Book Printing
There are two main options for printing your book
1. A Book Printer - the conventional route
It'll cost you though. And you have to put in an order for at least a hundred copies to make it worth your while. To print one copy so you can have a look at the finished product will cost you c. £70-£100. You can make changes(typos, puntuation, spelling, picture placement, fonts etc.) at this stage.
After that the cost reduces on a sliding scale depending on the number of books you buy. Once that order's gone through, you can't change anything until the next big reprint.
2. An E-Book Printer e.g. Amazon or Lulu
They will print individual books for you the writer (average c. 300 pages) at cost price eg. c. £3.50 each (depending on exact number of pages). You can make changes yourself by reloading the Interior book file or the cover file at any time, any number of times.
It's a No-Brainer really isn't it. I know which one I chose.
Info re Print on Demand Costs
You can actually upload your book - interior and cover - on Monday and have the finished book in your hands by Thursday or Friday. For under a fiver [plus postage of course]. How exciting is THAT?
And once you've clicked the PUBLISH button it's up and running, on the market, anyone can buy your book as a paperback in the normal Amazon (Lulu whatever) way at a price that YOU have set (and you can change at any time). They can just search for your name and the title, straight away. With a conventional publisher it can take up to TWO YEARS from them accepting your book to publication date.
Amazon will print and despatch your book to the person who ordered it within 48 hours. They will take a fair chunk of the profit and you get the rest.