Case studies

• punctum books undertakes almost all production and post-production in-house, but occasionally uses freelancers (Business Models for OA Books).

• Language Science Press: In Section 3.7 of the Cookbook, Nordhoff provides an overview of technological solutions for book production that worked well for LSP: this includes production management software (Open Monograph Press [OMP] by PKP and other software with or without workflow management) and output generation software (LaTeX, Kile, Kate or Adobe Creative Cloud products) and gives advice on which solutions guarantee professional outputs for digital distribution and paper distribution (different providers of print-on-demand services). The section also analyses pros and cons of using external service providers (free and commercial) such as Overleaf, Paperhive, GitHub, Zenodo, Google Books, or GitBook and of outsourcing some production tasks. LSP​​ outsources printing to Books on Demand (BoD). LSP converts the original PDF file to PDF/X, produces a cover and uploads the PDF and XML-metadata to the BoD FTP-server (Business Models for OA Books).

• Open Book Publishers (OBP): Its production is done in-house with InDesign, including editing, typesetting, and indexing. OBP also has in-house cover designers who create their covers. Print copies are produced by Lightning Source. Electronic editions are generated in-house. "OBP believes that cost efficiency achieved in our production processes is the most important component of [its] business model" (Business Models for OA Books). OBP occasionally uses trusted freelancers if workloads are high. However, in their early years, OBP used other platforms that offer free conversion for the users while building up in-house expertise. For example, OBP uploaded their books to OpenEdition which was creating a whole set of content, including EPUB, and OBP were linking through to their EPUB edition   Therefore, initially “looking to what [OBP] can use elsewhere and tag into” was a cheap way to produce different formats before getting enough funding and expertise for producing different formats of books in-house (Jisc Interviews, Rupert Gatti).
• Mattering Press: Copyediting, proofreading and typesetting are all outsourced, with Mattering Press partnering with Tetragon, a small independent typesetting company, as part of the production process. It uses Lightning Source to print hard copies (Business Models for OA Books; direct correspondence).
  
• African Minds: Works in partnership with African Books Collective to produce hard copies of its books. African Books Collective uses Lightning Source as its print-on-demand service, allowing African Minds books to be bought internationally.
• meson press: Copyediting and proofreading is often outsourced, whereas typesetting is done in-house. Print-on-demand hard copies are available for all books (via Ingram and Books on Demand) although, as it describes, sometimes it has small print runs:

For some books an initial, small print run is produced with several partnering small printers in Poland or Germany and, in some cases, with the POD partners. Shorter books (about 70 pages long) also often have an initial print run produced by companies in Germany. These books are then offered for free at conferences (Business Models for OA Books).