How to produce a high-quality hard-backed book?

June 2, 2012 12:08 PM

How do I turn a document into a high-quality hard-backed book?

My father's memoirs run to roughly 15,000 words, and I would like to turn the Word documents into a high-quality hard-backed book. I want it to look well done and professional, not cheaply self-published. I only need about five copies of it, and it includes some diagrams.

I'm willing to invest quite a bit of time and money to get the desired end result. The kind of quality I'd like would be something like this, though obviously this project would be quite a bit shorter.

I haven't been able to find a major company or small house that would do this, so suggestions for either welcome.

posted by StephenF to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

I've never used it, but Lulu supports self-publishing of books, including hardcover.

They also offer various services if you need help.
posted by jpeacock at 12:21 PM on June 2, 2012

Have you checked out Lulu or Blurb? Blurb seems to be primarily for photo books, but you could hire their consultants to help you lay out the text. Before getting started, I'd try to get my hands on swatches for papers first, to make sure you like their quality.
posted by runningwithscissors at 12:22 PM on June 2, 2012

Response by poster: I had somehow missed that Lulu did hardcover too, thanks for recommendations. Also like the consultant idea.
posted by StephenF at 12:29 PM on June 2, 2012

Best answer: Pay a copyeditor to copyedit the book (probably €25 per hour * around 15 hours). Pay a local graphic designer to make the PDF look good and to make a cover (at least €500, maybe as much as €2000, depends on local rates). Then, upload the book to Lulu and buy a few hardcover copies (cheap compared to the previous steps).

If it were me, I would put the book into LaTeX, get a little crazy with the memoir class, and then design a very basic cover on the book myself. I'd leave any and all copyediting mistakes be, unless they could get caught by one of these scripts. LaTeX generally makes good decisions regarding layout, so it will look good.
posted by pmb at 12:40 PM on June 2, 2012 [4 favorites]

Lulu and Blurb won't produce the quality of book you're looking for (canvas or leather covers, sewn binding, fine paper). My guess is that either you'll want to find someone who binds books by hand. Or, if you're willing to pay for a relatively large run (a few hundred books?) you might have luck finding a vanity press. Vanity presses seem surprisingly difficult to find from a simple google search but they surely exist.
posted by dis_integration at 6:22 PM on June 2, 2012

Also, 15,000 words is really rather small, about 40 normal print pages at 12pt. This puts it in the pamphlet category more than book category (of course, you could typeset it at 14 or 16pt, but even then it won't break 60 or 70 pages). It will be difficult to have it fine bound with so few pages, I think.
posted by dis_integration at 6:28 PM on June 2, 2012

Best answer: I second pmb's suggestion of latex, and probably the memoir class. Using the
lyx to invoke latex may be easier than doing it directly.

This is the first entry that comes up in google for "dublin bookbinder"
http://www.kennysbindery.ie/
posted by sebastienbailard at 9:54 PM on June 2, 2012

This is a job for a professional bookbinder. I am not a professional, but I do have quite a bit of training, and I've made traditionally bound books before. I had the text printed, folded the signatures, sewed them together, and bound them in book board wrapped in book canvas. The only time a computer was involved was when I was laying out the text to make sure everything was in the right order and the right orientation when printed (stitched books are made of signatures, which are large pieces of paper folded, sewn together, and then when the book is completed the folded edges are torn open with a book knife). For a book as short as yours, I would look into other types of bookbinding, like Coptic or Japanese. A professional will be able to tell you what would work the best.

Google "Craft Bookbinder in (nearest big city)" and start from there.
posted by cilantro at 3:40 AM on June 3, 2012 [1 favorite]