CafePress Publishing On Demand

CafePress is well known for its self-publishing brilliance. You can print your own mugs, your own t-shirts, your own shopping bags, and much, much more. It's a great way to get your photos and kids artwork out to the world. It's no wonder that they have now offered the ability to self publish books. There is no up front fee in order to be in CafePress.

You set up an account, then in that account you set up a shop. Shops are meant to hold all sorts of things - mugs, bags, shirts, and so on. You add a product to it, and choose a book as that item. Note that unless you pay for a "premium shop" you can only have one book in your shop. Their standard shops only allow one item of a given type (book, cd, shirt, etc) in that shop.

They offer a number of standard sizes, along with standard ring-binding and perfect binding (i.e. standard book). For my test I went with the small mystery book / romance book size, the one you see in most stores. That is 4.18" x 6.88" in their system.

Their pricing is:

Their sizes are:

4.18 x 6.88 (paperback) - wire, binding
5x8 (big paperbck) - all 3
6.625 x 10.25 (comic) "
7.5 x 9.25 manual "
8.5 x 11 (letter) - saddle / rings

Once you have those basics decided on, it's time to load the actual content of your book and cover into the system.

Loading Up the CafePress Book

Believing Your Eyes - a medieval romance at CafePress.com

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