This reminded me of my first job many, many years ago. I worked at the Lawrence Journal, a tiny little community newspaper, circulation maybe 5000 at the most. The staff consisted of an editor, a photographer, a salesman, and me- the do whatever has to be done girl. (That's right, no staff writers- I spent most of my time whanging press releases into article form, and sometimes, if I was lucky, they'd let me call the mayor's office for a comment on this or that.)
Anyway, my first week there, they taught me to do the layout for newspaper: first, I would type out each story on this slightly waxy, sour-smelling paper. Then, I would cut them out out as carefully as I could. These had to be affixed to the layout boards, which we painted with a hot wax gun to make the articles stick. The masthead always stayed on the boards, but it was part of my job to carefully arrange every article, every ad, and every classified until we had no empty space and the pages were visually appealing.
After that, the editor would box the boards up and take them to the printer- I had no idea how they became newspapers, but reading this, I think I've got a slightly better idea.
And to think I thought my job was a pain in the butt!
Steve- I thought the quality was actually quite good; I got a standard trade paperback, and while the cover isn't as heavy a cardboard, the printing and interior pages were very nice- good heavy paper, and very clear typesetting. That's only for the 5X8 paperbacks; they also offer spiral bindings and another kind of binding that I don't remember right off the top of my head, but which might be more applicable to what you're trying to print.
The only bad thing about it was fighting with Adobe Acrobat to get the PDF file both proportioned correctly, and with the fonts embedded- if you fail to get the fonts embedded, you can't even upload the file.
They charge by the page so a 326-odd page paperback cost me 15 dollars (plus shipping, which put it at around 19 dollars.) I thought it was really a very good deal for what little it cost.
CafePress has kindly set up operations as a POD, and while it's a bitch to get the typesetting correct in PDF format, if you just want to have a book in your hands, or to give to your grandma, it's ideal. I printed a copy of my first novel just to have it (I keep it on my desk for inspiration as I write out the next query letter for it,) and it cost me a grand total of 20 dollars. It seems to me if somebody wanted to go the self-publishing route, that would be the ideal way to do it. At least it doesn't cost money up front.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 4 |
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