Affordable professionally-printed custom-designed books for private release without retail distribution.
Every memoir has its own unique richness and complexity. Our fee is determined by the material brought to us and what sort of book is desired.
After a 30-minute phone chat and a perusal of your manuscript, we prepare a multi-page brief with Lucky Valley Press design and creation projections. This evaluation includes details of our fees, suggestions about the physical book, and information about what you would pay to order copies.
If you later contract with us to design and create your book, the Manuscript Evaluation fee is credited toward the book fee.
Lucky Valley Press fees are competitive and based on assumptions of time and energy for each project. There are no hidden charges.
We have decades of experience scanning and retouching vintage photos, documents, and 35mm slides for use on the pages of published books. After scanning, you receive a thumb drive with all the hi-res digital image files (the unedited scans and our retouched versions).
Developmental Editing (fee determined per project)
Assist in outlining and shaping your manuscript, provide guidance and
organization. Can include re-writing and intensive editing.
Manuscript Editing $0.02/word
Our editing combines the two main levels of text editing:
Line Edit - The writing itself, flow of ideas, transitions, tone, and style
Copy Edit - Grammar, usage, consistency, typos, spelling, language, syntax
Proofreading: We provide this at no cost to all our authors at the completion of the book design process. It is a final, thorough, multi-pass scrutiny: hyphens, quotes, extra spaces, widows, orphans, and many other details.
Text-only: approx $200. With your photos or artwork: usually $300–500+
Depends on complexity: a cover with only text is easy to produce, but visually effective with the right fonts and colors. A cover utilizing photos or artwork takes a bit more time to create. You receive typeface choices and digital proofs for comment and edit and a test book for final approval.
The cover and the interior layout express the book's personality with fonts, page numbers and headers, special designs for chapter start pages, etc.
You receive several suggestions for fonts and layout, and then based on your choices we prepare a full chapter for your approval.
Beyond the word count, much determines the time needed to typeset and lay out a book beautifully: photos and images, tables, maps, charts, family trees, index, footnotes, foreign languages, etc.
Here are hypothetical examples of interior layout design fees, based on recent books created by Lucky Valley Press. These are only for ideas.
5x7 inch, 12 photos, 25,000 words, 110 pages, 5 hours ($375)
6x9 inch, 20 photos, 36,000 words, 100 pages, 8 hours ($600)
6x9 inch, no images, 70,000 words, 200 pages, 9 hours ($675)
6x9 inch, 22 images, 82,000 words, 270 pages, 12 hours ($900)
Your book can have a black and white interior printed on 50# paper, or color interior on 70# paper.
The most popular and standard book sizes are 5x7 and 6x9 inches. Available sizes range from 4x6 to 8.5x11 inches.
Binding choices include softcover (gloss or matte); hard cover with the art printed directly on the cover; and hard cover (text printed on spine) with dust jacket.
For printing, our first choice is Lightning Source, a subsidiary of Ingram, the largest book printer and distributor in the world. We like their printing and binding quality and their rates are great. They have five printing facilities in the USA and your book will be printed on acid-free paper. (We are not affiliated with Ingram in any way.)
Lightning Source printing rates are very affordable and you may order copies in any quantity at any time through LVP—you pay only the actual Lightning Source charges. To give a very general idea, here are some sample softcover book prices based on 2021 Lightning Source rates. These are examples only.
5x7 or 6x9 inch, 150 pages, black & white interior: approx $3.50 + shipping
5x7 or 6x9 inch, 200 pages, black & white interior: approx $4.00 + shipping
8x8 or 8x10 inch, 150 pages, black & white interior: approx $4.25 + shipping
5x7 or 6x9 inch, 150 pages, color interior: approx $6.25 + shipping
5x7 or 6x9 inch, 200 pages, color interior: approx $8.50 + shipping
8x8 or 8x10 inch, 150 pages, color interior: approx $9.25 + shipping
Please send us a message if you have questions or if you'd like to chat.
LVP Memoir Project authors receive
five complimentary
copies of their book.
