Resources and Links

Book Printers

There are two ways to have your book printed: offset (traditional) and digital printing. Offset printing is more economical if you plan to print 1000 or more copies; with digital printing (also called print on demand, or POD) you can sometimes print 1 copy at a time if you like. Most of the printers listed here offer both kinds of printing, and binding as well. E-books are still in development, and there are several different formats. If you are interested in this option, ask your printer about how to go about it.

It is important to choose a printer before the other services, as the decisions you make with the printer affect all other aspects of the project. Choose carefully.

This is a tiny sampling of the available printers out there.

Adams Press
This book manufacturing company offers one-color printing for 4 standard trim sizes. They print and bind a minimum of 100 copies. They offer a web page on their site for each title.

Adibooks
This is a full service printer using both offset and POD technology. Their website offers plentiful guidance for first-time authors. They offer instant online quotes.

Bang Printing
This traditional book printer offers every kind of binding (and an excellent explanation of each) and 1- to 4-color printing in runs of 500-100,000. They offer each author his own webset to keep track of orders, inventory, and fulfillment. The FAQ page of their site has excellent general printing information.

BFS Printing
BFS (formerly Benjamin Franklin Smith) is a full service print shop offering POD and offset printing at virtually any size, and a friendly helpful staff to guide you.

Bookmasters, Inc.
Bookmasters does short run printing, but the minimum is 100 copies. They also have a variety of other services including storage, order fulfillment, and an online bookstore.

Braintree Printing
Digital and offset printing, and binding. Serves the Greater Boston area. Reliable and quick.

Hemlock Printers
This company prints covers and books on digital and offset presses. Based in British Columbia, Hemlock is a printer for all of North America.

Lightning Source
Lightning Source is popular with self-publishing authors. They offer digital printing with a limited range of book sizes. They also print on demand directly for Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Baker & Taylor, and others.

Thomson-Shore
This employee-owned printer in Michigan prints books on traditional offset presses and web presses (for large quantities). I know from personal experience that they offer excellent customer service and a high quality product. Quantities: 200-25,000.

Copyright

U.S. Copyright Office
Their website describes in detail the need for a copyright and how to obtain one.

Canadian Intellectual Property Office
If you are a Canadian citizen when you create a work, you automatically hold a copyright on it. This website explains your rights in detail.

ISBN and Bar Codes

You need a 13-digit ISBN (International Standard Book Number) for your book—there is no way to sell the book without it. The number distinguishes your book from all others. You also need a bar code with the ISBN (also known as the Bookland EAN) on the back cover of the book. When the book is printed and about to be sold, you will need to register it with Bowker Link to get it into Books in Print.

ISBN number (U.S.)
Bowker, the official ISBN distributor in the U.S., offers ISBNs and bar codes in groups of ten (so that if you plan to publish more than one book, or more than one version of the same book, your numbers will be more or less sequential).

ISBN number (outside U.S.)
Get a number that is compatible worldwide.

ISBN-13 for Dummies
This site offers a PDF that explains everything you need to know about ISBN-13.

Barcodes
Create a barcode from an existing ISBN for $10.

Editors

There are three levels of editing services that you can request.

1. Content editing consists of advice on writing style, suggestions on overall suitability for your audience, the best ways to get your point across, organization of your book, as well as corrections to your consistency, grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

2. Editing involves corrections to your consistency, sense, grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

3. Copy editing involves only corrections to grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

You may ask for any of these levels of assistance from the editors below.

Sylvia Dovner
Undaunted by technical material, Sylvia is an experienced writer and skilled developmental editor with many years in educational publishing. In addition to helping authors fine-tune their writing, Sylvia is adept at organizing and structuring content for a logical and coherent presentation suited to the material and the target audience. Her special strength is bringing out the best of what each author has to offer.

Janet Stone
As an experienced writer and editor with more than 35 years in educational publishing, Janet understands how to write copy that meets the needs of the target audience. She is skilled in writing in the author's voice, editing copy so that it says what the author wanted to say. Titles she has edited for the trade market include North Quabbin Wilds by William Foye, Having Twins by Elizabeth Noble, and Worcester: A Portrait of Central Massachusetts.

