The first thing you need to do is be brutally honest with yourself. You take one of two doors.... and the first one is labeled "Damned If You Do"
Option 1: you don't care about making any
money. You are in it for the betterment of
numismatics and being recognized in the community. You write a chapter or two to be able to
showcase your
work and then pitch it to any and all publishers out there. At the moment that's probably down to just
Spink and
Whitman but maybe if you have the right connections in academia you could get a university press to fund the project on your behalf. I find that last really doubtful but who knows. Assuming that you do find a publisher then you'll already be prepared to be offered an insulting advance to finish your drafts by a certain deadline. If they've given you so much as a dime upfront that's a deadline you don't want to miss and they're going to ride you really hard along the way. In the end, if all goes well, you turn over all your research and they do with it what they will. You might see royalties of a dollar
per sold copy if you're lucky. Given the number of potential sales this might all add up to, say, give you enough to fix a busted water heater. Maybe.
Option 2: you decide to go the indie route and sell all the books yourself. Since you've opted for color you don't have the option of print-on-demand and other DIY alternatives. Color requires an offset press if you want professional results (and if you don't you can always use an inkjet at Kinko's but each book will be enormously expensive and look amateurish). Anyway, you go through the same
work as Option 1 but with the added headaches of dealing with a printer and, of course, the outlay it'll take to get the book printed. Color printing will cost you on
average 5 cents a page. It is four times costlier than black and white because it takes four different ink colors to reproduce the full color gamut. To this you must add separate fees for
binding, paper stock, coatings, shipping and who knows what else. Worst of all your printer will need to devote staff to prepare your prepress-ready files (which need to be done in InDesign or Quark Xpress neither of which is a program for the faint of heart) and turn it into the PDFs that will be readable to
his particular printing press. Since that printing press normally takes up a huge room and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars he will most likely be allotting at least one full
work shift to your project. These costs are hidden to you but are passed on in the form of substantial MOQs (minimum order quantity) which usually starts at around 1,000 copies but is typically a fictional tier to get you on the hook. Either the
price per copy is so high as to make you want to throw up or they might lump you in with all the other cheapskates for some undetermined future date when they can get to it. Of course, you have to prepay the full
price up front. Don't be surprised if the bill is in the six figures.
I know this sounds very discouraging but you might as well know the unvarnished truth of what you're getting into. I personally think that every serious
numismatist should at least consider publishing their own
collection. It is immensely rewarding, you learn a lot along the way and it engages you with your favorite subject much more intimately than having your
collection sit in a drawer ever would. A one-off color copy suitable as a coffee table art book may cost you hundreds of dollars but would be a beautiful - and again immensely rewarding - experience as well as a tangible keepsake of your
collection long after you die and your coins dispersed. Publishing is really only a drag when you start thinking big. If you have
money to burn then by all means do it. It'll be worth every penny. You can outsource all the headaches and concentrate on the creative
part. If you have a
budget though then consider scaling back to eBooks or reverting to black and white to make it more feasible. You can always
scale up to bigger and better if the first attempt is successful.
Rasiel
