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How to finalize your personal history for printing: Part 3- Printing preparation and decisions

Part 3 in a series of posts to help you finalize your personal history for printing

You have accomplished an amazing work—a legacy—in writing your personal history. Your children and grandchildren will be forever grateful for this priceless gift! So don’t leave it locked on your computer…

Let’s prepare your legacy tale to be shared with your posterity. Don’t rush these final steps; it will take some time to do it right! And if you want it professionally printed, be patient! Printer deadlines are very early for Christmas as well as other times. To be safe, allow three months from when your manuscript is completely finalized and sent to print, for it to arrive beautifully bound. It is absolutely worth the wait!

Follow these steps to prepare it yourself, or contact us (702/625-1466 or info@legacytale.com) for professional help with any or all of the editing, layout and printing. We’d love to assist you in creating a legacy tale you’ll be proud to share!

Part 3: Printing Preparation and Decisions

Preparing your manuscript for professional printing, and managing the printing process complete with proofs and approvals, can seem overwhelming. Legacy Tale can take the stress and guesswork out of the final stage of preserving and sharing your legacy. We love helping families publish heirloom books that are cherished for generations. Contact us (702/625-1466 or info@legacytale.com) for professional assistance with any or all of the printing process.

To move forward on your own, you need to make some decisions:

  1. How many copies do I need? For whom did I write this? Most clients want copies for all of their children and grandchildren. Others also want it for siblings, nieces and nephews. Some are lucky enough to still have parents around to receive a copy.
  2. How do I envision them reading and/or using it? What kind of binding/printing do I want?
    • Do I want a beautiful hardbound book that will last through time? OR
    • Would a softcover (like a paperback book) or coil binding be sufficient? Those options are not as durable or attractive, but they are more economical. OR
    • Would electronic printing meet my needs? Simply saving your files as PDFs makes them shareable, readable and printable via computer.
  3. For professional printing:
    • Get price quotes from printers. Look around your town or online for options. Consider BYU Print and Mail Services for affordable, high-quality printing of hardcover, softcover, and coil binding. Printers like Kinko’s and Costco often offer paper printing and coil binding directly from your electronic files (no proofing like with a professional printer, so insert your own page numbers and make sure every page looks just like you want it printed).
    • For a price quote, you will need to know the number of copies you want, total pages and the number of color pages, and binding type. You can request quotes for multiple binding types. Per-book costs decrease with larger quantities.
    • Check, and double-check, and triple-check your manuscript before sending it to a printer. Proofreading and corrections should already be done.
    • Professional printers will send you one or more proofs before they print. REVIEW THESE PROOFS carefully!
      • Read/scan your entire manuscript to check for dropped lines, proper order of pages, pictures and captions in the right places and properly linked, color in the right places, etc.
      • Now is not the time to be proofreading for typos, but if you find a mistake you can’t live with, they can usually fix it, possibly at additional cost.
      • Work with the printer to place page numbers on every page and within the table of contents.
      • Provide direction to the printer on the cover and spine, including color, what text will be included, font, etc.
      • CHECK EVERYTHING! What you see in the proof is what you get!
      • Give your books as priceless gifts to your loved ones… they will treasure your legacy!
  1. For electronic self-printing:
    • Insert page numbers
    • Save your entire manuscript as a single PDF file.
    • Share with family members via email, flash drive or other electronic platform… don’t just leave it locked on your computer!!

 

I’d love to hear your thoughts, so please comment below. Was this useful? If so, I’d really appreciate you sharing on Facebook.

Have you grabbed a copy of my free e-book of writing prompts? If not, you can get it here.

Don’t leave your tale untold…

 

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