Publishing with BCRA
- This page contains information for those who wish to explore the possibility of BCRA
publishing their book.
- If you are an author contributing to a BCRA publication please see
Information for Authors.
- If you are an author or publisher seeking permission to reproduce copyright material,
please see Copyright of BCRA Publications.
In summary, if you want BCRA to be involved in publishing your book you will need
to set out your proposal explaining why you want to involve BCRA in your project. If you require
any funding you will also need to supply a business plan.
Click/Tap a link or scroll on down.
What is a publisher?
BCRA is open to approaches from authors who have works that they wish to see published.
However there are a number of points to bear in mind. It is important to understand what is meant
by a "publisher"; to understand how BCRA operates; and to be familiar with methods of printing.
Traditionally, a publisher performs the following tasks...
- Receives a bare manuscript from an author.
- Edits the manuscript, lays it out, and produces a print-ready file.
- Arranges and pays for the printing.
- Handles the marketing of the book.
The publisher has control over the manuscript and may wish to make modifications to the
author's manuscript, and to apply house styles. The publisher has to have control because,
legally, the publisher is responsible for the published content, and is in the firing line if
there are allegations of copyright infringement or libel.
It is worth highlighting the point that the author is subservient to the publisher. This
is not always understood by authors who approach BCRA. Quite often, an author will have produced
his own print-ready PDF file and simply wants BCRA to "publish" it; and it is not always clear
what the author actually means by that, which is why we insist on a proper business plan being
provided.
How does BCRA operate?
BCRA is a UK registered charity. It meets its charitable objectives by several means
including publication. BCRA is an "unincorporated body", which can best be explained, in practical
terms, by saying that BCRA has no real existence – it is a "shell" occupied entirely by
volunteers.
BCRA does not pay its authors and contributors; and would expect that any surplus from
its publications would be retained by BCRA and put towards its charitable aims. The important
point is that because BCRA is merely a "shell", whenever anyone asks BCRA to do anything (e.g. to
publish their book), they are really asking us to conjure up a volunteer to undertake that
task.
Methods of printing
Essentially, there are two methods of printing. The traditional approach involves making
"plates" and then printing using a wet-ink process called
offset lithography; usually printing
four, six or eight book pages onto one side of a large sheet of paper, which is then folded. The
resulting "signatures" are then stitched together and finally cropped to free-up the pages and
form a book. The set-up cost for this process can be high but the individual copies are very cheap
to produce. Because the set-up charge is high, reprints are best avoided. In other words, the
initial printing must be for as many copies as are ever going to be needed.
A more modern method, which is increasingly popular, is to use what is essentially a
large laser printer. These machines can collate and bind as well. The set-up cost is low, but
individual copies are more expensive. This process is rapid, and has lead to "print on demand"
printing. There are many on-line services that will accept an uploaded PDF and ship your books
back to you with a very rapid turnaround. On-line booksellers use p.o.d. to satisfy customer
orders for low-sale items. On-line services can also market your book, ship it world-wide to
wholesalers and also sell it from their web-site, direct to customers.
At the moment, a digital print-on-demand process cannot match a traditional process for
quality and resolution unless you opt for a top-of-the-range "premium colour" process; and even
then it doesn't quite match the traditional process. For large full-colour books, the traditional
process is still the best option, but this requires a significant initial cost which, in turn,
implies a good business plan and an excellent marketing strategy. For a large monochrome
text-book, print-on-demand would be the more suitable option allowing it to be produced in low
quantities, without necessitating any marketing effort.
Printing costs
This table compares print-on-demand costs with those of a traditional wet ink process. It
should be borne in mind that these prices are ball-park figures only, recorded in 2020. It is
essential to obtain quotations for your work – the market-place is changing rapidly and
print-on-demand costs do vary significantly between suppliers.
| Type of printing |
Format (Inside pages) |
Set-up charge |
Price per page |
Overall cost |
| Digital print-on-demand
Perfect-bound paperback. Colour cover. Coated paper.
For hardback add £5 per book
|
Standard Monochrome, 90gsm paper, A5 |
£1.25 per book |
£0.015 |
£2.15 (60pp booklet) |
| Premium Monochome, 120gsm paper, A5 |
£0.03 |
£3.05 (60pp booklet) |
| Standard Colour, 120gsm paper, A5 |
£0.035 |
£3.35 (60pp booklet) |
| Premium Colour, 120gsm paper, A5 |
£0.09 |
£6.65 (60pp booklet) |
| Premium Colour, 120gsm paper, A4 |
£1.50 per book |
£0.13 |
£34.00 (250pp book) |
| Traditional offset lithography |
Premium Colour, 120gsm paper, A4 |
£25 per page-in-book |
£0.02 |
£6250 plus £5 per 250pp book |
You can see that for slim booklets, print-on-demand printing is ideal – the items
are relatively cheap and there is no up-front cost. An example of a print-on-demand booklet is
Exploring the Limestone Landscapes of the Cumbrian Ring. For this, we
used a "Standard Colour" process, which is why the colour reproduction in the book is not as good
as it could be.
