I’m looking at combining my three poetry booklets that I currently print at home, and using a self publishing site online to have them printed as a paperback.
Has anyone used Book Printing UK before? Or have recommendations for any other good sites to use?
Did you bother with an ISBN code?
Any hints and tips appreciated 
I’ve been involved with small press publishing some years ago - in the days before print on demand, e-books, etc - that long ago!
But a friend recently self-published using the Amazon tool - I think it’s called CreateSpace - and she asked for my advice, and I did the cover design and layout for her.
She prepared her text in Word - I assisted with Styles, headers/footers, Table of contents layouts etc to make sure it was all consistent, another friend proofread - and she uploaded it into the tool without any real problem. I did the cover layout on the template they provided, using InDesign, and provided it to her as a .pdf, and again, she uploaded it herself. So from a tech point of view, pretty straightforward. They provided a very clear Guidance document which explained everything.
I was very impressed with the printed book - high quality paper, nice clean and crisp finish, proper ‘perfect binding’ and all in all much better than I had imagined for 'print on demand! My friend is delighted.
I don’t know what she paid - the only way I could get a quote was to sign up myself, which I didn’t want to do. But they did give lots of options for size, paper, full colour/cover only colour etc etc. They organised the ISBN and barcode, I just had to leave space for it to go on the cover. I would recommend an ISBN, apart from anything else it makes you look professional. There were options to publish as an e-book as well - and of course, it was all tied in to the Amazon site, instantly available. (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wings-Fly-Poems-Uplift-Inspire/dp/1544659474/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1499691029&sr=1-1
Obviously, publishing is the easy bit - to actually sell any, you have to market like mad … but as a Folksy seller, you know that already!!
Hello,
I have had two books published using the Amazon sister site create space and it was all very straight forward. They give you a createspace ISBN as part of the set up but you can buy your own and use that.
It does not cost anything to do but the books will be sold through the amazon store and you only get the royalties of a sale which is usually 35% I believe. The other costs are ordering the proof copy which can be expensive depending on how fast you would like it delivered. However you can choose to proof an electronic version but i prefer to have the book in front of me to check that the cover is a high quality image and it is bound properly.
So far I have not had any problems and my two books from the Heroes of Terisca series have proven quite popular on the Amazon store, thankfully.
Hope this helps, if you have any other questions please let me know
Thanks for your help. I am also a POD seller and was looking for the solution to the same problem.