Need help publishing a music book

Place to blether and haver ;-)
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Callum Mathers
Posts: 18
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 12:05 am
Location: Abbotsford, BC

Need help publishing a music book

Post by Callum Mathers » Fri Dec 25, 2009 10:10 am

So I have about 30 solid tunes out, but when Im at around 50, I'd love to put a book out. Does anyone know where to even start? Someone who has done this that might have some tips for me?

Thanks.
"When He finally abandons You
Your wit and Your blade
Are all that keep You alive."

Greg_in_London
Posts: 33
Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2006 5:14 pm
Location: London
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Post by Greg_in_London » Sat Jan 02, 2010 3:06 am

I published a book of music for the traditional music session I play in using www.lulu.com

Someone else did all the work transcribing tunes using a music program, then organised it into word. I then get some other people to sort out the formatting, covers etc and little glitches and uploaded it and then got an ISBN number sorted out.

Lulu does short order printing or print on demand, which means I can have 10, 20 or 1000 printed at a time to sell myself, or they can be ordered through any bookshop or Amazon etc and they will print just the one and send it out as if they had had it in stock all the time.

Look up Greenwich Traditional Musicians Coop on Amazon to have an idea what the result looks like. Retail price is £10, but I can have them printed for £3.50-£4.00 depending on numbers.
better sharp than out of tune

Callum Mathers
Posts: 18
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 12:05 am
Location: Abbotsford, BC

Post by Callum Mathers » Mon Jan 18, 2010 7:27 am

Cool. How much were the graphic and transcribing services for a full book ??? ( roughly )
"When He finally abandons You
Your wit and Your blade
Are all that keep You alive."

Greg_in_London
Posts: 33
Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2006 5:14 pm
Location: London
Contact:

Post by Greg_in_London » Tue Jan 19, 2010 8:07 pm

Well if you can put the file together in a Word or (very) clean .pdf document, then it costs nothing.

If you have handwritten manuscripts and rough notes and want someone else to collate it, then obviously you'd have to pay someone.

Our music was written using Sibelius, then exported to Word to have text and pictures added. I couldn't upload that directly because I didn't have the right music wordfonts, so I sent it to a friend who has an original full copy of Adobe , who switched it for me. At this stage we had a couple of glitches because of 'embedded fonts, which was a headache, but cost nothing.

Since then, however, I have produced a few books using text and pictures that I uploaded as Word files with no difficulty.

I bought a tranche of 10 ISBN numbers which cost #79 I recall, plus ten or fifteens pounds to actually use each one (so I have nine left).

Hope that helps.
better sharp than out of tune

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