Do-It-Yourself Book Press (2006)

In one of his descriptions of the publishing world, Charlie Stross described publishing as "supply chain management". And after three successful but stressful Kickstarters for my comics[1], that really rings true.

If you have the option to get your work published through an Actual Publisher, I strongly recommend doing so. You will make less money but you will also spend a lot less time dealing with wrangling the money, printing, shipping, distribution, and maybe even promotion if you're lucky enough for the publisher to decide to put some actual energy into that for you. Building a distribution network that gets stuff into bookstores all over is a lengthy process that will consume a lot of your time, and doing it right really requires having a lot more product flowing through that network than you will ever be able to generate yourself.

If you have someone in your DIY circles who has made the choice to take on the handling of some part of this network as a part of their DIY career, I strongly recommend paying them to handle this part of things if you can afford it.

[1] http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/ - want a copy? there's still a bunch in the garage of the friend who helped me deal with fulfilling the kickstarter for the final collected volume after my initial plans of using Amazon Fulfillment went awry, who also now handles my online store!

If you are interested in the process of bookbinding, I strongly recommend DAS Bookbinding (https://dasbookbinding.com/) and his Youtube channel of tutorials. He is very skilled and makes excellent videos.

This is really great! I've recently picked up bookbinding as a hobby, and so far I haven't found much in the way of good advice on tooling - I've been working with a guillotine cutter from Staples that only handles about ten sheets at a time, and I didn't even know such a thing as a "handbinding press" existed.