YOU HAVE DECIDED to bypass the traditional publisher and produce your book on your own. With today's technology this has never been easier.

Special Edition can provide a level of service and attention to detail that many larger, more anonymous suppliers would find difficult to match and that the vanity publishers would eschew altogether. Larger establishments are increasingly getting their typesetting done overseas, but with Special Edition everything remains within reach and we are flexible enough to work to whatever budget you have set for your project.

We do all the copy-editing and typesetting ourselves, liaising with you at every stage. We will advise on editing levels, layout and typography and can create basic cover designs from photographs that you supply, but if you want to commission truly sophisticated artwork for your book cover we can work with specialist jacket designers. We can advise on printers who offer short print runs at reasonable prices, or you may be interested in using a print-on-demand service, such as Lightning Source. We show on a separate page how easy it is to get your book into print when you use a print-on-demand service.

We produce PDF proof files of the fully typeset and designed pages and e-mail them to you so that you can view them and print them on your home computer. If you want to post your publication on a web site or distribute it on CDs, PDF files are ideal for the purpose. These could be replicas of the printed publication, or extracts from it, or a version of it that incorporates links and bookmarks. Retaining control over your material (and ownership of your digital files) means that you can publish your work in many different formats at little extra cost.

We advise on all the pre-press stages of production, but we do not deal with distribution, marketing or promotion. A source of useful information for self-publishers is the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook. available from Amazon.