At the other end of the scale Caves and Karst of the Yorkshire
Dales used a traditional process and required a considerable investment by BCRA but resulted
in a unit price (assuming 1000 copies) of just over £11. To match that with a
print-on-demand would have resulted in a unit price of £34, which would not have been
feasible. Note, though, that a print-on-demand hardback for £39 would be entirely
feasible.
Help with funding
One of the tasks of a publisher is to provide funding for the printing and marketing of a
book. You may have a project that is largely complete and which only requires funding for
printing and marketing. In this situation, BCRA may be interested in publishing the work, but you
will need to provide a business plan, showing your projected expenditure and sales income,
and an explanation of how the book is to be marketed.
Our experience is that authors sometimes struggle with the concept of a professional
business plan and are happier simply collecting "donations" towards their project. BCRA can only
offer limited funds as a donation whereas, if you provide a proper business plan, we are likely to
offer a greater level of financial assistance – provided, of course, that the project looks
viable within our terms.
Help with editing
Having BCRA "publish" your work amounts to BCRA identifying a volunteer to act as your
editor. This is not always possible. The job of editing involves skilled and wide-ranging
tasks so, clearly, the more editing work you can do yourself, the better. The range of editing
tasks includes...
- Proof-reading
- Application of a consistent house-style
- Layout
- Pre-press work on photographs (e.g. histogram, sharpening, CMYK conversion)
- Pre-press work on maps and diagrams (e.g. vector graphics, hi-resolution requirement
for lines)
- Preparation of proofs for printing (PDF output to correct specification)
- Commissioning and overseeing the printing process
We can usually find a volunteer to provide you with advice on the above, even if they
cannot actually offer their services.
There are some points worth commenting on...
- You do not need to use professional desk-top publishing software. It is perfectly
adequate to use Microsoft Word or Open Office to lay out your document. However, to do this
properly (even if you are using a DTP package) requires a considerable skill level which, to be
honest, few "amateurs" ever reach. You should take the trouble to learn how to apply paragraph
styles, and how to work with cross-references, auto-numbering and linked picture files.
- Photographs and diagrams need to be of a high quality and they require specialised
treatment. You cannot simply drag a photograph into a document and expect it to reproduce
properly. The required processing depends on the precise nature of the printing process that is
eventually chosen, so you cannot necessarily process the images and graphics in advance.
- Unless we have arranged with you to receive print-ready files, our volunteer editors
will want to work with your raw manuscript, rather than your attempted layout –that is not
to say that an attempted layout is not useful as a broad picture; just that it will not be used as
a starting point, so do not waste too much time on it.
Help with marketing
Marketing is essential for a traditionally printed book, because of the need to recoup
the initial investment. However, BCRA cannot offer much help with marketing so it is down
to you to arrange this, and this is why we need to see your business plan.
When someone asks BCRA to publish their manuscript, they are really asking... Please
provide a volunteer, who will work for no payment, to turn my manuscript into a publication; then
have another volunteer spend effort in marketing the publication. Clearly this poses a dilemma
for BCRA because, whilst we would like to add suitable publications to our catalogue – in
order to fulfill our charitable aims and to generate a small surplus for BCRA – volunteers
are thin on the ground. In particular, volunteers with the specialist skills (and the time) to do
editing and marketing are rare.
Marketing, in particular, is something that BCRA has never been very good at. (That is,
we have never managed to find a volunteer who was prepared to put in the time and effort needed to
successfully market a book). It might be that the only "marketing" that is needed is to post a
message to social media and call in at a couple of caving shops but, clearly, if there are
up-front costs to re-coup then marketing is more important. It might be necessary to design and
print flyers and posters; to mail material to a large list of bookshops; to place the item in the
national book catalogue, and so on. It would be helpful to consider the likely target audience,
e.g., ...
- BCRA members
- BCA members
- Other cavers, who read social media
- Callers at caving shops, show caves, tourist offices etc.
- Visitors to caving club accommodation
- Bookshops
- Academics
- Libraries and institutions
Publishing options
Publishing a "traditional" book
The first thing BCRA will need from you is a business plan, explaining what money
is needed to start the project, what funds you are expecting BCRA to contribute, and how you will
recoup the costs for BCRA. As noted above, you cannot just leave BCRA to market the book. We will
also need to know how you plan to take the book from manuscript to print-ready copy. Usually, we
would ask the author to do all this work himself – or to find his own co-authors and
collaborators.
Publishing a "print on demand" book
Most of BCRA's new publications are now POD items. There is no (or little) up-front cost
and so this makes marketing less essential. If your manuscript falls into one of BCRA's areas of
interest, we would probably be able to find a volunteer to do the editing and layout, in which we
would ask you to submit a raw manuscript, much as you would do for a paper in Cave
& Karst Science or an article in the BCRA Review.
If your manuscript is unusual, or specialised (and if we cannot interest one of our
volunteers) then we would probably ask you to consider editing it and laying it out yourself,
which might involve finding your own collaborators to do the technical work. We can offer some
advice on this – see
Document Revisions
- 21-June-2015. This document was written by David Gibson.
- 21-Jan-2021. This document extracted from Information for
Authors
- 22-Jan-2021. Minor revisions
