Book Help Requested

[Edrof]

Hello all!

I have been away for a long time being a complete nerd and writing a non-fiction book. As I now tidy the final draft I am looking closely at publishing options and I need input from the great GD hive mind. I want to release the book digitally as I want to be able to edit it whenever I want and I would like the illustrations to be viewable in high resolution. I don't want to use Amazon KDP as the traditional price for this type of book starts at £50 and I'd only receive £15 of that (I'd rather charge £15 and have readers save the £35, to be frank. My current thoughts are:

• publish it on a tier on Patreon with the idea that patrons are paying to access a huge reference archive rather than a book
• add it under a password-protected page on my own website

There are major advantages and disadvantages to both options and I'm wondering - are there other platforms I should be considering? If I add it to my website (Squarespace) then how does one prevent the first buyer from sharing the password with the world?

All thoughts are welcome.

Matt

 

[Feek]

A friend of mine self published his book through Lulu, is that worth a look?

 

[Edrof]

A friend of mine self published his book through Lulu, is that worth a look?

Thanks, I had heard of them but I haven't delved deeply. That is probably going to be an option for later on after digital publishing.

 

[peterwalkley]

My wife is a fiction author. Piracy of any digital content is pretty much inevitable Main digital platforms she sells on are Kindle, Kobo, Apple (and traditional dead tree on a shelf) - but there's no artwork or diagram content, just text. Also, once published, any change is effectively a full re-publish as all the formatting counts as having changed, even ifs its just an odd page.

If you're looking at frequent changes, a book format probably isn't best - unless you do something like publish it as a PDF and offer a subscription type service to purchasers so that they automatically get mailed a link to the updated releases.

What's the subject area you are talking about ? Is it something that would change often and hence attract people to maintain some kind of subscription for updates or access to a website ?

With a website you can track login IP addresses to check for things like access being shared. That's a separate discussion though, better raised in the programming sub-forum.

 

[Edrof]

My wife is a fiction author. Piracy of any digital content is pretty much inevitable Main digital platforms she sells on are Kindle, Kobo, Apple (and traditional dead tree on a shelf) - but there's no artwork or diagram content, just text. Also, once published, any change is effectively a full re-publish as all the formatting counts as having changed, even ifs its just an odd page.

If you're looking at frequent changes, a book format probably isn't best - unless you do something like publish it as a PDF and offer a subscription type service to purchasers so that they automatically get mailed a link to the updated releases.

What's the subject area you are talking about ? Is it something that would change often and hence attract people to maintain some kind of subscription for updates or access to a website ?

With a website you can track login IP addresses to check for things like access being shared. That's a separate discussion though, better raised in the programming sub-forum.

Thank you for your thoughts, I really appreciate them. It's a book about historical swords from the 1800s - a very niche genre that's filled with extremely intelligent people so I am taking into account that people might correct any little mistakes that might have crept into the manuscript. Also, the ability for readers to zoom in to high-resolution photos is very attractive to me. It's tough to find the right platform and it's been 5 years of hard work to get this far so I want to make it right.