The Librarian's Guide to Micropublishing: Helping Patrons and Communities Use Free and Low-cost Publishing Tools to Tell Their Stories

What a fantastic resource! The title should be Everyone’s Guide to Micro Publishing with Notes to Librarians. Walt Crawford gives step-by-step instructions for producing paperback and hardback books in small quantities — just one, if that’s all you need — at amazingly low prices (under $9 for a paperback, about $18 for a hardback, and $75 for a full-color coffee table book on luxury stock). Don’t laugh at that last one. I produced one of those books for a birthday gift. The price tag was $300!

Crawford’s primary tools are Microsoft Word and other commonly used programs. But if you don’t have these programs and you don’t want to buy them, he also includes instructions for using free software available on the Internet. A show more very valuable feature of the book is the detailed instructions for using Lulu and Amazon’s CreateSpace to produce your book-on-demand, including point-by-point comparisons of the two that will help you decide which of them is best for your project. (Did you know that Lulu and CreateSpace will take orders and send out books for you?) The advice for libraries that want to become community or academic publishers will hold for anyone who wants to become their own small press. Whether your aim is to produce a book of family stories or to test the market for your how-to book on underwater basketweaving, you will want this book. Not one useless word in it.

Unfortunately, the book is priced for libraries who will take advantage of its offer of copyright-free photocopying of certain chapters. Even at $49.50 (ouch!), I recommend it to the individual seeking to produce a few copies of a book (or at least one at a time, as needed). As well as great instructions, you get templates for producing a professional-looking book. P.S. Amazon shows the names of several sellers that sell for about half that. show less

I'm not a librarian, but I am interested in micropublishing, and I found this book fascinating and informative. It addressed more topics than I would have thought I might need in putting a book together for self-publishing. I read the entire book, even the details on fonts and pagination, and I think I'm much better prepared than I would have been otherwise. The price is daunting, but if libraries indeed buy this book (and I hope they will), then I'd urge writers with an interest in self-publishing to check it out of whatever library is available to them. My particular interest is in putting together an anthology of articles from a quarterly journal related to Sherlock Holmes -- I'm one of the journal editors and have previously done a show more couple of anthologies with a publisher. This book gave me the confidence to get out there and "do it myself." My only reservation is all the information on MS Word; I vastly prefer MS Publisher. I'd love to be able to add in-text illustrations, but it doesn't sound like that's really an option at this point. That said, I still think this volume is wonderful...I just wish it cost half the price that's listed, so that it could be a little more accessible to readers/writers/editors and anthologists. show less

Why should librarians be involved in micropublishing? That's a question Walt Crawford asks in his first chapter, but then never really answers it satisfactorily. Instead, through the remaining chapters, he addresses the soon-to-be author of a family history or a writing club's compilation (in other words, library users, not librarians). In very clear detail, Crawford shows how to start micropublishing; he singles out CreateSpace and Lulu -- while too briefly dismisses vanity presses. Aspiring authors are then given a long tutorial on templates, fonts, and layout -- it's a bit pedantic in spots, but there's a lot of very helpful information compressed into a few pages. It's clear what the focus of the book is when the ending barely show more mentions distributing the book (Crawford notes other books that discuss marketing in more depth, and his comments about them are fantastic, if sometimes scathing). Ultimately, if you're interested in self-publishing, this is worth a read before you start, even if you're not a librarian.

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LT Haiku:

Have a tale to tell?
Learn about fonts and layout.
Book might sell better. show less

In The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing, Walt Crawford advocates micropublishing as a way to support the community by publishing books on a small scale and at little cost on subjects important to the community such as genealogy, family histories, and local history.

Crawford defines micropublishing as publishing books that may serve niches and are printed on demand, from one to 500 copies. He covers the basics of micropublishing as well as the technical details of formatting, use of templates, type, available programs, and editing. Particularly useful are the sections describing solutions and techniques that can be used while writing the manuscript that will help ease its way into publication later.

Libraries can help the community show more by providing micropublishing services at low cost, and Crawford’s book is a comprehensive source. As Crawford sees it, Micropublishing is “all about doing it on the cheap without the results looking cheap.” show less

The Librarian's Guide to Micropublishing
Helping Patrons and Communities Use
Free and Low-Cost Publishing Tools
to Tell Their Stories
by Walt Crawford

I always get what I need when I need it, and my new 172 page best buddy is no exception. I love a title that tells you everything just in it's name. This one I needed so much it made sense right off the bat, with it's simple language, easy to follow suggestions and awesome web referrals it came right together for me.

If there is anyone out there like myself that has a book or a couple books or ideas that are just sitting around, this little number can get you there. It answered all the questions I had in such a direct and gentle manner I felt confident that I can get myself published. I show more totally recommend this most recent edition to my spiritual toolbox to anyone serious about getting your message out to the world with as little hassle as possible. Thanks Walt, for helping us so much.

Love & Light,

Riki Frahmann show less

Essentially a primer on do-it-yourself book publishing, this slender volume (172 pages, paperback, $49.50) covers such nuts-and-bolts issues as typography, layout, copyright concerns, print-on-demand (POD) service providers, marketing/publicity, and so forth. Ostensibly aimed at librarians, the text is general enough in tone and language for use by anyone that wishes to create a book with very limited print runs, meaning from a single copy upwards to maybe 500 copies.
Clearly written and with plenty of examples, this how-to manual contains a glossary of technical words and a bibliography of other books on this topic. Smatterings of black and white illustrations are mostly screen shots of word processing software.
A caveat, and it’s a show more fairly major one, is the author’s idea of what constitutes the concepts of “free” and “low-cost.” The fact of the matter is that everything comes with a price tag, it’s just a matter of who is footing the bill. In this case, the author-to-be pays a for-profit company (Lulu and CreateSpace are the two that Crawford discusses) to perform any of a range of services, from basic printing and binding to copy editing, artwork and who knows what else. The more services requested, the higher the cost per book. Crawford writes that “I’m assuming you’ll use friends and acquaintances to substitute for some of the fee-based activities” (page 31). Lots of luck with that. Although he draws a distinction between micropublishing and the infamous vanity press, it’s an academic argument. The bottom line is that the author is paying, rather than getting paid, to see his or her name in print. show less

Crawford defines micropublishing as using print on demand services to produce copies of a book as required for a niche market. This definition is too narrow; micropublishing is ANY content creation, print or online, for a niche market—publishing, being the act of making public, is not limited to any particular format. What Crawford means to suggest is that libraries can and should be involved in community content creation, because libraries are their community information centers, and can inexpensively utilize print on demand processes to assist interested authors.

What Crawford give us is a how-to manual for producing a polished physical manuscript—the content development process is out of scope here. He provides templates for show more laying out a manuscript, step-by-step instructions for making the text look good, and details for navigating the interaction with a print on demand vendor. The goal is to enable anyone to create a good-looking physical book, using only common software. Crawford assumes access to MS Word and the internet; with only this basic equipment, anyone should be able to follow the steps he lays out and, without too much difficulty, have a reasonably-priced object for sale.

While Crawford sees this as most applicable for public libraries, where writing groups and local history or genealogy students may produce content of interest to a small audience, his methods are equally useful for a self-publishing fiction author or even an open-access academic imprint that wants to make an archival copy available. This book’s value, though, comes from its detailed layout instruction; readers are encouraged to apply these skills to their own imaginative ends. After all, the goal of micropublishing is to produce a high-quality content carrier, cheaply. Crawford shows us how to do exactly that in this book. show less