Printing.

So, we've chosen the stories that are going in the collection. You have helped us choose the name of the book. Splinters. Well done everyone, excellent choice.
So now we're going to work out how much it's going to cost to print the book. If you're more organised than me, you would have probably done this first, but hey, this is Timeline Books.
Printing is an expensive business.
Right, imagine someone wants you to make a potato print of an owl on a piece of paper.

It will take a good hour to buy the potato and to carve the owl onto it. Once that's done it will take 10 seconds to print one owl. If they then wanted another 100 owl prints, it would take no time at all to print the other 100 owls, cos you've already got the owl print ready.
This is my crass description of the printing industry. The cost of small print runs is a lot more per book than the cost of larger ones.
Our print run is 500. This is relatively small and so the cost per book would usually be quite high. The cheapest I can find online for what we're looking to produce is around £2.40 per copy. This does not include typesetting, proofreading, editing, designing the cover or all the other expenses that publishing a book includes.
As our budget for the whole project is £1,000.
Oops.
Ah, but wait.
I have worked in the bookselling industry for 26 years and have lots of wonderful friends who I could maybe ask advise and/or help.
So I have.
I spoke to my friends at Gallic Books and I asked them who they used to print their books. Gallic Books are lovely. They told me that they used a company called CPI Anthony Rowe and they also if I sent them the book specification they would get a quote for me. You see, I told you Gallic Books were lovely didn't I?
So now we've got the quote back from the printers and rather than £2.40 a copy, they have quoted us about £1.40. That has just saved us £500.

It also means we have £300 left to do everything else to get this book published.
So now it's down to you lot again.

I need help to build a microsite to get some pre-awareness for the book. Are there any html whizzkids out there who would like to offer their services on a micro budget? If so, please get in touch. It would be greatly appreciated.

We also need an editor & a couple of proof readers who love their jobs so much that they'd do this in their spare time (almost).

News of our latest competition will be announced very soon too.