I consider Dead Tree Publishing to be Good Enough at this point. It’s launched.

I’m going to add support for URLs instead of uploading PDFs, and fix some bugs here for there, but it’s essentially done.

Meanwhile, I’ve already received my first physical book I’m publishing through the site. I got this nice email from Eric Eve:

Dear Zachary,

Thank you for your interest in my work. Yes, do please feel free to offer print copies of the TADS 3 Tour Guide (or any other of my TADS 3 documentation) along the lines you suggest. The only copyright right I’m interested in enforcing is my right to be identified as the author of the work, and I'm sure that's not as issue here.

Best wishes,

Eric

Compared with last update,  the Dead Tree Publishing website is looking nicer.

It’s served over HTTPS now (not needed for security, but it puts people at ease and enabled Chrome’s autocomplete) and you can order multiple books at a time.

Other than some more visual improvements, the main thing missing is proper detection of page size — my server doesn’t understand about page margins, so it things books are bigger than they really are.

Last post I discussed the publishing website I’m working on.

Today I added credit card processing and address forms–it’s functionally complete and available at https://publishing.za3k.com

Next up I have to clean the site up, because it looks like this:

I’ll also add HTTPS.

I started work on my publishing website again (Dead Tree Publishing). The idea is to make a really, really convenient way to get a physical copy of a PDF/epub book. Think: “send me a printed copy of this mailing list / tumblr”. Right now things are looking encouraging.

I use a “back end” publisher who does all the actual printing, and the one I was using before charged quite a lot and wasn’t amazingly fast; I just used them because they were the only publisher who was at all up to date. Seriously, order of $100 – $200 for a 100 page book, just absolutely ridiculous levels of expensive. I’m switching over to a new publisher who can offer that same book for something like $7 (maybe $12 in hardback), which is absolutely reasonable, and with similar 2-week turnaround times.

First you upload a PDF:

Then I tell you what your ordering options are (hardcover, softcover, color), and what they cost. I’m also supposed to ask you your address to ship the book, and for you to pay for it,  but those aren’t done yet.

Hopefully in the next day or two I’ll have something up and running so people can order books, and then make it gradually nicer! I’m very excited about this website existing.