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Blurb - Make your own hard cover book 23-Feb-2009 At 7:08:58 PM nerm

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On 23/02/2009 ajfclark wrote:
>The
>arvo already are through digital
>print australia and lulu.com.
> I have no idea of the mechanics involved though...

Print-on-demand is definitely the future for low volume, middle quality guides (at least until electronic guides take over). Too expensive for colour though. The major advantage is the low up front cost, compared to having to shell out thousands for a traditional offset print run. With pod you can just print the number of guides you have orders for.

lulu.com was really easy to set up - just upload a pdf, a cover, set the price and you are away, and they provide an e-commerce site to sell the books. But in the last couple of months they have gone down hill fast, and introduced exorbitant shipping costs, even though the supposedly have an Australian printer. Hence the move to Digital Print Australia, which is a bit more hassle to set up (you can't just upload the file) - quality seems good though. The other reason was that lulu.com is priced in $US, which was good until the $AUS tanked.

The other big player, for anybody looking into it, is www.createspace.com - which is owned by amazon.com