Need help/ideas on self publishing a non-fiction book on cemeteries

Cafe Society
1

I’ve been thinking about doing a book/set of books, on the local family cemeteries. I’ve already done a lot of the research and taken a lot of photographs of the stones. What I need now are some pointers and suggestions. I’ve compiled one book before, an index of maps, so I have some experience.

Here’s what I’m thinking on doing, and I know there’s at least some interest from the local libraries and historical societies. I would like to have a listing of all of the tombstones that I was able to find along with the information, Name, Date Of Birth, Date of Death, and then photos of each of the stones done by cemetery. I’d also like to compare the information that I have found with information that other publications have found showing the differences.

Here’s where I need help/ideas. I’d like to make the book hardcover as I know what can happen to paperback books after a few years of opening and photocopying. It would also have to be in color since I don’t want to convert thousands of photos to B&W. I don’t know what size to make the pages though. Looking on Lulu, where I did my other book, they have 6x9 and 8.25x10.75. I would think the larger size would be easier to put more photos per page. Which size would be easier to create and publish?

I only have MS Word, I know it’s not the greatest, is there a freeware program that I should be using or will I be able to get away with Word. What boarder sizes will be best to use? I number of cemeteries will most likely mean I will have to break it up in to multiple books. I’d like to get the look right the first time out so I don’t have to go back and fix things later on.

What other self publishing places should I look at? Lulu was find for the B&W book I did, but color looks like they will be really expensive. I don’t expect to sell many books at all and I will most likely pay for at least a few copies to donate to the libraries and such.

I’ve never seen a book like what I’m planning. I’ve seen books on cemeteries, and books with one cemetery photographed, but not 15-20 or so cemeteries all together. Any ideas of how you think it should look or where I can go would be greatly appreciated.

2

You might start with Arcadia Publishing, the company that puts out the books about town histories throughout America (sold at Walgreens, etc.)

3

It sounds as if you want to self-publish but don’t have the complete skill and experience set to do so. That can be tough. Your choices are to make it a learning project, which will be slow and probably have extra costs in the mistakes and so forth; hire someone to do the hard parts for you; or trust it to one of the E-Z self publishers. The downside of the last is that they tend to be expensive, with unit cost on the books at or exceeding a reasonable cover price, so you’re not likely to make a dime on the effort.

If you tackle it yourself, here’s some suggestions…

[ol]
[li]Yes, Word is a pretty poor tool for books. Of the three or four platforms I use for book/booklike development, with more or less equal expertise on each, Word is by far the hardest to get consistent results from, especially for works that have illustrations, diagrams, nonlinear text (like equations and insets) and multiple sections with different layout and page numbering. It can be done, but the files tend to bloat and bloat in size and get fragile. Work in separate chapters with a shared style sheet and save and archive often.[/li][li]I can’t think of any good reason to go with color images. Tombstones are rarely colored in any significant way and you will get smaller image files, a smaller book file, cheaper printing and probably crisper reproduction with careful conversion to B&W. No, it’s not easy but having seen too many books jammed with amateur color pictures - with widely varying color tone, sharpness, resolution and quality - it’s something you want to avoid. Also VERY expensive to publish color interior books.[/li][li]Books with lots of images per page are better at larger sizes. I’d probably start with a nominal 8-1/2 x 11 layout (which will probably result in a slightly smaller trim size).[/li][li]Crowding the pages can save page count but at the expense of making the book look jumbled and hard to read/use. Don’t skimp on margins or inside gutter. An inch inside, a half inch top and bottom and no less than 3/8 outside, with decent spacing between pictures and text.[/li][li]Work to a PDF master, preferably through a genuine copy of Acrobat Pro (even if it’s a few generations older). Submitting Word files for print is always a recipe for problems; submitting enormous, bloated files with tons of embedded images is a recipe for disaster.[/li][/ol]
Very experienced small-run and small-press publisher; happy to answer all further reasonable questions.

4

I’ve done one self published book, but it was an index for an atlas. That really wasn’t too difficult. But this is something different. I don’t mind learning, I don’t have an end point for when it needs to be done. Figuring out my mistakes now is what I’d like to do before going too far. I can’t afford to hire someone.

[quote]

[li]Yes, Word is a pretty poor tool for books. Of the three or four platforms I use for book/booklike development, with more or less equal expertise on each, Word is by far the hardest to get consistent results from, especially for works that have illustrations, diagrams, nonlinear text (like equations and insets) and multiple sections with different layout and page numbering. It can be done, but the files tend to bloat and bloat in size and get fragile. Work in separate chapters with a shared style sheet and save and archive often.[/li][/quote]

Already having this problem. Is there an open source program I can use?

[quote]

[li]I can’t think of any good reason to go with color images. Tombstones are rarely colored in any significant way and you will get smaller image files, a smaller book file, cheaper printing and probably crisper reproduction with careful conversion to B&W. No, it’s not easy but having seen too many books jammed with amateur color pictures - with widely varying color tone, sharpness, resolution and quality - it’s something you want to avoid. Also VERY expensive to publish color interior books.[/li][/quote]

I hadn’t thought of B&W photos. Though I have seen lots of B&W photos look bad in publications for tombstones, but that might be because they were color and copied to B&W. I will think about this. I just have thousands of photos as is. Many of them can not be easily read without zooming in.

[quote]
[li]Books with lots of images per page are better at larger sizes. I’d probably start with a nominal 8-1/2 x 11 layout (which will probably result in a slightly smaller trim size).[/li][li]Crowding the pages can save page count but at the expense of making the book look jumbled and hard to read/use. Don’t skimp on margins or inside gutter. An inch inside, a half inch top and bottom and no less than 3/8 outside, with decent spacing between pictures and text.[/li][/quote]

I was thinking about doing 4 photos per page. That seems to be a good size that makes the stone somewhat readable, but at least one can get a good idea of what it looked like.

My current thought is to find as many of these small cemeteries as possible, there are probably 150+ in my area. I had thought that I would separate each cemetery, make a list of all the stones I found, a photo of the cemetery, and then photos of each stone. I have one cemetery done in my idea here.

I’m not looking at making any money. I lost money the last time I did something, but the information is useful, and I thought that people would like to see what the stones look like. I will most likely print the books myself and donate them to a few libraries.

Thanks for the tips and let me know what you think of the layout. I do want to put the names under the photos, but Word is a real pain doing that and Google Docs isn’t much help either.

5

Consider this, then: do it all as an ebook/wiki/online resource/PDF only. While I’m sure amateur historians looking for grave info lean towards hardcover books, making it electronic slashes the cost and problems to near zero and means anyone in the world can browse the 'stones in your small cemeteries, no small thing. (I’ve done my share of biographical research and genealogy, and things like grave photos on FindAGrave have often been essential.)

I don’t know of any tool better than Word or the open-source equivalents that’s free or cheap. InDesign and FrameMaker are the two big gorillas, and they are costly.

6

Strongly support Amateur Barbarian’s suggestion.

Your actual market is all the descendants of those buried, and they will never be aware of the existence of your book unless their loiter around your local library, which might be hard if they are in a retirement home on the other side of the planet.

Lots of good free blog type software like Wordpress. If you surf around and find a website you like the look of, it might have the software and design credited.

Costs are negligible, you can use your colour pics, Fred Nurkenstein’s great grandchildren living in Belgium will be able to find him. And when you find a mistake or additional info, easy to update. Try any of that with a book.