I want to create (and sell, obviously) a nifty journal. Ideas?

I know what I want it to look like. I want it to be semi-illustrated (so I need clipart graphics I can use without getting into trouble) with some nice pithy sayings, and spaces to write, keep recipes, maybe a calendar page, etc.
I’m positive that I can whip one up on Publisher, take it to the local Kinkos, and have it printed there, but maybe there’s a better way?
Saleswise, I’m going to do eBay and maybe market to some specialty lists that I belong to.
Someone here must know more than I do about this sort of thing…any input?

(Oh, and it has to be cheap. Mucho cheap.)

Thanks!
karol

A local gift store sells some very interesting theme journals. One for film lovers (lets you record what movies you’ve seen, and what you thought of them), one for the “cabin up north” (what you did, who visited, etc), one for knitting projects, stuff like that. They’re neat, but I haven’t bought them because I haven’t been keen on the formatting (for example, the film one is real general and layman-ish and wouldn’t fit the real film geeks I know in my life).

Blank books are a dime a dozen, but I really liked the idea of these (if not the execution).

I keep a journal for all the books I read, and I have one for my son where I occasionally write down my thoughts to him and things I don’t want to forget. As a wee person, he doesn’t care now, but he might later. And I love re-reading it. I think those would also be decent “themes.”

No matter what you do, mass publishers are going to be able to print their journals cheaper and distribute them easier. Printing is extremely expensive in small quantities- most the cost is in setting things up. Is it possible to make a sample and find someone else who wants to deal with the problems of funding and distributing the thing?

There are some duty free clip art CDs out there, but the art is probably going to be pretty unspectacular. Maybe you could put up some fliers looking for artists at a local college?

doh//royalty free is what I mean.

Cafepress prints books-on-demand now, with no setup fee to you at all. You would create your book in PDF format, upload it (plus the front and back cover .jpgs), and set your price.

For a journal, I’d probably go with wirebound. You get your choice of five sizes. The base price is $5 + ($0.045 x number of pages). So for, say, a 190-page book (one side of a page per day of the year, plus some extras), the base price is $13.55 (not bad for a year-long journal, right?). If you wanted to make any profit, you’d have to charge more than that, of course.

One downside is that the inside is entirely in grayscale. Other than that, I think it’s a really good deal. Linkety.

(NOTE: I’ve never used this service, I just really like the concept.)

Amazon has a program where you can be an independent publisher and have your journal listed like all of their other books.

Talk to some of the printers in your town about what you want. They can probably print you what you need or direct you to someone who can.

If you want to go with large quantities (1000 or more), there are some Chinese printing companies that can print your books pretty cheaply.