Lightning Source is a company that prints books on demand. It offers a service to publishers which essentially means that if you are going to use them, you will be the publisher and not them. You will provide the ISBN number, and all of the sources. The sources consist of digital files for both the text and the cover and you can submit them in a variety of formats.
I submitted mine in the form of pdf files, the cover being in full colour. I'll get on to the details of what is expected a little later, but first let's deal with the process. It's fairly painless and remarkably efficient...
You first set up an account with Lightning Source online which involves supplying your details, including bank details. They will want to charge for their services of setting up your title, any print proofs you want, any shipments of copies to your address. Once you have an account set up, you can set up your title by supplying the ISBN, the title, the extent in pages, the physical measurements of the book, and the type of paper. But you get lots of help with this in the form of documents you can download, including tables of standard sizes, paper types, and a calculator to even work out how thick the spine will be.
All of this information depends really on your finished book. You'll need to know its exact extent in pages, including front matter, text, indexes, appendices, whatever. It's down to you to do the production work. If you need them to do any production work, for example modifying your files, they will charge a commercial rate, typically the equivalent of $70 per hour or part thereof. It pays to learn your software and get it right.
Once you have decided on the size of your book, you can download a template file which contains the sizes you need. In my case, I downloaded the template, looked up the dimensions, and set up a document in OpenOffice.org Writer (which is free software - you don't need to buy Microsoft Word...) with the right measurements. You need to be very careful and pay attention to margins. You also need to look after any running heads (those tag lines on the top of bottom of each page), and page numbering. Remember, Lightning Source take your documents exactly as you supply them so it's up to you to get them right.
I chose to work entirely in the Open Office document once it was formatted correctly, saving regularly. Remember, the definition of a split second is the amount of time it takes to realise you don't have a backup. Open Office Writer has the useful facility of exporting to pdf format which is one of the ones that Lightning Source accepts. It also exports all of the fonts automatically so if you choose different fonts, they will end up in the pdf, and can be printed correctly.
The facilities in Open Office are excellent though you do have to learn how to use them. No-one will come and do it for you so it's helpful to copy your book file to a throw-away version that you can experiment on, keeping your working copy safe and separate. That way you can experiment with formats, styles, etc, without risking anything important.
Once you have your book text finished, you can work out your extent. Remember to include title page, copyright, preface, contents, and anything else you think is needed, and also the end matter such as indexes. Read the help documents from LS about calculating the extent because they need to make up the extent to fit the size of sheets they use. They may need to add 2 or even 4 pages to the extent to make it fit. The need a pair of blank pages at the very back so that they can include the bar code for internal processing.
I was initially worried about getting the bar code sorted out because although I had the ISBN number, I didn't have sensible software for generating a bar code image. There are sites on the web that will do so but they seemed uniformly poor, and I didn't want to risk putting an unusable bar code on my book cover. I needn't have worried because once you know the size and extent, you can actually download from LS a cover template file which contains the barcode.
The cover template comes in the form of an eps file (encapsulated postscript) and LS recommends you use the Adobe suite of graphics packages to make and manipulate your final pdf file. That's an expensive option but you can do all the work in free software. The eps file can be opened using the free software Gimp. You need to make sure you open it in 300dpi (dots per inch) because when you've added your graphics, you'll need to save it at that resolution to get a good quality cover image.
The eps file consists of a single layer, with the guides and crop marks shown clearly. You create additional image layers, add your images and text, then remove the original layer containing the guides, and export the image flattening everything into a single layer. If all goes well, you'll have a file which contains your perfectly positioned cover design and text, along with the spine, with the guides and crop marks removed.
I then needed to convert the eps file to pdf. As I avoid the Microsoft tax, I use Ubuntu (a free version of Linux) rather than Windows but built-in there is a useful utility called epstopdf which worked quickly and effectively to produce my final pdf file for the cover. First time around, I got caught on the resolution - I had ended up with a 100dpi file which would have produced a very poor cover. Fortunately, the guys at LS caught this for me and asked me to resubmit the file. Normally they charge for resubmission but they kindly waived this. The reason I made the mistake was lack of familiarity with the graphics software so it pays to practice and check everything. You do have a contact person at LS who is at the end of an email if there any problems and they are very effiicient at replying.
The cost of submitting files is around £25 each. When you set up your title you specify also the discount you are prepared to offer the distribution channel, typically Amazon. Although the usual is around 55%, you can set yours as low as 20%. I set mine at 25% based on other recommendations on the web. That means that when Amazon sells a book, they take 25% of the cover price (which you also set in a number of currencies) and they charge the customer the postage. LS gets the order from Amazon, prints the book and despatches it and gets 75% of the cover price. From that, they subtract what it costs to produce it, which is where they make their money, and you get the difference. If you were going through a commercial publisher, you might be lucky to end up with around 10% of the cover price. They'd offer placing in bookshops of course but if you're more likely to sell through Amazon, they're not offering you much for their commission.
