In 1997 I had an idea for a book I wanted to self-publish. I paid $250 for a block of ten ISBN numbers as part of my preperations for doing so.
While I did learn a lot about Quark (synopsis: yuck!) and Adobe FrameMaker I never actually got my book printed. (It was to be a compilation of speeches and I never heard back about—and didn't follow up on—my request for copyright permission to use a handful of addresses that weren't in the public domain or otherwise licensable.)
For years the expensive list of ten 10-digit numbers ($25 per number!) has sat in the bottom of a filing cabinet. I managed to find them this evening. (I found all sorts of other stuff that I hadn't seen or thought about in years, but that's possibly the subject of a future post.)
I got to looking because I've been trying to decide whether I should go ahead and publish, on a larger scale, the book I typeset in LaTeX to give as Christmas gifts last year.
(Mormon's Book, a paragraphized version of The Book of Mormon. The initial print-run was 25 in December and another 52 in March. Since President Gordon B. Hinckley asked Church members to re-read the Book of Mormon again before the end of the year I've had a couple of inquiries from people who've received Mormon's Book asking if additional copies are avaiable. At the moment, I'm all out—I gave away my final copy six weeks ago to a captain in the US Air Force.)
Up till now I've had the book printed locally at Alexanders, a digital printer in Utah County. In the volumes I've been doing each book has run $8.70/each. If I went with a real bonda-fide book printer instead, and ordered a larger run (perhaps 500?) I'm sure I could get the unit cost down lower.
One issue I've struggled with is what to price the book at if I do decide to publish and sell it. The content, originally published in 1830, has long since entered the public domain. It wasn't divide into verses until 1879. My reparagraphization doesn't precisely match the original 1830 version because in the early 19th century it was fashionable to typeset paragraphs that would sometime span multiple pages(!).
Therefore, the amount of "work" I've done has been limited to typesetting in LaTeX. What sort of markup is that labor worth? As a practical matter many people seem to find it much easier to read (as a book) when it isn't chopped up into chapters & verses. I don't want to take advantage of peoples religious beliefs just to make money, however. Thoughts?
What I didn't find this evening in a quick review of isbn.org is whether I can change the name of my (nascent heretofore really non-existant) publishing company. The name I registered the ISBNs under eight years ago might not be my first choice still today...
—Michael A. Cleverly
Wednesday, August 03, 2005 at 22:06