Irvinehill Farm, Stewarton, Ayrshire KA3 3EL
Scotland, United Kingdom
Telephone 01294 850217
Email
Contact Information for Self Publish Books
Address: Irvinehill Farm, Stewarton, Ayrshire KA3 3EL, Scotland, UK
Telephone: 01294 850217.
You can contact us during normal business hours and also during the evening and weekends. If there is no one in the office calls divert to a mobile.
Email:
Uploading files: Files up to 5mB can be emailed to us.
Fax: If it is necessary to fax us, this can be done by arrangement. Please telephone first.
If you need to send larger files to us you can do this via www.mailbigfile.com – it’s free. If you click on the link the website explains what to do, using our email address above. If you have several small files that together come to more than 5mB it is probably more suitable to compress them together into one file using compression software and then send via mailbigfile.com. If in doubt call us!
Privacy Statement Self Publish Books / Gilmour Print
Any information you submit to us will be dealt with in the strictest of confidence. No details supplied by you will be passed on to any third party. Information supplied will only be used for the purposes of dealing with and responding to your communication.
We can saddle stitch the books. (Wire staples into the centre of the spine.)
We are not publishers; we design and produce the book for you. You, the author, publish your book yourself (‘self-publish’). We can give you advice and help you with marketing tools such as Free Author’s Page and MyLiveBook. You have to finance the production of your book, market and distribute it. We will produce a quality product every bit as professional as a conventionally published book but you have the benefits of self-publishing and have control over your own book when you publish it yourself.
No, we are designers and book producers. When you self-publish with Self Publish Books you as the author will retain all rights to your book and will own all the copies which will be sent to you immediately they are bound. Any moneys you make from your book are yours.
If a publisher asks the author to pay money to have a book published this is vanity publishing. Conventional publishing houses do not ask for payment they pay an author to allow them to publish his/her book. . Between these two options is self-publishing. The author, after writing the book, creates his/her own imprint (and by so doing they now have their own publishing house) eg The Joe Bloggs Press, buys a batch of ISBNs, finds a designer/printer to produce the books and upon delivery sets about marketing his/her own book. Sounds easy when said in one sentence but there can be a lot of work involved if you follow the self-publish route. In saying that, it is a lot less daunting now that you can create your own website to help you market your book.
You will have control over all aspects of your book. You may be confident that you know there is a market for your book and therefore that you wil get all the money generated from the sales. Or you may feel that although the market for your book will be small and that a publishing house will not be interested in take up the book for publishing, that you still want to produce the book in a small quantity for your own satisfaction.
They will give you editiorial advice. They will proof read your copy. They will market your book. They will distribute your book to bookshops and libraries.
Self-Publish-Books is the internet marketing name of Gilmour Print who are based in the West of Scotland with clients all over the UK.
See the Testimonials Section for what some of our many satisfied customers have to say about us. We provide a bespoke book design and print production service with more than 30 years’ experience in the book printing trade. We are helpful, friendly and pay a great deal of attention to detail. We take pride in what we do. Our many satisfied clients come back to us time and again.
Paperbacks and hardbacks in a variety of sizes and styles for a wide range of self-publishing authors – paperbacks with black text and colour covers, perhaps with colour plates or full colour throughout, hard backed (case bound) books with full colour covers, or with full colour wrap around dust jackets, the text can be black or have colour sections or be full colour throughout. It doesn’t have to be English. We can produce books in other languages as well.
If the quantity of books is small the books are produced digitally. We can produce one copy if you wish but most authors, when only wanting a small quantity, will usually orderfive or more copies. Depending on the number of pages and the content of the book, once the quantity reaches 259 to 300 it is possible that it will be more economical to produce the books by convetional offset litho printing. The quality of digital printing today is such that you would be hard pressed to be able to see any difference in quality between digital and offset litho printing.
There are many variables involved in a book price . . . Are you supplying a print ready PDF or do you wish us to produce the artwork? How many pages? What size is the page? Is it paperback or hardback? Is the text black or full colour? The list of options is almost endless.
On our pricing page we have included many of these options so that you can accurately work out the price of the book type you require.
If you have a requirement that is not listed or you would rather we work out the price for you then please contact us with details of your requirements.
If we have produced artwork for your book, then this will not be charged again for the reprint. For digital printing there are also setting up costs involved on the digital press which will not be charged again as long as the annual charge for holding your book (currently £15 plus VAT per title) is paid each December. Amendments to artwork will be charged extra and digital press setup may also be charged if book is amended before reprint.
Reprints of litho printed books will be reprinted at time of reprint, but again if we have produced artwork on the initial run, this will not be charged again at reprint.
If your book is required for a specific deadline we will always do our best to meet this and let you know before we start. Under normal circumstances a standard paperback novel will take about two to three weeks at the most to produce artwork to the final stage (depending on how quickly you come back with amendments). Printed proof copy usually takes a furhter week to ten days and final print run a further week to ten days.
No, we expect you to have checked it before you send it to us. It is always a good idea to get someone who is not involved with the book to proof read it so that it is looked at with a fresh eye.
We will check your file for spacing and puntuation problems. We find no matter how thoroughly authors have checked their words, that there will often be spaces at the start of paragraphs that should not be there or spaces in front of question marks or full stops. We have a set of standard checks that we run through to sort these out when we are laying out the text.
