Renewed books at low prices

Renewed books may be just what you’re looking for if–

• You want to reprint a book but it’s been so long since the first run that nobody has the original files any more.
• You’ve come across an heirloom in your family museum and would like to publish it to share with all the relatives.
• The book you’ve got in mind is out of print, and the copyright is no longer in effect.

We haven’t been able to help people with such needs except by painstaking methodology that needed hours and hours of fine-tuning.

The printer I use says his company has leading-edge scanning equipment. I send him a copy of the book, which is scanned and made up into a book, printed and shipped. Changes can be made to the text, and a new cover can be supplied. The results are fantastic. I cannot tell the difference between the original and final book without a high-powered magnifying glass.

Total cost is a lot less than starting from scratch. Try it next time you need an exact reprint of a book. Of course, you can substitute new pages for minimal cost if you want to update or correct the first version.

Of course you must own all publishing rights for the book or you could run into legal problems. Another point to remember is that just because the copyright has expired doesn’t give you open access to the book. Check to be sure the owner of the original copyright didn’t renew all rights. Don’t get trapped by the embarrassment and financial penalties for breaking copyright law.

We offer book replicating services at Griffith Publishing, editors of this blog.

Short-run full-color books

Finally, full-color books in quantities from 50 to 2,000 are available from Griffith Publishing and other book designers. We’ve always been able to provide full-color books for our authors, but it involved sending artwork and proofs back and forth across thousands of miles of ocean. Beautiful books, and for coffee table presentation books, still the best route to go. But not everybody has $12,000 or more to produce a small book.

Now we can actually print 100 to 500 full-color books 6×9 inches with 48 to 60 pages for under $4 each right here in the USA. There’s more involved than the printing, of course, and for that you’d better hire an expert–someone who will work one-on-one with you to give you a thorough edit job, not just a spell check, and a design on the cover and throughout the book that will zero in on what your book offers and set it apart from all others in its class.

This is a big step for people who have loved the hard-cover photo books offered by ShutterFly. We can’t match the look of those books, but since they cost about $29 per book or more, we think there are quite a few people who would rather give up some of the glamor and style of a ShutterFly book for 100 or so well-produced full-color books.

If you’re curious about how this works and are watching the holidays creep closer every hour and wondering what’s in store, call us at 1 800 359-9503. Or send us email at hodi@mindspring.com.

Joyce Griffith