A couple of days ago I came across the Self Publishing website. The amount of information on the website is quite overwhelming! But you can order a free copy of their book, Publishing Basics – A Guide for the Small Press and Independent Self-Publisher that will help guide you through a lot of the resources available through their website. Just fill out the form to download the free e-book on this page. Then you will have the option to order a printed version of the book for free (+$1.99 shipping). I just finished the book today and not only is it chock-full of useful tips for self-publishers, it is also printed on various types of paper with examples of both offset and digital printing processes. This provides an excellent way to examine the difference between the papers and printing options available.

Publishing Basics is an excellent way to navigate through the terminology used in the publishing industry and sort through the conflicting information in the self-publishing industry. Here are a few of the helpful tips I gleaned:

1. Start your own publishing company and buy your own block of ISBN numbers. Do not buy a single ISBN number from another publishing house or author services company. If you do, they will own the ISBN and be listed as the book’s publisher.

2. Use MS Word for word processing, but not for book layout. If you aren’t inclined to purchase and learn to use a page layout software (Quark or PageMaker), it is well worth it to hire a professional to do the page layout design for you.

3. Print-On-Demand (POD) is a viable option for short-run jobs, but for a truly professional look, web offset printing is the way to go and can be used for print runs of 500 or more books.

Of course, much of the book is plugging the services offered by selfpublishing.com, but whether you use their services or not, it is an incredibly handy reference book (and well worth the $1.99 shipping charge)!