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Printing a book of Music Scores


Dirge

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Hi Dirge and all,

 

Best of luck to you Dirge! I was googling around to find where I can share my music scores and this topic came up - or this forum and your topic rang a bell with me. I had 7 books in Lulu, now I have 5 in CreateSpace - Amazon's place

 

Just found this thread, so I still have some reading to do....

 

For the record, there is also a site called createspace.com (Create Space), for publishing.

 

I can't remember why I chose Lulu over create Space, but I did, some time ago. Maybe I simply understood the mechanics better.

 

Anyway, as for Lulu, I have just over the past few days got my husband's autobiography (...god help us all...!! blink.gif) published there. I haven't yet received final (I hope final) proof of his book, but when I do I'll hit the 'approve' button to take the next step in making it available for distribution.

 

It's already available on Lulu, just can't go elsewhere until further steps are taken. However, it's very findable via Google and so on.

 

 

 

My mother just published her first novel. My daughter and her husband did a music CD. I'm going to get something published one of these days....

 

I think I'll probably use Lulu again.

 

I'm thinking a hardcover spiral bound, though...

 

EDIT:

...and I wasn't done.

 

My dog was barking angrily at me while I posted my previous bit, and he got me frazzled.

 

Anyway, to continue...

 

I would probably use Lulu again to publish some form of a 'scrapbook' that would include photos, tunes, recipes, whatever. Sort of anything I felt like including.

 

I used to feel spiral bound was imperative. So easy to flip pages sitting on the piano you know? But only some special trick gave me that option at Lulu - but it was there! Actually, last I remember I was going with flat bound, something with staples in the middle, but that was because at least Lulu had color pages. I've left Klingon a board game I made and How To Be In Harmony a strange book with Pharoahs, Chakras, Mandalas and the like.. because they have color printing, but it's more expensive per book than Createspace.

 

I wanted to see whatever else there was, I think it was because Lulu changed their ARTIST SHOWCASE feature, a free page for us authors, and wiped out all the programming we had done for so long! But that's still another issue entirely. Anyway I looked around, that LighteningSource I think someone else mentioned, I think their contract sounded funny.

 

CreateSpace by Amazon seems great and now I'm in there, though their books take longer to send to me (at my Canada address), and here's the thing they do that bugs me:

 

When you have uploaded all the pdf files of the book and cover etc etc etc.. you get to choose distribution. They only allow distribution to Libraries and Institutions if you use THEIR isbn number. Well why would you use their isbn #?!? That means if you ever took it somewhere else, it would confuse people to no end. So my 5 books of music, even though the only place I care that they are distributed to is libraries and institutions, I can't!

 

I have a scheme, that I probably shouldn't share here but what the hey.. I'm going to combine 4 of the books, the page numbers is the hard part.. so one huge book, 250 pages of scores, I'll let them put their isbn on it. Then let it be distributed to libraries and institutions, and if I do it correctly, they can see that the individual books are available as well, so we're all happy.

 

Other than that, for both, and in general, I would suggest you back up every 10 minutes, what I do is constantly save the file under another name, example: MoWaltz01.mus then MoWaltz02.mus and so on. Do that every 15 minutes or so (Finale software backs up automatically if you tell it to), and every night I upload all of todays files into my site. Get an easy FTP program, keep all your files there, believe me you will appreciate it one day!

 

In fact you should back everything up, all the time. That being said, I should ctrl-a to select all, ctrl-c copy since this post/writing would be a drag to lose! See what I mean? Always think backing up!

 

Best of luck and I hope this helps.

 

Teo

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