Last year I decided to experiment with on-demand publishing. This refers to companies who offer to print your publishing projects one unit at a time as needed. Automated printing and binding technology now allows this to be done in an affordable way. The best solution for me is to work with a company that combines production, fulfillment, and even some marketing. I choose to try CreateSpace which is owned by Amazon. You register for an account and upload your book and artwork as PDFs. After a proofing process, Amazon posts your book for sale on their site and a number of additional markets. You get royalties from the sales.
My books are essentially modifications of resources I originally produced for online teacher markets. I had several books worth of material ready to tweak for printing a variety of content. This simply serves as an additional market to possibly appeal to a different customer base. Overall, I am pleased with the printing. I am able to work with the materials they use but I wish there were more options such as the weight of the paper they print on. For workbooks and coloring books, I find one has to opt for printing to only one side of the page. It may not be for everyone. Amazon takes a nice chunk of the sales for their part, but it’s worth it to those who don’t have time to spend acquiring a traditional publisher. It was very easy for me since the content already existed. I was able to go from registering to having several books ready for sale in a couple of weeks. I was pleased that sales began right away without any particular promotion from me yet.