Proofreaders

After the designer has laid out the pages, they should be sent to a proofreader for review. Do not skip this important step in the production of your book. A fresh set of eyes can spot typos, omissions, and other errors missed in earlier stages.

Beyond Words Proofreading
Beyond Words Proofreading is a 25-year-old mother-daughter service. We have seven dedicated editorial proofreaders with a combined 60 years of experience. We specialize in textbooks in all fields, including but not limited to medicine, science, information technology, language, film/video, law, religion/spirituality, education, psychology/psychiatry, and literature. We are respected for the quality of our proofreading and for our ability to keep up with the important but often difficult deadlines of our field.

Alana Calapai
Alana is a proofeader with a background in educational publishing. She has an in-depth knowledge of The Chicago Manual of Style, and several years experience proofreading textbooks and workbooks on a wide range of topics including Algebra, Language Arts, and ESL. She also has experience proofreading for nonprofit newsletters. Alana is a graduate of Tulane University, where she earned her degree in English Literature.

Tara Masih
Twenty-five years of proofreading experience in most genres: textbooks (English and softside science) and trade books (cooking, health, literary and popular fiction, biography, history, business, anthologies, and YA). Books include: Fast Food Nation (Eric Schlosser); The Hermit's Story (Rick Bass); Best American series; The Elements of Style, 4e (Strunk & White); Nemesis: The Final Case of Eliot Ness (mass market pb ed., William Bernhardt).

Indexers

Indexing is usually only needed for nonfiction works. A professional indexer will do a better job of indexing than the author can. However, the author can point out or list the important subject matter that should be listed in the index.

IG Indexers Group
We have over 25 years experience with Textbooks, Periodicals, Trade books, Medical and Technical texts, Engineering, Law, Surveys and Catalogs, and all the NFPA standards, codes, textbooks, and handbooks; also Name Indexes, Harvard University Press and other University Presses. Our fees are negotiable per project. No job is too big or small. And we do rush jobs. Please give us a call at 508-444-6963 or email us from the link above.

Indexing Society of Canada
Find an indexer to suit your needs in English or French.

Translators

Linguist Systems, Inc.
Since 1967 this group has been translating for industry, publishing, and the legal profession. They can translate to and from 117 languages.

Book Illustrators

If you are in need of attractive charts and graphs, I can provide those for you. But there are an almost infinite number of other illustrators ready and waiting to illustrate your book in any way you can imagine. When you contact them, you should of course be ready to explain in detail what you want, but the artist will also want to know exactly how many illustrations you want, and the trim size of your book. Here is a small sample of directories of artists.

Book Crossroads
Among other things, this site has a directory of illustrators of children's books, with links to many, many artists.

Children's Book Illustrators Group
This site has a large gallery of work by illustrators and contact information for each.

Folio Planet
You can choose illustrators by category of their work, such as Medical, Sports, Caricatures, Realism Painting, Realism Stylized, Photo Illustration, and so on.

Medical Illustrators
Discover hundreds of illustrators specializing in the medical and biological sciences in the Medical Illustration Source Book.

Paper Tigers
This is a website about multicultural books for children. It features mostly Korean-American writers and illustrators, including galleries of illustrators' work.

Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators
Their site promises a gallery of illustrators' work soon.

Marketing

This is an important subject that you should tackle early on. If you decide not to hire an agency, you will at the very least need a website. I can help with this. There are a great many marketing/publicity agencies, and some of them specialize in books. Here is a short list.

Author Bytes
This group offers everything from author websites to Podcast production and interview preparation.

Barking Lily
Barking Lily, based in Vancouver, BC (Canada) can help you market and distribute your already printed books, or they will take your project from the manuscript to the bookstore.

Book Marketing Works
They offer an array of ideas for marketing your book, including a long list of book publicists, 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, and dozens of articles on pricing your book, publishing, marketing.

Frugal Marketing
This group offers consulting, articles, and how-to marketing books. The do-it-yourselfer can get a lower level of help here, including phone consultations.

Minerva
Minerva provides marketing for all kinds of products and has had some major coups in the publishing world recently.