Saturday, January 16, 2010

Printing a Book in Thailand

I received an inquiry today about getting a book printed here in Thailand. I had investigated printing in Bangkok but found the cost to be significantly higher than outside of the city. An added benefit was a free bar code label included in the printing costs.
ISBN numbers here are free as well and are gotten by e-mailing the the Thai National Library and filling out the application they e-mail back. E-mail the completed form back to them and you should receive a number within hours if you do it in the morning. Their only requirement is that you give them 2 copies of your book after it's printed. It goes in their library and is listed as a new book in print.
A copy right from the U.S. is $35 USD via e-mail.
There are many businesses that advertise copy right, ISBN, and bar code services for insanely large amounts of money. Such as $150 USD and up, for one book! I guess laziness has it's price.
The whole point of this blog is to inform those out there about the process of true self publishing; not to support the ridiculous vanity publishing houses who wrongly claim they assist an author to self publish; which it isn't! Further; they're getting a lot of money for their "service" which means they over charge you for the very things you can do for your self.
Self publishing is what I did, which is everything, except the printing and illustrations.
My total cost for 560 books; A5, 80 pages, 8 full page color illustrations, fully illustrated cover (which is shown a number of posts back), the illustrator, ISBN, bar code and copy right, was $1,100 USD.
That comes to just under $2.00 per book. If I had printed 1,000 or 1,500 the price would have dropped by about 25%.
True self publishing is a lot of work and some of the most rewarding fun and enjoyment I've ever had.
Please feel free to e-mail me or post comments or questions here and I'll get back to you asap.

P.S. I'll have my second book out sometime this year and it's going to have some stunningly beautiful illustrations done by an up and coming Thai artist named Aek. He is young and formally trained in traditional Thai art. I've seen his work and it's beautiful.

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