[FM Discuss] publisher workflow ideas

[Anne Gentle]

Hi all -
I've been picking the brain of Richard Hamilton who has started-up a
publishing house called XML Press (he's publishing my book, Conversation and
Community this summer, yeah!) here at the STC Conference. Here's his
workflow, and I think it's a great path for FLOSS Manuals.

1. Buy a 10- or 100-pack of ISBNs from Bowker. For FM, since we are not a
US-based org, we have to find another way to get ISBNs, probably from
Amsterdam since FM is a Stitchting. I think you can get 10 ISBNs for USD$275
from Bowker.
2. Contact Lightning Source as a publisher and open a new account. An
account is something like USD$39 a year.
3. Upload PDFs and cover PDFs to Lightning Source.
4. Set a wholesale and retail price. Richard had a spreadsheet that showed
scenarios. This type of price setting flexibility gives us a couple of
abilities - providing extremely low cost copies to organizations like
libraries, or offering a higher markup for a "social good" donation while
receiving a printed book, or giving an organization a way to bulk order
copies.
5. Sell on Amazon mostly, but they do offer plenty of distributors include
brick-n-mortar stores - and it's not just US Amazon, whew.

Once the steps are done, you don't have to change anything that I know of -
though do let me know if you see holes or have a scenario that isn't going
to work with this process. I think the starter step is to get a pack of
ISBNs for FLOSS Manuals.

Thanks,
Anne

-- 
Anne Gentle
email: annegentle at justwriteclick.com
blog: www.justwriteclick.com
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