After a nice hanging-out and talking with Jim from autonomedia here are some of the notes I tried to compile for good use in the future:
Autonomedia has
- published/co-published and distributed (for 20 years), a number of
- books, some accompanied by CDs and DVDs, that have been
- copyrighted, copylefted or anti-copyright all together.
Thay have done - bilingual titles (but feel that this is not really good form to approach US customers :)
- have collaborated with cultural institutes and agencies like ProHelvetia, Free University of Berlin, French Cultural Attache, (need to add some more if possible)
- have done publications from editorial to distribution (incl. design and printing...in-color and have experience in digital technologies), but also have worked with almost finished projects.
Thay know that: - printing less than 2000 books is not feasible, so smaller editions should be done in
- digital (on-demand) print in quantities of around 500, but they print their full editions of full color covers always in editions of 5000.
Some figures - in production of book:
- average sized book (around 200 monochrome pages) in off-set costs around 3$, plus cover costs
- same in digital print costs around 4$
- in production of CDs/DVDs
- prices range from under 1$ per AudioCD copy to 1,5$ for DVDs (this last figure is very approximate)
Things to take into account :
- price of a book is not only production, but also
- storage and
- distribution costs
- autonomedia has moved its primary warehouse out of New York City for cheap stoarge
- has functional on-line shop and has works with Amazon and Barnes and Noble on-line;
- designed books prepared for printing in PDF; can be printed out in some cases in less than a month from the day of the file delivery