Bronwyn Calder has finally completed writing her epic fantasy novel "Askar" after 20 years working on it. We have been developing a film script version and my students have been creating Askar-themed internet games. What this is leading up to is a new media publishing project.
This gets us into self-publishing which is quite a learning adventure. We are publishing with "lulu.com" which our writing friends like and recommend - thanks Colin and Joss - see it at..
http://www.lulu.com/content/1539440
No e-book version yet. Lots of interesting pros and cons there and a lot of discussion going on amongst us here. A special point here is that "Askar" is big, 464 pages in its Lulu version. Print-on-demand is very cost-dependent on the number of pages so "Askar" becomes relatively expensive as a physical paper book which helps make the case for the e-book. We will probably put up a separate e-book version in a few days. The font/page size for the printed book does not do screen reading well for us, and IMHO an e-book also needs quite different wording for its copyright statement.
We could have reduced the cost a little by going for a smaller font = Garamond 11pt rather than the Garamond 12pt we ended up using. Various people drafted in for their opinion all said the bigger font was worth it.
We needed some copies quickly and with Christmas coming we could not get a print job done in time so we are trying home-printing some examples and we have got as far as the first 4 prototypes. In brief, we were able to buy A5 paper and our modest Brother DCP 115 C home inkjet printer is doing the heavy-duty duplex page-printing job reliably and economically. We can get the covers printed on A3 card at reasonable cost by a copy centre. The fun and games is in do-it-yourself paperback glue binding and we have been trying various kinds of glue. "PVA" and "Contact Adhesive(ADOS F2)" both worked with F2 being a quick process, but the spine comes out rather flexible and so wear-creases appear on it with normal use. The latest experiment with "Gorilla Glue" is looking like the best so far. We also need to try hot glue.
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