Many of us have felt that we have a book inside us – the stumbling block was always finding a publisher to get it in front of an audience. There are now several options to achieve this, the most cost-effective is to produce an e-book yourself, sell it on sites like Amazon and wait for the money to come in. Another is to approach the many vanity publishing sites on the internet offering their services to typeset and print your title (but be wary). Or, you could try me.

      Self-publishing has been around for years, Mark Twain, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf started this way and it is now considered to be a perfectly respectable path to get your book into the marketplace, and many authors are choosing to self-publish as a stepping stone to get their work noticed.
Have you a work of fiction, a family history, some poems or researched work you would like to see published? It might be that you have already successfully published your title as an e-book and wish to offer a printed version?

      My approach is different to many, I try to find the most cost-effective process to bring your book to print, search out the best prices and use my skills to typeset your work so it can look as pleasing as you hoped it would. I am always around and happy to answer any questions you have and there is no obligation to proceed. I do not ask for payment up front, or add extras to my quotations. I will also try to persuade you not to go ahead with your project if I think you are wasting your money.

      Here are some titles I have produced for self-published authors:

From Russia to Mexborough with Love, by Laura Thickett. An autobiography, 128 pages with text and pictures, mono. 1,000 copies printed. Laura's book tells her story of arriving in this country as a nine-year-old from the Ukraine and settling in Mexborough, South Yorkshire. I typeset this for free, for a family friend.

John's Story, by John Carter. Two volumes, mono. He enjoyed producing his first book so much he went and wrote another. Then the family combined them after he died, to give away at his funeral.

The Dunster Stories by Doris Innes. I had to rescue this one. Doris had already got this typeset and illustrated, but the girl doing that had become upset and refused to do any changes. I had to re-typeset it from a printed copy she had, scan the drawings and produce 20 copies. I did this for two cream cakes and £5 petrol money as she could not afford my costs.

20 Shorts by Jack Aitchison. 96 text pages, 16 in colour, size A5. He had already had these stories published in the Derby Evening Telegraph and donated the profits he made to the MS Society. From delivery of Jack’s Microsoft Word files, the production took approximately only two weeks.

Pretty Vacant by Darren Holden. 224 pages in colour, size A3 landscape. Darren is a wonderfully gifted photographer and dreamed of capturing his hobby of going to and taking pictures of abandoned building in a book. It was incredibly ambitious and a shock to see the cost when I found a printer that could produce a 820mm width sheet with two pages side-by-side, and to reproduce them to an exceptionally high standard. The cased-cover was printed on linen, and slip cases were black-blocked. The weight of the paper, 200gsm, meant it had to be hand-sewn – it weighed a ton! The binding cost was also scary, but Darren was determined to see it through and for it to be exactly how he wanted it.

Marshall's Meanderings by Marshall Gray. 96 pages, text only. Marshall is another member of Spondon Writing Club and wanted his memories of going on holiday put into print. 

The Property Coach by Aran Curry.  184 pages, text and tables. Mono. This ran into three editions. Aran wanted to share his secrets of investing into property with his clients through a book.

Teacups, Tea, Angels and Me, by Anne Ellis. 72 pages, colour throughout. Text and illustrations. Anne shared her love of angels, she did some illustrations, lots of information and verses about them and put them into a book

Educating a child genius, by Amanda Sarabi. 116 pages, text only, mono. The story of the difficult but remarkable journey of a mother discovering how to live with a gifted child.

Block Beater by Peter T King. 96 pages, colour pictures with text. Peter has an incredible imagination and is a member of Spondon Writer's Group. He wanted to reproduce many of his stories and poems, to give away to friends and staff, to inspire them to give writing a go themselves. Both softback and hardback editions were produced.

John Thomas Graham: A Life in Verse, by Kath Doré. 180 pages, mono. When estimating this book the number of pages it was expected to make, some 500+, suddenly reduced once the author did a recount! This was a collection of travels around Britain, written in rhyme, by her grandfather a century ago.

Littleover War Memorial, by Chris Drury. 48 pages, colour throughout. Commissioned by the local history society, this book related to the war graves and memorials in that area, researched by the author and brought out for Remembrance Day.

Poems Mostly About Nature, by Margaret Tomlin. 98 pages, hardback. Lots of poems Margaret has written over the years that she wanted to give to her friends in a hardback edition.