Home-Printing vs Commercial Printing of your Self-Published Book

If you are producing a predominantly black & white book of about 20 pages, then home-printing using a home computer-based printer (inkjet or laser) can be the most cost-effective solution for your self-publishing needs.

If you need a few color photos/pages, then you could print all the photos onto a couple of full-color pages and then insert them into the center/front/or back of your book.

Or you could have a full-color cover printed (front and back) that has your colored images.

However, maintaining a printer (buying ink or cartridges, drums) can monetarily add up quite quickly.

I have gone this route quite extensively in producing classroom handouts for my teaching purposes. In the future I may add a chapter to this thesis about the process. But for now this document will focus on how to get a book published that requires printing beyond what my home printing system could cost-effectively provide.

My book required full-color pages and contained a larger number of pages (Book 1 = 66 pages). The cost of supplies and upkeep for my color-laser printer was too great to allow use of this printing option. It also requires a large amount to time to print and bind a book this way. This amount of time also was not cost-effective to me since I have a full-time job and book production is a hobby for me at this time in my life.

When researching for this book, I realized that a great number of published tatting books are:

·Self-published

·Home-printer or copier printed

·Comb or spiral bound—inexpensive options for ‘doing it yourself’.

·Do not have an ISBN number

Note regarding need for ISBN number: Due to the niche-market nature of tatting/lacemaking books, most authors realize that their books are probably not going to be mass marketed in such places as Barnes & Nobles. Most tatting books are wholesaled and sold through Handy Hands (Barbara Foster). She does not require that a book have an ISBN number and sells it effectively without one. Thus, if you are home-printing your book, you can get away with not having/buying an ISBN. You are still the publisher and author and all rights remain with you.