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The Thrill of the Case
By Terry Freedman
Wed, 20 Dec 2006, 10:19

What could be better than receiving a box of books? Receiving a box of books that you wrote, of course! Is there a place for self-publishing in schools?

The books I refer to are the two booklets I wrote, on Every Child Matters and Boring ICT lessons. These were produced by print-on-demand, through Lulu, but published by, an therefore assigned an ISBN number by, Terry Freedman Ltd.

I ordered 10 copies of each in order to be able to comply with the UK requirement to send 6 copies of a newly-published books to various libraries and agencies. And that, of course, leaves 4 copies of each for me to send to reviewers and casually leave lying about when guests come to the house....

But isn't this just a case of vanity publishing? Well, yes and no. "Yes", in the sense that you pay the costs of having it printed and bound, whereas in mainstream publishing those costs are borne by the publisher. And "Yes" in the sense that if it's a niche product it would be hard to find a mainstream publisher that will take it on, which leaves doing it yourself as the only option. But "No" in the sense that if, as in my case, you have been approached by mainstream publishers and declined their advances and therefore made a free choice about whom you want to publish your book. And also "No" if the book has virtually no market at all (cf The Long Tail), which is what I should like to consider now.

Print on demand is a very good option when you need  very few, perhaps even just one, copy of a book. The origination costs, ie the fixed costs of setting up the book, are not spread over a large number, and so the fixed cost per book is relatively high. On the other hand, you don't have the twin problems of trying to find (a) start-up capital and (b) room to store hundreds of copies. In the case of Lulu, it's easy to amend the text of your book very quickly too, which in education, and especially the educational technology field, is a must these days.

So, what does all this mean for the ICT (Educational Technology) leader in a school?

I have long believed that if you want people to take something seriously and treat it with respect, it has to look good. What can look better than a publication which looks like it just came from a bookstore? Most schools do not have the facilities to be able to even begin to compete.

So, if I were a Head of Department or subject leader in a school now, I would use Lulu for a number of purposes:

* The staff handbook

* The 3 year strategic plan

* Information about assessment

* A year planner or calendar with important internal events (like report deadlines, term dates) and external events (like conferences) pre-filled in.

If you wanted to produce your own textbook to distribute to all your students, it may be better, because cheaper, to go down a more traditional self-publishing route. That means, finding a printer who does short print runs, ie 500 or 1000. The biggest barrier to this avenue is the advance cost.

I'm not convinced that such a strategy would be cost-effective: On the one hand traditionally-published books are much cheaper as a rule. On the other hand, it's hard to beat the cost of a ring-binder and handouts or, of course, an online collection of resources.

But for the purposes of boosting your team's morale and creating a great impression with inspectors, having a dozen each of a few publications printed is hard to beat.

© Terry Freedman Wed, 20 Dec 2006