process becomes fast and easy. By taking advantage of the latest digital printing technology, PABD eliminates the need for large print runs, one of major expenses of the traditional publishing process. In addition, PABD provides tools to allow writers to sell their book on-line.”
Has anyone used pabd.net yet? Is it as good as it sounds? Are there any hidden catches? If not, then this could be a real boon to a lot of writers. Given the global distribution network that Amazon now provides, and the proliferation of book sites on the net, an enterprising self-publisher could shift a fair amount of copies of their book. (let’s say 1000). Once you’ve got an ISBN number, you can plug straight into Amazon’s wholesale service and indeed, virtually everyone else’s. The problem until now has been finding a cheap way to actually get the physical book produced, given that this area of the market is cluttered with vanity publishers et al who want to obfusicate the whole process. There are a lot of books out there that should be getting published which aren’t - admittedly a lot of those books are going to be non-fiction rather than fiction. History is disappearing faster than it can be documented, so anything that let’s someone knock out a memoir or a thesis or whatever for seventy quid and make it available for future reference has got to be a good thing.
On a related note, this was a key theme in a recent Wired article, The Great Library Of Amazonia, which described how Amazon are scanning the content of books to make that content available online. The great paradox we have at the moment is that people go online first to find information, but the best information tends to be available in books - and that information isn’t usually available online. So Amazon are trying to produce a system where they can flag books which match a user’s search query - and not just a related subject, but down to highlighting a specific page and text in a specific book concerning the user’s search - which of course will lead to more book sales. It’s a quite incredible and audacious project - if it comes off it will signal a whole new renaissance for the book - and of course, Amazon will make a ton of cash. Deservedly so, because they’ve realised the huge information chasm that’s opened up. Thanks to the Net, books themselves rather than training manuals, safety instructions et al are rapidly becoming Ballard’s “invisible literature” - if I can’t read it online, it doesn’t exist.
Other Splinters posts of interest:
- Google Goes Gutenberg
- Publish and be damned
- Book Promotion and Macmillan New Writing List
- Free New Books
- Brrrrrrains
