On Tuesday, December 13, 2011 08:01:45 AM Rainer M Krug wrote: > Hi > > first my apologies for this OT topic, but I rahter ask here then go > into another forum where I have no idea who knows what. > > So please reply off-list (unless you think this is on topic). > > I am going to write a guidelines book (management, alien invasive > species, South Afica) which will be around 50 pages (I guess). To > make it available in printed form as well, I am planning to > publish it in something like print-on-demand, but would also make > the pdf available for free download (or a very low cost). The > guidelines will likely be read mostly in South Africa. > In addition, these guidelines should have an ISBN number. > > I will obviously writing the guidelines in LyX.
LyX is obviously the best authoring tool for this. I'm reading your preceding post. If I'm reading you correctly, profit isn't a major motive, because you're giving away your PDF free or at very low cost (free would be a lot less headaches if profit isn't a major motive). The free or cheap PDF constrains what you can charge for the print book. Nobody's going to pay $29.95 for the print version of what they can get free. You can do print-on-demand and pay a lot of money for each book, or do a 200 book short run and pay less but have inventory clogging up your life. If you take possession of the books, you pay shipping twice (one from the printer and one to the reader). Fulfillment of print book orders is a hassle. Wrap it, take it to the post office, mail it. One out of 100 claim they never got it. These hassles are worth it if you're selling the book for $29.95, or $42.50 like the most expensive of my print books, but maybe not if you're selling it for $9.95, and definitely not if it's $4.95. What I'm getting at is this: Are you sure you want a print version at all? If you have a PDF, plus maybe you distribute it as a few flowable text eBook types like Kindle, iPad, Nook, generic EPUB, you'd get it out to a lot of people. I've never been to Africa, but I hear in South Africa and Africa in general, a lot of people have cell phones due to a lack of other infrastructure like cable and landline phone. I'm pretty sure that as long as your images are inline and not to the right or left of text or other images, images come out OK on a flowable text eBook. By the way, I LOVE the whole concept of invasive species. Living in Florida, USA, I see a world teeming with life, with plants growing on plants growing on other plants. I don't know if they're foreign, but we have these "air potato" vines that climb trees from the ground all the way to the top. We have Spanish Moss hanging from every tree, and little mini-vines that completely cover our decorative plants and would steal all their light if I didn't rip them off. And then of course we have the fire ant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant) that came here from Brazil in the 1930's, liked it here, and made it their home. Don't try laying on the grass in Florida. Anyway, this post isn't really responsive to your question, but a lot of other people answered your question precisely, so I thought maybe I'd persue this other avenue. SteveT Steve Litt Author: The Key to Everyday Excellence http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/key_excellence.htm Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
