Title: Letter to the Editor

Not exactly a huge mail bag this edition, but this interesting one came in from Francis Glassborow.

I recently spent time with Parchments, ACCU's printers, discussing how their technology is changing and what those changes enabled.

One of the dramatic changes is that they can no produce single copies of books in much the same way that you might previously have asked them to produce a single copy of a poster. The feature that I found interesting was their estimated cost for a 100 page 'perfect bound' book with a full colour laminated cover. This was substantially under £4 for any production run between 1 (yes a single copy) and 150. After that the price goes down because a cheaper option cuts in for reproducing the pages.

This has set me thinking. Probably many of you have a book that you could write, probably not a best seller and probably not one that a major publisher would contemplate, but nonetheless a good book.

There are a number of processes in going from an author's grey matter to a delivered book and quite a few authors make a mistake by under-rating the added value of a good editor, good design and layout, careful copyediting etc. Then there are issues like ISBNs and the requirement to provide (in the UK) copyright copies to the British Library.

Now I am well familiar with most of those issues. On the other hand I really do hate administration. I wonder if any of you would be interested in exploring creating a partnership or small company to specialise in producing very high quality (validated technical content, properly copyedited and professional standard of layout and production) short run books. I have thought about many of the issues but won't take up ACCU's space by going into them here. If the idea interests you please contact me (+44 (0)1865 246490 or <francis@robinton.demon.co.uk>)

And if you have an idea for a short (80 to 200 page) book you would like to write and have published let me know about that as well.

Francis Glassborow

It certainly looks an interesting idea.

As always, should you have any comments or other items of interest, please don't keep them to yourself - send them in. I'm always happy to receive your views.

Paul F. Johnson