We believe that the person who owns the rights to the title, puts up the money to edit and format the book, pays for the printing, markets and sells the book is the publisher. That means if you are using publishing services, you are the publisher. Companies like Blitzprint provide services that assist you in publishing. Take pride in the fact that this is your book in every sense and wear the badge of publisher proudly, you earned it.
If, on the other hand, a company agrees to buy the rights of the title from you and take on the task of getting the book to market with their time, money and effort then they are the publisher and you have just been “published”.
Typically getting “published” involves sending query letters to many publishers in the hopes they will read and accept your manuscript for publication.
Think of the ISBN as a serial number for your book. Unlike book titles and author names, the ISBN is always unique. Details of the book, such as size, pages, type of bind, author, publisher, etc are associated with the ISBN. We encourage authors to get their own ISBN, as it is free and easy to do in Canada. If you have no plan to put the book into the retail market there’s no need to even have an ISBN. The EAN barcode for a book will be created from the ISBN and is a simple process that should cost you next to nothing. So, don’t spend hundreds on one from unscrupulous web services!
For more information visit the Author’s Toolkit.
The preferred colour space is CMYK. The colour space of cameras and scanners is RGB. If you do not have the software to convert these images to CMYK just send them in RGB, our software will still print the images though colours may not be as vibrant.
These are marks that the design program adds to the file to show the printer where the page is expected to be trimmed.
If you’ve decided to self-publish, you’ve essentially taken on the role of publisher and we are here to help you with the process. Being the publisher, you are in charge and can decide just how far you want to take it. You should evaluate your needs, desires, skill set and goals. Your goals can be as lofty as bestseller status, movie deals and fame, or as simple as just getting closure to a labour of love. No matter where you go with it you’ll be in good company with the likes of Rudyard Kipling, James Redfield, Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, Carl Sandburg, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman having self-published at some point in their careers.
The preferred file format is .tiff. Tiff files use no compression so there is no loss of quality. The file format .jpeg uses compression to make the file size smaller but at the same time reduces the image quality. It is okay to send in .jpeg files if .tiff’s are not available, but make sure to use the maximum image quality setting.
- Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) – in all cases you will retain 100% of the IPR for your title when using Blitzprint. You are free at any point to use any other service or printer. The only right we need to be given is the right to reproduce the title, without that we can’t legally print the book.
- Copyright – Copyright law is a big topic and for any definitive answers you’re best to talk to a good intellectual property lawyer. But, the gist of it is this: copyright is implied at creation. If you write a novel, the copyright is “yours”. The challenge is establishing a timeline of “when” you created the novel because in a copyright case, who came up with it first, will usually win.
- Title – The title of your book is not subject to copyright and in all likelihood, there are other books out there with the same title.
- Liable – You are completely liable should your title infringe on someone’s copyright or contain defamatory statements.
- Product or company names – Using a trademarked name in your novel is generally fine as long as it doesn’t appear to confuse the reader. Saying, “Bob took a sip of Coke” will not be a problem. Saying, “Bob, hopped in his brand new Coca-Cola roadster and drove off” will confuse the brand and might get you in trouble.
- Contracts – You don’t actually have a contract with us, simply an agreement. Either party can exit at any point without penalty.
We have established guidelines for paper choice based on years of experience. We have a number of paper choices along with recommendations.
300 DPI at the finished printed size, or 600 DPI if your image contains text.
Although most of the books we produce are standard sizes like 5.5” x 8.5” or 6” x 9”, we can print your book at a variety of sizes. Sometimes slight changes in size can make a large difference in the final price. Our Client Support Specialist will be able to guide you in the right direction.
Bleed is when the printed elements on the page go off the edge of the sheet leaving no blank space between the printed area and the edge of the sheet. In order for this to occur on every copy/sheet of the cover or interior pages, the image or colour should be larger than what is required to compensate for any movement in the printing process.
The bleed amount should be no less than .125”.
Blitzprint uses a PDF workflow, so PDF files are the preferred format.
This is typically caused by using spot colours. When saving the file an error message will appear that most people ignore. This is actually a very important error message. When using special effects functions ALL colours in the file MUST be set to CMYK.
Using a few pieces of information and our handy spine calculator this is quick and easy to do. Just select this link and a couple of key strokes later you will have your spine size.
Yes. You may have pages that are colour images and/or text as well as pages that have grayscale images and only black text. Make sure that the grayscale images are placed in the document as grayscale and not RGB/CMYK that looks B&W. The print engine will see the colour information in the RGB/CMYK images and would consider those pages as colour pages and you would be billed as such.
If you are building your complete cover in Photoshop including textual items then a minimum of 600 DPI and a maximum of 1200 DPI must be used. Also, in this case, a .psd file would be the preferred file format to send us.
Distribution Advice
At Blitzprint, we don’t distribute books to the end reader, and we think it’s important that you know why. We have chosen instead, to provide what we believe, is of much greater value to self-publishers: top-notch book development and manufacturing support. We believe that you should keep as much of the book proceeds to yourself as possible.
Distributing Your Book on Amazon
There are some self-publishing/print companies that will add your book to Amazon for a price. These are usually monthly or yearly charges. We recommend that you add it to Amazon yourself and save the money. Publishing margins are thin and every penny counts.
You can either have Amazon store or ship your books, or you can do this yourself. Doing it yourself puts you in the driver’s seat and more money in your pocket.
The process of working with Amazon is quite simple.
Getting Your Self-Published Book into Libraries
Like distribution, getting your book into libraries takes work. There are companies who will help you get your book into systems that archive your book and make it available to libraries worldwide. However, once again this is a paid service – more off your bottom line.
We recommend you reach out to your local libraries yourself to test the market before committing to a third party.
Simply put, it’s complex. Blitzprint is not obligated nor are we entitled to give advice to our authors regarding IPR. We can however guide our authors to help them understand what is at stake.
First, of all the intellectual property rights relevant to the book publishing industry, copyright remains the most significant.
If you add any copy, art, drawings, photographs, etc., that has been created by a person other than yourself, you need their permission and may need to put an agreement in place, especially if you are planning to sell your book. You can also set up an agreement to transfer the rights.
The best advice we can give you is to talk to an IPR lawyer in your jurisdiction.
Remember to list your contributors (once you have their permission or you have an agreement in place) on your copyright page.
Blitzprint uses a PDF workflow, so PDF files are the preferred format.