Many of us would like to see what we have written in print. It
may be our memoirs, our stories, our poems or our family
history. Maybe it's a children's book with our own
illustrations, or a collection of our favourite recipes
with anecdotes related to the times these meals were eaten.
For the majority of us this will always remain only a dream.
Very few aspirant authors will find a publisher for what they
have written.
The answer to this is to self publish. This is often known as
"vanity publishing", but there is nothing vain about wanting
to see your work nicely bound and on your, your family's and
your friends' bookshelves.
Traditionally, self publishing has been a very costly enterprise.
Now, with advances in technology, you can publish your own book at a very
reasonable price.
Boutique Books has been in business since 2009, and has facilitated over 2000 books in that time.
Boutique Books offers a range of services, any combination of which
can help you to get your book into print.
Have you already typed everything into a word processing programme?
If so, we can help you with editing, copy editing, format design and
layout - or, if you're quite satisfied that what's there is pretty
perfect, just get it ready for print.
If all you have is a bunch of handwritten pages, we can take this, too,
and make it into a book - although this would obviously not be exactly
cheap as a great deal of work would be needed to achieve this!
We can also arrange for the printing of your book. If you want 10 books or more this
will be done by a printing company. Unfortunately, smaller quantities for books that
require a spine cannot be catered for, but folded and stapled books can be produced
in smaller quantities if necessary.
In addition, we can help you to get your ISBN number and barcode.
Read more about ISBN...
Should you wish to, you can also have your book present on our website for people
to order direct from you, or download, depending on your decisions in this regard.
To clarify, Boutique Books is not a publisher, but facilitates you to be your own publisher.
What this means is that while you pay the costs up front, you also reap the full rewards if the book is successful.
Boutique Books can help with editing and proofreading, layout and cover design, printing and creation of ebook files.
We don't do any marketing, sales or distribution.
Even the very best writers are edited, although book editing is, unfortunately, always rather expensive as each word has to be read and each sentence evaluated.
As it is not possible to pick up everything in a single read, and as you will likely make changes as a result of the editor's comments and suggestions,
if you choose to go with editing your work will also need to go through the proofing phase. In mainstream publishing, a book will be proofed more than once,
but this obviously results in additional costs (and as a result you may have noticed that even award-winning mainstream books contain some small language errors
as publishers reduce the amount of time spent on checking a book). However, a single post-editing proofread should be sufficient to ensure that there are very
few errors left in the book.
Academic editing is a bit different from the more general editing that Boutique Books does. Head over to our sister company, Preston-Hall Academic Editors, for information about what they can offer.
This is not an easy question to answer, because the cost will depend on what needs
to be done, how many pages there are, how you want it printed and on what kind of paper, and how you want
it bound. We can, however, give you some examples:
Text supplied in final form (i.e. no editing or proofing required), in a Word
or similar document.
Layout required
Cover design required
ISBN number required
50 final booklets, printed and finished, required
Costs:
Layout - R1 485.00
Cover design - R1 485.00
ISBN facilitation and barcode - no charge
Print facilitation - R780.00
Printing (80gsm bond, black only for inside pages, full colour on 300gsm card, gloss laminated
cover, including delivery in South Africa) R1 300.00
TOTAL COST: R5 050.00
As a matter of interest, the cost of printing 50 copies of the same book, but in full colour would be about R3 400 (as opposed to R1 300 when printing in black only). This shows that printing in full colour is significantly more expensive than printing in black. What one can do, however, is print a group of pages in colour and place these in the book in a bundle, as one often sees with autobiographies.
Text supplied in in a word or similar document.
Editing required.
Layout required
Cover design required
ISBN number required
100 printed books required
Costs:
-------------------------
Editing is almost always the most expensive part of the process because the editor
has to read each and every word and make considered decisions about what is
read. We make a point of not fiddling with the "voice" of the author but of
ensuring that the work is grammatically acceptable and that spelling and
punctuation are correct. Suggestions are made regarding the style, content
and story line where appropriate.
To edit a book of this length (about 64 000 words) will cost in the region of R11 385.
While this might seem like a great deal of money, it is often money well spent
because a book filled with errors will not sell and any money spent on printing
it will have been wasted.
-------------------------
Layout - R1 485
Cover design - R1 485.00
ISBN facilitation and barcode - no charge
Print facilitation - R780.00
TOTAL PRINT PREPARATION COST: R3 750.00
-------------------------
Because it is almost impossible to catch everything in a single read, and because
the author will often make changes after the first edit, proof reading after layout
is required. In this case, proof reading would cost R4 950.
-------------------------
Printing of 100 copies, including delivery costs in South Africa: about R50.00 per book
Therefore, total cost of printing 100 copies is R5 000.00
-------------------------
TOTAL PRODUCTION COST OF FIRST 100 BOOKS: R25 085.00
Of course, if your book is fewer words than this, your book will work out cheaper
than this.
-------------------------
As you can see, the setup costs form a great portion of the cost of the first copies. Usually, the more copies that are printed, the less each book will cost. BUT there is no point in printing many books if you are not sure of selling them! Books sitting in boxes under your bed are wasted capital.
Layout and design
Editing and proofreading
ISBN application and barcode: no charge if we are preparing your book for print
Barcode - R100 if we are not preparing your book for print
Print facilitation of books prepared by us: R780
Print facilitation of books prepared by you: R1 525
Commercial Printing and binding per quote
It does not matter where in Southern Africa, or even the world, you may be as we
can simply send you a print-ready file which you can have printed locally. The print
prices indicated in the above examples include delivery costs to all but the most remote places within South Africa.
If Boutique Books does the layout of your book for you, we can also let you have your book
in .mobi (kindle), .epub (xhtml) and clickable PDF formats. In addition, we supply you with files
formatted for Amazon KDP print on demand. Generally this will cost you
R940. Please note that you should have a different ISBN for your
e-book than for your printed book.
For this, we do not help with uploading, but do supply information that should make it possible for you to do this yourself.
If you want us to upload, we charge an additional R990. We believe, however, that it is in your interests to control your own accounts
and do your own uploading, and we have found that most people are able to manage on their own.
Books that are heavy on pictures, or where there are many tables and graphs,
do not translate well into e-books. This is because e-book readers differ vastly, and the user
can dictate the size of the font and page, making control of the display of anything that is not straight,
flowed text more difficult. The R990 charge does not include trying to make such items pretty,
and if that is what is required a separate quote would be necessary.
If you are interested only in an e-book and do not intend to ever print the book, or if you want someone
to help you market your e-book after we have created it for you, then you may like to contact
David through his website at www.myebook.co.za.
Why not fill in this form or e-mail any questions you might have to enquiry@boutiquebooks.co.za? You could also telephone 033-387-3186, or fax 086-609-1535.
Need English/Afrikaans translation or language workshops?
Then visit http://www.wordguru.co.za.
Need academic editing of your essay, dissertation, thesis, research report, academic paper, concept note or proposal?
Then visit http://www.preston-hall.co.za.
Want your own website to promote your books? Live Mxaku specialises in developing author websites. You can contact him at
https://livemxaku.com.
Looking for something special? To get a one-off handbound version of your book, or a special gift for someone instead of or as well as
commercially prepared books,
visit our sister bespoke bindery here Hoopoe Bindery for books bound by hand.
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