Book design requires a certain level of skill and so for a book to look professionally typeset requires experience. As long as you realise that the design appearance is your responsibility, you can supply high resolution, print ready PDFs to our specification. See also cover artwork and cover photography.
We will be happy for you to supply your own cover illustrations or photography as long as it is of suitable quality and resolution.
Photographs should be a minimum of 300dpi at the size it which it is intended to be used. Photographs cannot and should not be have their resolutions increased from the original. If you intend to manipulate photographs in photoshop, you should let us see them first to assess suitability.
Line illustrations should ideally be 800 dpi at the size of us.
Yes, as long as you follow our specifications and your artwork is produced to suitable quality. See section on website on supplying cover artwork.
This is dependent on the number of pages and the thickness of the text paper. If you are supplying your own cover artwork but we are creating the text page artwork, you should create your cover in a manner that will allow you to make adjustment to the spine width if required. We will confirm the spine width once the text pages are complete.
The simple answer is – you don’t. Email us the ISBN and we will have the barcode ready to drop into your artwork when you supply it.
No, selling and marketing your book is down to you.
We give you a free Author’s Page where you can tell the world about you and your books and also a free MyLiveBook page where you can bring your book to life by showing sample pages in a real time, online, electronic, page turning, digital document.
If you are going to sell your book through book shops then you need to obtain an International Standard Book Number (ISBN). See the page on ISBNs for detals of where to obtain these. If you are using an ISBN we will supply the barcode for the cover.
You are welcome to visit us by appointment. However, it is not necessary. We have many customers that we have never met in person but have produced books for by email and phone discussion. You can read what sme of them have to say on the testimonials pages.
A Format 175mm x 111mm (6.875" x 4.25") B Format 198mm x 129mm (8" x 5.25") (standard paperback size)** A5 210mm x 148mm (8.25" x 4.875")** C Format 222mm x 143mm (8.75" x 5.625") Demy 229mm x 152mm (9" x 6") Royal 235mm x 191mm (9.25" x 7.5") Crown Royal 280mm x 210mm (11" x 8.25") A4 297mm x 210mm (11.75" x 8.25")
** These are the two most popular sizes.
Yes you can. If the colour pages are all in the one place in the text it is cheaper than spreading them through the book.
If we are producing your artwork, you can use any typeface and size that you find convenient. We will change them to suit the design. You should use italics and bold text where you want text to apear this way in the finished book. You should only place a line return at the end of each paragraph and not in the middle of sentences.
If you wish to have some paragraphs indented at the first line but not all paragraphs then you should place a tab keystroke at the start of the paragraphs you wish the first lines to be indented.
If you wish to have some paragraphs with an extra line space before, then you should add this in your file.
If you have some paragraphs which you wish to look different from the main style, eg correspondence letter or a paragraph that is a quotation then you need to inform us of this and mark them in an appropriate manner. It is probably better to discuss this with us before proceeding.
If we are producing your artwork, you can use any typeface and size that you find convenient. We will change them to suit the design. You should use italics and bold text where you want text to apear this way in the finished book. You should only place a line return at the end of each paragraph and not in the middle of sentences.
If you wish to have some paragraphs indented at the first line but not all paragraphs then you should place a tab keystroke at the start of the paragraphs you wish the first lines to be indented.
If you wish to have some paragraphs with an extra line space before, then you should add this in your file.
If you have some paragraphs which you wish to look different from the main style, eg correspondence letter or a paragraph that is a quotation then you need to inform us of this and mark them in an appropriate manner. It is probably better to discuss this with u before proceeding.
You must obtain their permission in writing to use the material and they must be credited. This applies to text and photographs.
If we are supplying library photographs for use in your book, these come from sources who have given permission for the use when purchased.
If what you write is true then no. Alternatively, if you are writing about actual events but in a novel then, the more details of names, personal details and places that you change, the better. Either way, if you are in doubt you should consult a solicitor.
Yes, we are happy to design your book, lay out the text and provide you with a high resolution PDF for artwork for you to do do with as you wish. You will have to let us know of any specific settings that your PDF requires.
If you supply artwork and we produce your books there is no VAT chargeable. If we design your book, create the artwork and produce the finished books then again there is no VAT chargeable on the finished product. If we design your book and supply you with a PDF for you to have the book produced elsewhere then there would be VAT chargeable at the standard rate on the artwork, but whoever produced the finished book for you would not charge VAT on the book production.
With perfect binding and PUR (Poly Urethane Reactive) binding, the spine edge of the pages is ground off leaving a rough edge for the adhesive to key to. Burst bound books have perforations down the spine edge of the folded sheets, which are folded in 4, 8 or 16 page sections. The adhesive penetrates in through the perforations giving added strength to the binding. Notch and slot binding are two names for the same thing and are similar to burst binding except that instead of perforations, slots are cut into the spine edge allowing for better penetration of the adhesive.
PUR is stronger than perfect binding but with modern adhesives perfect bind is still good. Burst bound is on a par with PUR and notch slot binding is looked on as the strongest glued binding.
All our paperback books are currently slot bound where the quantities are over 100. With smaller quantities the binding method will depend on the book.
back
