Print Press Selection

[poetsunited]

I am currently considering Lulu and a Web-Page or Blog that coincides with the Anthology.

Lulu presents the most cost effective way to go about this. There are no start up costs. It is an online print to order company. A vanity press of sorts but one we can shape to work well for us with no worries of price gouging. Once we design the layout and whatnot and submit it to them, they prepare a finished proof for approval. From there we provide a link to where anyone can order a book at a minimum cost of $7.50. I may round it to $8.00 and pool the 50 cent overage money to purchase more books for give aways and or contests, something to help our community.

The web page or blog will be an exact replica of the anthology with a few additional features. i.e. Archives if we produce more than one and so on.

I will be placing a few more questions and topics in the Anthology section to help guide this and keep points of discussion separate and easy to monitor.

What are your thoughts on this? Please do not be shy we are here to work through things and make everything easy.

[systematicweasel]

I would pay the price for the physical copy, =D It sounds reasonable to me. The blog/website is a great way to promote the project as well.

[Philip Thrift]

If you want to produce an ebook version along with the paper version (this is becoming essential these days), keep in mind that editing/formatting that version will take an extra effort for iBookStore, Amazon (Kindle), B&N (NOOK), etc.

You can no doubt make a PDF from the print format delivered to Lulu, but PDF is pretty lame for ereaders like Kindle and NOOK. When you go through making an ebook available on Lulu (and via them, to iBookstore [ www.lulu.com/publish/ebooks/ ]), they would want to charge extra for making it look good in EPUB -- a bit trickier for poetry, if you don't do it yourself.

[poetsunited]

Philip Thanks fo rthe heads up. I have been researching the e-book route and may have to get with you outside the forums. I want to to do an e-book in conjuction but at little or no costs is my goal. That is why I am also considering a seperate web page for the anthology to be displayed. I figure I can get more into the weeds once we have ended the submission period.