[TheForge] Lindsay Publications

[Ries Niemi]

The problem is price.
I already do some of my own on demand books at Blurb- I upload the content, and anyone who wants can order one from blurb, and they will handle the sale, print, and ship. The problem is, for the smallest books, they want around 20 bucks to do this, bigger ones can get to fifty or more.
So you dont make any money to speak of with this model.

The next step up in on demand would be to buy/lease your own Espresso machine-
http://www.ondemandbooks.com/
these machines print, bind, and trim, to order. 
In house, you can control costs more.

However, printing ONE of something is always going to be more expensive per book than printing thousands. 
Lindsay was  selling his books pretty cheap- I dont know if you could hit that price point with print on demand.

maybe.

ries



On Mar 28, 2012, at 3:42 PM, Bruce . wrote:

> If I were interested in this, I'd look into on-demand printing:
> * There IS not stock, the copy isn't printed till it sells.
> * The "printer" takes the order and fills it, with no work for you.
> 
> The existence of on-demand printing might be WHY Lindsay is going out
> of business.  After all, he doesn't own copyright on any of his texts,
> so in principal any of us could scan the same text and make it
> available on-demand.
> 
> There IS some lead time setting up for on-demand printing.  Happens,
> I've recently done some book scanning.  The hardware can be cheap; the
> software can be free.  (This is for IMAGES of the pages, not OCR'd
> text.)
> 
> Once it's in image form, it could be released for a reader or computer as well.
> 
> Things have changed since Gutenberg...
> 
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 12:12 PM, Ries Niemi <ries at riesniemi.com> wrote:
>> Good question.
>> 
>> I would want to have an accountant look at the books with you.
>> Whats the gross annual sales, and whats the net?
>> Does he pay himself a salary?
>> Are there hard assets, and, if so, what are they worth?
>> Inventory?
>> Is there an assurance that the printers will keep printing these relatively small press runs?
>> 
>> There are various rules of thumb for different businesses- basically, you dont want to buy a business that doesnt make enough money to pay employees to run it- otherwise, its not a business, its a hobby.
>> 
>> 2 to 5 times annual net income is not uncommon as a sales price for small businesses- but it really depends.
>> Would it be a cash sale, or would they carry a loan?
>> 
>> This affects price, of course.
>> 
>> 
>> On Mar 28, 2012, at 8:31 AM, terry l. ridder wrote:
>> 
>>> hello ries;
>>> 
>>> i wonder how a person would go about determining the current value of
>>> lindsay books for the purpose of making him an offer for the business
>>> and name?
>>> 
>>> On Sat, 24 Mar 2012, Ries Niemi wrote:
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> if this is true, its sad news.
>>>> But especially with all these free books on the internet, book
>>>> publishing, especially low volume niche books like Lindsay does,
>>>> is a losing proposition.
>>>> 
>>>> I have a couple dozen Lindsay books, and I especially like the
>>>> reprints of older tech books from 100 years ago.
>>>> 
>>>> I have noticed that Dover, which, like Lindsay, republishes old,
>>>> out of copyright material, is now starting to include DVD's with
>>>> some of its books- they figure, for the extra quarter or fifty
>>>> cents it costs them, it could help sell books.
>>>> 
>>>> ries
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Ries Niemi
>>>> Industrial Artist
>>>> www.riesniemi.com
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> terry l. ridder ><>
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Bruce
> NJ
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