Pre-Publishing: How to Get Your Book Ready for Printing

Printing a book is an exciting step for an aspiring author. There was a time when it required getting an agent and a contract with a publisher. However, online printing services have made book publishing attainable for many more authors. Their low cost and ability to produce small print runs (some even “print on demand” – producing as few books as you desire whenever you want them) make self-publishing reasonably attainable.

Between writing and being ready to send your book to the printer, you have a lot of work to do which is known as pre-publishing. If you have some experience, you can do this on your own, but online book printers offer various services to assist with this process. They will all have somewhat different services, software, and packages available, so shop around to find the one that best meets your needs. To give you an overview of the process and an idea what you can expect from an online book printer, here’s what one such publisher, lulu.com, offers for their most basic pre-publishing package:

Primer Publishing Package ($369)

Support. Lulu will assign a project coordinator to manage your project through to getting the final version published.

Cover. Several templates are available, including some with a photo on the cover and an author photo on the back, if desired. You pick the layout you like the best and provide the picture(s) which must be the specified size resolution; photo editing is not included. Lulu provides a free ISBN if you want one for future retail sales.

Formatting. Lulu calls their formatting package “Advanced Manuscript Formatting”; the name and included services will vary depending on the book printer, but this particular service lets you choose from six layouts. The format allows for up to 15 images, which again have to be sized appropriately, no editing is included. Proofreading and editing is not included, but the physical layout aspect to get your manuscript looking right for book printing is covered. They will take care of headers and footers, page numbering, font corrections, paragraph indents, and updating the table of contents.

Product. Once you approve everything thus far, a galley copy (pages formatted and typeset with images in place but not bound) is provided, and you will get a PDF format download also.

So basically, for less than $400, you have access to a service that will pretty much walk you through turning your finished manuscript into a form that is ready for online book printing and binding. Packages go up into the thousands of dollars and include hardbound and softbound copies of the book, but these are the basic steps that you’ll need to do one way or another.