I’ve often thought about publishing an ebook online or getting something into print media (a physical book). Getting an ebook together wouldn’t be a difficult feat for me. I’ve read enough of them to recognise the layout, I’m quite comfortable in a variety of publishing and layout packages - convert the end product to PDF and find a home for it online.

So this morning I collect my mail and find a question from someone interested in publishing a book but also looking for illustrators for their book so I thought, why not make some suggestions through a post and share the information.

Publishing Your Book

I won’t lie - I’ve never dealt with physical book publishers. However, at CreativeCamp in March (I was one of the three main organisers of the conference), we had a talk on self-publishing books and what your options are online for print-on-demand books.

Lulu.com

One option is Lulu.com who offer a variety of paperback books, hardbacks, photobooks, cookbooks and more. If you have all your files ready to go, you can upload the individual pages of your book to Lulu.com and get instant quotes on how many books you need.

My query for a 68 page (consider 4 belong to the cover, inside and out) colour A5 book, perfect bound, worked out at €281 for 20 copies of the book, meaning the manufacturing cost per book would be €14.05. Buy in bulk and save, opt for black and white and save, change your stitching types and save, change your page size and save.

Lulu.com also allows you to define your own price, sell the books online from your own store front, get your own ISBN number and look at distribution options in up to 60,000 outlets online and off.

Instant Publisher

Another company in the self-publishing marketplace is InstantPublisher.com who will turn around a minimum order of 25 copies of your book at trade quality in 7-10 days. For 25 books at 68 pages, colour cover, black and white content, perfect-bound in similar size the cost was significantly lower - at just $113.50.

Freelance Illustrators

So you’ve found a publisher you’re happy with and you now need an illustrator for your book. Why not explore the options provided by the many freelance illustrators working online?

The NJ Creatives Network, based in New Jersey, is home to several freelance illustrators whose samples of work and contact details can be found here.

Creative Freelance are a UK-based organisation drawing on freelance artists and illustrators from the Ipswich and Suffolk area of the UK. You can find some of their freelance illustrators here.

The Freelance Alliance (creative freelancer network) also plays home to a number of freelance illustrators working online, again all with samples of their work, viewable CVs and direct contacts for the illustrators in question.

Something To Add?

If you’ve got something to add or would like to share a resource on self-publishing or sourcing freelance illustrators for books, then leave a comment or drop me an email and I’ll get your link added.

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One project I’m working on this week is sound design for a new theatre production, something I’ve walked into at relatively the last minute.

In the past I’ve hired sound designers for theatre productions - those who can source the sound effects, get the music right, get the cues sorted for the stage and leave us with a magnificent soundscape of pure audio delights.

This job also falls into my ‘free work’ category due to my continued involvement with and development of the theatre company.

What’s been making my job that bit easier are the samples available from Free-Loops.com. Over 5,000 of them in fact, with a lot of the samples covered by a Creative Commons. If you don’t want to go through the downloading process of single-clicking 3,000+ sound loops, you can contribute $20 to the site and get access to a single download file of the entire free loop archive.

If you’re working as a podcast producer, in radio, freelancing with some audio work then this is a solid starting point to explore. There is also a selection of free VST plugins you can download to integrate with your preferred audio editor along with some free standalone multimedia applications to help you with your work.

More Free Sound Loops

Another resource I picked up during the week was SoundSnap.com offering a multitude of free MP3 samples to download. The interface is a lot cleaner and certainly easier to navigate around with clips also available in WAV format (not all clips).

Then there’s the old reliable of SoundDogs.com, which I find to be hit and miss quality-wise depending on what you’re after but it’s always worth a look for short effects / sounds.. You do indeed have to pay to download samples from SoundDogs.com (or grab the MP3 links if you want a low-quality copy.) For commercial use and project use you must open a professional account. The previews, which are low in quality are for demonstration purposes only, with high quality samples available with a pro account.

As with any audio or video download, be sure and read any accompanying license agreements or terms and conditions if using samples in a commercial project or venture.

If you have any free audio resources you would like to add, just leave a comment and I’ll get it added to the list above.

Update 1: Try also, Free Sound Project

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When it comes to the summer, I love to have a good book around. I’m a thriller man myself so I’ll usually go for a John Grisham, James Patterson, Nelson DeMille type of read. However, since last summer I’ve started seeking books provoking thought through my work. I’ll go for graphic design books, blogging books, music books, something other than your regular holiday fiction.

If I’m shopping for books, I’ll grab something from Amazon.com or Play.com (free shipping if you’re living in the UK or Ireland).

Here’s a list of books I’ve been looking at recently. If you’ve got any suggestions or comments on the titles (if ou’ve read them), I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Books For Freelancers

• What to Charge: Pricing Strategies for Freelancers and Consultants by Laurie Lewis for $19.95
• The Free Agent Marketing Guide: 100+ Marketing Tips for Free Agents, Independent Consultants, and Freelancers (Successful Independent, 2) by Douglas Florzak for $18.95
• Going Solo: The Best Resources for Entrepreneurs & Freelancers new from $8.95
• Freelancing Made Simple by Larry E. Hand for around $1.90 (seems pretty cheap price-wise though there’s a bit of reading in it.)
• Six-Figure Freelancing by Kelly James-Enger for $10.17

While I can get so much information from blogs, I’ll still find it nice (while we still have the chance) to shut off for a half hour and steal some time with a book. Want to help me pick one worth reading? Or failing any of the titles on the list, have you something I should add to the list for other readers? Let me know.

