Soft cover for my self published art book.

[CTyankee]

I thought I had to have a hard cover for my book on art and music, which is 8x10 size. However, I recently found a beautiful art book published by the Tate Gallery and it has a soft cover. The Tate is one of the most famous art galleries (there are actually several Tates) in the world and I wondered why they would use a soft cover for such great art in their collection (the Pre-Raphaelites, a lovely, if brief, era of art).

My question for you, my fellow writers, is "Am I saving money by going with a soft cover?"

If it's a lot, I am definitely going to try the soft cover. If not, I'll opt for the hard cover since it probably lasts longer.

I am elderly and I want to leave this book with my grandkids. I only wish I had more memorabilia from my parents and grandparents.

[msongs]

1. ask your publisher for a price quote, it should be less than hard cover nt

[CTyankee]

2. Thanks. I plan on asking, of course. If it isn't a lot of money I'll probably go with the hard cover.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. How are you publishing it?

If you're using KDP, you don't pay money no matter what kind of binding you choose, but you can set the cover price lower for paperback than what KDP calls hardcover, which is actually case laminate.

[CTyankee]

4. I am using Book Baby, a company that does this for you. I published with them with the first book. What is KDP?

[DavidDvorkin]

5. It's Amazon's self-publishing arm

KDP stands for Kindle Direct Publishing, or something like that, but despite the name, they let you publish your book as a Kindle ebook, and/or a paperback, and/or a case-laminate hardcover.

I've been using them for years and am fairly happy with them. The books are sold on Amazon.com and other other Amazon sites worldwide. The physical quality of the print editions is very good.

KDP doesn't charge anything, but you have to prepare the book fully for publication or have someone do it for you. My wife and I prepare people's books for publication on KDP, but of course we charge for our services, so if you can't do it yourself, even though KDP doesn't charge you, you do end up paying if you use a service like ours.

There are other, somewhat similar options for self-publishing, such as Draft2Digital and IngramSpark.

[CTyankee]

6. I have someone who is doing that. He's a young guy, all of 29, and I got him thru my old professor from grad school

(I went back to school for a Master's degree as an older student). He is in the computer services dept. there and wanting to branch out professionally. He knows practically nothing about art. I kid with him "you'll be the computer guy who knows what a "sacra conversazione" in art is.&quot . He is also a very religious Lutheran and is "pro-life" as he puts it so we don't talk about politics.

I am not interested in selling my book. I am publishing it for distribution to my family, particularly my grandkids, and friends. I'll have some available for free to folks here at DU.

Book Baby published my first book and will publish this one.