Writer Sanctum
Writer's Haven => Formatter's Forge [Public] => Topic started by: garygibsonsf on November 12, 2018, 03:32:58 PM
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Hopefully this is the right corner to ask this question...I'm looking for a way to do POD but without distribution: the idea is to print a book, on demand, for Patreon subscribers without otherwise offering it for sale publicly. Anyone know of a halfway decent service for which this fits the bill?
I already have a paperback available through Kdp Print, but I can't see any way (unless I'm missing it) to format and set up a book through KDP-P without having it available for sale. I had a look at a website called thebookpatch.com, but they don't get terribly good reviews. Any recommendations?
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Hopefully this is the right corner to ask this question...I'm looking for a way to do POD but without distribution: the idea is to print a book, on demand, for Patreon subscribers without otherwise offering it for sale publicly. Anyone know of a halfway decent service for which this fits the bill?
I already have a paperback available through Kdp Print, but I can't see any way (unless I'm missing it) to format and set up a book through KDP-P without having it available for sale. I had a look at a website called thebookpatch.com, but they don't get terribly good reviews. Any recommendations?
I know of other services where you can control the distribution to some extent, but none offhand where you can cut it off from all supply channels.
Pardon me if I'm overstepping by offering a suggestion you didn't actually for. While I can understand wanting to give Patreon backers a book for free, would it be too awful if other people could also buy it? If you made the price high enough, likely no one would buy if that's really essential. You could still get author copies at cost and ship them to your Patreon supporters. To me, that seems easier than trying to find a separate POD, which will probably have higher print costs than KDP-P. I notice the print costs are roughly the same as they were in CS, and whenever I've compared, everybody else I checked was always more expensive, meaning you'd incur greater expense to give your supporters the same book. Also, a lot of PODs base price on how many copies are ordered at a time, meaning that to get closer to the KDP-P price, you'd have to order a lot of copies.
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Both KDP print and Ingram Spark allow you to print copies before the book is released, although with kdp it's limited to five (ordered whole the book is still 'private'). Ingram doesn't have a limit.
Ingram also lets you print a book without an isbn and intended for personal copies for self, family, etc. So that would likely be just the ticket.
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Doesn't B&N's print service allow this? Seem to recall seeing that somewhere. Or you could look into having a local print shop do it, but unless you reached a minimum it probably wouldn't be cost effective.
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You can easily do this with Lulu - it will cost a little more than KDP but in my experience the quality is often a little better.
I've done this in cases where I wanted to make a separate edition with different combinations of novellas, for instance, with a view to selling at a local event.
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48hrbooks.com (http://48hrbooks.com)
thebookpatch.com (http://thebookpatch.com)
Search Google for "book printers' and/or pod printers.
You want a printer that only prints books, not business cards, wedding invitations, etc.
Book printing is a very competitive field. Some printers will say a setup fee is standard. It is not. Some require a minimum number of copies. A few do not.
Do your research.