To recap: I’ve written and published a novel
on-line. CafePress has a
print-on-demand system set up so that you can self-publish your books
with no upfront costs–instead, they take a cut of each book.
Consequently, I’ve resolved to try publishing my book through CafePress
while spending as little of my own money as possible.

To publish a book through CafePress, you need to provide them with two
things: a PDF file containing the text of your book, suitable for
printing on the appropriate size paper, and image files for the front
cover, back cover, and spine. I’ve chosen to work on the PDF file first,
and in the last installment I settled on LaTeX as
my tool of choice for producing it. (If you’d like to start from the
beginning, you can go here.)

So far, I’ve managed to convert the HTML text of the novel into LaTeX
format and print out the resulting PDF file on letter-sized paper. I had the
resulting manuscript (now there’s a misnomer) comb-bound at Kinko’s, and
gave it to my brother in hopes that he might read it and feel moved to
put together some cover art for me. At the very least it would be a
refreshing change from wine labels.

Here’s what I have left to do:

Persuade LaTeX to typeset my book attractively on 8″x5″ paper (standard
trade paperback size).

• Design the page headers.
• Lay out the front matter (title page, et cetera, et al).
• Possibly get an ISBN number; I don’t know what’s involved there, but
  apparently it’s doable. That would make it theoretically possible to
  list the book at various on-line bookstores.
• Design the cover.

To aid me in the first three of those items, I’ve bought a couple of
books:
LaTeX: A Document Preparation System, and The LaTeX Companion.

My approximate expenses to date:

• The LaTeX books: $100
• The bound manuscript: $5 for the comb binding at Kinko’s, plus
  half-a-ream of inkjet paper.

I know I’ve let myself in for accusations of inconsistency by spending
$100 on books when I could have gotten Adobe Acrobat for that price; but
frankly the books have a longer shelf life, and as Jane says I’d have
spent the money on some kind of books anyway.

In the next installment, I hope to share some nicely formatted front
matter. Stay tuned!