When you first publish with LS, you have to buy a proof copy of your book - which seems reasonable as you've never seen their quality before. Most of the cost of the proof is the carrier charge and in my case they sent it from the UK to Spain by DHL. It was very effiicient getting from the UK to Barcelona and there seemed to enter limbo for a couple of days but overall it was a pretty good service.
The whole process feels very much like a distraction for someone who want to get on with writing, but it's not too difficult and there are clear advantages. No-one gets you to change your content to fit in with their other marketing plans and products, and no-one interferes in the design. That does place stress on you taking the responsibility of course. But you completely control the time schedule and of course you don't get rejections. You are responsible for marketing so you have to spend time with websites, forums, spreading the word and getting publicity where you can. This tawdry side of writing goes with the territory and if you don't do marketing, no-one will know about you.
Getting onto Amazon is supposed to be automatic but may well take 6-8 weeks for a first time author, and maybe 3 weeks for someone already listed on Amazon.
All in all, it's an interesting experience in itself. It keeps your outlay down to very little indeed and gives you total control. Since the likelihood of a first time author selling well in bookshops is close to zero, your online marketing efforts could compare favourably with anything a commercial publisher will offer. And because you can avoid returns, you won't have anything eating into your income. You could break even with a very low sales figure and the rest is income.
Even if I don't sell a lot of copies (and it's a non-fiction book under another name), it's still invaluable experience and one I'll surely repeat.
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No, LS doesn't take anything beyond the initial setup charge and the printing costs per copy. It means that by setting the price of the book, and the discount to Amazon, you completely control how much you make on each sale.
LS makes its money by the printing operation since all the publishing work is done by you.
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I am in the process of submitting my files to lightning source. I want to make sure I do it right since they charge for uploading more than the first try.
I am completely confident about submitting the interior files using Indesign but I'm not sure about submitting my cover.
When you submit for a cover generator - the bar code is in the middle of the back cover. Can I move it? Does LS provide one for you? I'm not sure what to do as I've read different answers to this. Thanks for your help
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I think the trick is to copy the bar code to another layer, and position it wherever you want it. Then when you remove the layer LS supplied in the template, you have the bar code image usable to position wherever it's suitable. When you flatten the layers into a single image it works fine. As long as you keep it at 300dpi it seems to be usable - at least, it was in my case. I'd certainly avoid the free utilities for producing your own bar code as I tried half a dozen and they were all very poor. Good luck.
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|64.12.117.xxx |2010-05-28 15:41:19 Randy Kieffer - Dba taxesI'm in the early stages of this process. I believe I have to start a Pubishing company to use LS. I plan on getting a DBA but am unclear about taxes and the like. Do you have to file sales tax forms if you buy directly from LS? I'm looking for the most simple way to do this.
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Hi Randy,
To the best of my knowledge, there is no involvement of LS in anything to do with taxes. The responsibility for managing the tax side is with the publisher. In my case, I simply obtained an ISBN, thus becoming a publisher, then published the book. It is probably wise to ask the relevant tax authorities about the requirements for reporting sales. I'm in Spain and we simply fill in a tax form.
Incidentally, all you need to self-publish is the ISBN and that makes you a publisher. As a sole-trader (I don't know what the equivalent is in the US) you don't need to incorporate a company.
All the best,
JC
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|87.103.6.xxx |2010-06-10 21:53:12 E.A. Bucchianeri - Wow, does the free PDF formatting software work?Thank you for all the helpful info
--I was thinking of using LS for my next publications and they recommend using the Adobe Distiller saying it works the best with their printers, but that is a rather pricey option. Does the free PDF programs you suggest really produce good quality text and covers, ie. Open Office and Gimp? I'd hate to fork out for Adobe and find I didn't have to. Plus, does Gimp offer online tutorials on how to design the cover using the LS template? Just how do you use an LS cover template properly? I'd be afraid I wouldn't have all the guidlines and cropline removed correctly and end up with a mess for a cover and a load or resubmision fees. Plus, will downloading Ubuntu mess up MSWindows that I already have downloaded on my computer? I'm new to this whole LS printing business as you can see! 
Sorry for bombarding you with questions!
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E.A. Bucchianeri:
Quite a few questions and too many to just answer in a reply here so I'll write up a fuller response and post an article on the site. Hopefully, I'll get it done today and then I'll post a link on these comments as well.
Really good questions so thanks for raising them.
All the best,
JC
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http://www.johncuando.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=categor...
This is the article trying to answer the questions raised above. I hope it's of use. All the best,
JC
doesn't LS also take besides printing costs a 20% fee for any sale? I thought I read that somewhere. Hm.