Planning a self-published book

Content

Jem Cohen made a mysterious movie (video) about a unique handwritten book. It contained (seemingly) chaotic lists of headings, dates and places with some (unknown) internal structure and deep meaning. A street scavenger offered the book to the narrator, but he didn't buy it then. Since then the lists from the book have stayed in his head. Unpredictable events can trigger a voice in his head that recites lists and (almost) reveals the hidden logic of the city.
The book never existed. But I want to have this book so I will have to make it myself. And there is only one place I can find the contents: in my own archives. I will use three sources of material:

•  KINDLE: the My Clippings file on my Kindle, they are ready to use,
•  BOOKS: paragraphs from my English books that I've marked, I will scan them,
•  INTERNET: the stacks of printed matter from the Internet, I will re-download them or scan them.

There will be three volumes called "Searching Lost Book Found" (or "Lost Book Found - A Reconstruction" ). The Kindle version, the book version and the internet version. There will be a few illustrations, taken from my scrapbooks of cuttings. I will start with the Kindle version, because that content is most readily available.

Each volume will have 12 categories (chapters). Some categories will repeat in all or some volumes. Most categories will be unique per volume.

When you open the book randomly there will be some short but interesting piece of text. Something to make you think or make you notice.
Form and graphic design

The cover and content could look like this:

Inspiration

Lost book found
a film/video by Jem Cohen (copyright 1996 Jem Alan Cohen), Poopface productions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MYh9YmVlxc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6FKgr3QTp0

… it was a composition notebook full of handwritten listings
page after page of places, objects, incidents, all having something to do with the city
but it was carefully divided into chapters of some kind ...

… but there was a side effect, that as I travel through the city,
I sometimes hear a voice making lists,
and sometimes they fall into groups, classifications, sets and subsets,
in other words, the book stayed in my head,
like parts of a song I didn't know I knew,
and parts of the book come back in flashes, bits and pieces ...

Forest, The clock, The fossil, Battery, Undertow
The flood, Mercury, Italic number, Well, The archive
The sick man, The monument, Periodic table, Mendel's law,
Lighthouse, Hourglass, The flood, Alchemist,
Victory, Conservation of matter, Atomic number,
Perpetual motion, Strain, Burial at seahttps://lux.org.uk/work/lost-book-found
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/107377
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230468/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jem_Cohen

Capital
Renowned poet and conceptual artist Kenneth Goldsmith collects a massive assortment of quotations about New York City in the twentieth century. This kaleidoscopic montage from hundreds of sources is a literary adoration of New York as the capital of the world, and was inspired by Walter Benjamin s unfinished masterpiece, "The Arcades Project," a compendium of quotations about nineteenth-century Paris. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29146198-capital
https://spectrumculture.com/2016/03/27/capital-by-kenneth-goldsmith/

The missing pieces
An incantatory catalog of cultural artifacts either lost to time or never realized. The Missing Pieces (by Henri Lefebre) is a list not only to be read an item at a time, but, as the very cover of the book itself might imply, to be viewed as a mishmash of things forgotten, and of things we need to dutifully remember.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/missing-pieces
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21422875-the-missing-pieces

Budget

I'll do all the design work myself.

If I spread the project out over two years, I could spend 100 euro per volume on printing.
I will hire a professional reviewer on a time-box basis. I'll see if I can get some advice, tips and tricks for 50 euro.

To add further constraints I will try to break-even somehow. That means I'll have to sell most of the books. A price of 7 euro would be ideal for impulse buying. 5 euro is probably impossible. 12 euro is still doable.

I will have to think about price elasticity. This means I'll have to think about the amount of books to produce. Would I dare to print 100?
Formats and printers

I'll try to do everything in LateX, as an exercise.
https://www.latex-project.org/get/

A5 vertical, 48 (56) pages, black and white, softcover, glue binding

https://www.studentendrukwerk.nl/ > 25 books = 58.54 euro

https://www.printenbind.nl/ > 20 = 72.10

https://www.ivadrukwerk.nl/ > 25 = 96.71

https://www.drukkerij123.nl/ > 25 = 105

https://print.24bookprint.com/ > 20 = 140.39

https://www.printerpro.nl/ > 10 books = 140.24 euro

https://www.deboekdrukker.nl/ > 100 = 318 + 9%

I should look at Rotterdam Publication Studio too:
https://www.publicationstudio.biz/studios/#rotterdam

A warning for myself

• Der Augenblick der Erkenntnis seiner Unbegabung war ein Geistesblitz. 
• Guter Rat für Schriftsteller: Im bestimmten Augenblick zu schreiben aufhören. Sogar, bevor man angefangen hat.

Das große STANISŁAW JERZY LEC  BUCH, Aphorismen, Epigramme, Gedichte  und Prosa 
GOLDMANN VERLAG 

Failure

The project will fail if I :

• don't find supporters or subscribers for my project (lesser failure) 
• get stuck with many books somehow (biggest failure)
• don't break-even (lesser failure)

When I get stuck with books I will place them (also illegally) in bookshops and museum gift shops to confuse the buyers and sellers.

To do

1.  Select the chapter categories
2.  Design the covers
3.  Make a mini trial version of the content
4.  Rethink plan and feasibility
5.  Make volume 1 (kindle version) in PDF format
6.  Get a review of volume 1
7.  Present the PDF to editors
8.  Contact PrintRoom
9.  GO - NOGO decision
10.  Edition size decision
11.  Order print run of volume 1