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Working as a graphic designer, one of the jobs I really enjoy is creating artwork for CD releases. While the fun comes in the creation of the artwork as well, you’ve got to consider the technical specifications - measurements, bleeds, colours, if you’re going jewel case, j-card, digipak or otherwise.

Here’s a list of resources for you on CD sizes and specs along with some downloadable templates you can work from.

• Printing For Less CD Cover & Inlay Card
• Amtech Duplication (Montreal, Canada) - Digipak templates available in EPS and PDF format. (See also DVD Templates)
• MPEG Production, Sweden - CD / Digipak / DVD templates in PDF format
• Music Matters International - CD, J-Card, DVD specs and templates.
• WTS Duplication - CD, Booklets, Mini CD, Business Card CD covers and templates.
• Oasis Disc Manufacturing - Plenty of CD templates to download including required industry and packaging logos.

Have you any resources you would like to add or suggest? Leave a comment here.

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If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last few years of business, it’s that no partnership is truely equal. If everything is 50/50 then nobody has control.

Some partnerships work. Maybe it’s two designers pooling their collective resources in order to taking on bigger projects. Maybe it’s someone highly skilled in design and the creative elements of freelancing, coupled with someone highly skilled in a business sense - the one I like to call “the face”.

If you are considering taking on a partner, forming a new business with a partner or entering an existing business as a partner then you need to be sure of a few things.

• Is this person or persons the right one to get involved with?
• What agreements exist in place between partners?
• Where does the responsibility lie - individually or collectively?
• If the partnership dissolves, what happens next?
• Do you really need a partner?

That said, here are a few links to online resources and articles you might consider exploring and reading if you are indeed looking to take or or set up a partnership.

• Locating The Ideal Partner
• Partnership Agreements - Are They Right For You?
• Before You Go Into Business With Family Or Friends
• Steps To Starting Your Own Business
• Starting A Partnership
• Creating A Winning Business Partnership
• Definition of the term “partnership”
• Setting Up General Partnerships & Limited Partnerships

The articles above are contributed by numerous authors writing for About.com. Details relating to partnerships apply across the board, regardless of where you live.

Popularity: 14% [?]

The Google Webmaster Tools collection is a powerful set of free online tools that you, as a blogger or webmaster can use to track visits to your site. If you are serious about tracking your web visitors and making sure your blog or site is ticking over and technically correct then you should include the Google Webmaster Tools as part of your blogging proccess.

Why You Should Be Using Google Webmaster Tools

It is all about the statistics and information on offer. Just look at the list below to see what I mean.

• Crawl Rate
  You get to see, straight from the horses mouth, when and how often the Googlebot hits your blog. Don’t like the crawl rate? Then make a change!
• Index Status
  Get an overview of what pages you’ve posted are actually appearing on Google and what can’t be found.
• Web Crawl Issues
  See errors and problems encountered by Google’s crawlers while accessing pages on your site.
• Mobile Crawl Issues
  See errors and problems encountered by Google’s crawlers while accessing pages on your site created specifically for viewing on mobile cell phones. In the age of N95s, iPhones and dozens of other mobile phones running a variety of mobile browsers, this is a key tool in making sure you’re visible on all devices.
• View Search Engine Queries
  You can view your top search queries month by month, location by location and mix those up with the top clicked queries from the same period.
• Feed (Subscriber) Stats
  If you’re not a FeedBurner user this one will give you an idea of the numbers using and subscribing to your blog feed. If you are a FeedBurner user, you won’t see your FeedBurner numbers reflected here (even though Google own FB).

What Else Can You Do?

• Add your blog’s sitemap (essential really if you want to get the best use from the service).
• Remove URLs from Google
• See what the GoogleBot sees when crawling
• View the different levels of PageRank across your blog / site
• View all internal / external links related to your blog / site
• Much more!

At the moment, I’m tracking eleven different blogs under the Google Webmaster Tools. Now, I don’t run this independently as I boost my stat tracking using the likes of Google Analytics and StatCounter. The screencap you see above is from a blog I have recently put on hiatus (visually represented by some aged queries in March) but it gives a look at the top twenty search queries over the month of August (all related to Liverpool Football Club).

You will need a Google account in order to register for the service (you can use an existing email address, you don’t neccessarily need to register for Gmail) and it certainly helps to have an XML sitemap for your blog as well. Don’t have one? If you’re a Wordpress user then try out this Google sitemap generator.

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If you’re new to the world of freelancing and you’re trying to find freelance writing jobs, freelance graphic design jobs, freelance web design jobs, then here’s a list of places to get you started.

Equally, this applies to employers and organisations looking to source freelance workers for a particular project or contract.

• All Freelance, a freelance jobs directory with a jobs board, work at home jobs and telecommuting jobs.
• Freelance Ireland, a free site for Irish-based freelancers, contractors and service suppliers
• Freelance Job Search, find projects and leads, get free bids on web design, graphic design and logo design jobs.
• Freelance Switch Jobs Board, the jobs board at Freelance Switch with over 100 jobs at time of writing ranging from flash design, web design, scripting and more.
• Sologig, for contractors, consultants and freelancers connecting quality employers with independent talent.
• Freelancers.net, offering both freelance jobs and freelance projects while providing profiles for freelance users of the site.
• Go Freelance, thousands of freelance jobs accessible in the online database with jobs focused on editing, writing, design and beyond.

These are just a sample of the many freelance job resources out there. If you have had any success using any of the above sites, why not let me know? Maybe you could suggest one site over another to fellow blog readers and freelance workers?

Photo via Courtney Phillips blog

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