Printing and Binding

PRINTING OPTIONS

Once the layout of your book has been done and approved, digital files are sent to a printing house, a Print on Demand (POD) service, an e-book distributor, or all three. These days self-publishers often choose more than one outlet for their books.

Whichever service(s) you choose, try to get them to provide you with a paper proof of the book (including the cover), which should be checked carefully. This is the best way to see what the colours will look like in the finished book.

If any corrections need to be made to either the cover or the pages, they will probably need to be done in the original layout program, after which a new file needs to be sent to the service. At this point you can request a new proof or just trust that everything will go well and tell them to print the books.

Traditional or Digital Printing?

Traditional printing (on a printing press) is the most economical method for quantities of 400 books or more. For fewer than 400 books, digital printing may be less expensive. Your layout people or printing house can advise you. With digital printing it is economical to order say, 50 books, and later order an additional 50 books. At some digital printing house, the minimum order is 10-12 books.

The quality of the type in a digitally-printed book is not noticeably different from the type in an offset-printed book, but the quality of the images will be different.

Printing Greyscale Images
At this time, black and white photographs printed on a digital printer are slightly grainy and do not display the subtle tones that the same photographs would display if they were printed on a printing press. This is only relevant if you are producing a coffee table book of photographs.

Printing Colour Images
At this time colour images printed on a digital printer will look slightly different from those printed on an offset printer. This need not be a deterrent to digital printing but it's a good idea to look at sample digital output if colour quality is a concern.

Print on Demand (POD)

Print on Demand services hold your book files in their system. When they receive an order they will accept payment, digitally print enough books to fulfill the order, and ship the order out. The self-publisher receives a portion of the sale price.

POD offers the self-publisher the advantages of not having to finance a full print run and not having to store the print run somewhere. The quality of POD books is the same as those printed digitally (see above) since they use the same technology. An added advantage to POD is that some POD services will promote your book on their site or get your book listed on the major bookselling websites.

E-Books

Many self-publishers will choose to order printed books and also to have their files converted to an e-book format. To decide whether this is a good route for you, think about your target audience. In the case of a memoir, your audience may be older people who are not interested in reading on a device. However, if your audience is comfortable with e-books, you should arrange (or have your book designer arrange) to have the files converted to epub format. Epub is the most common format and will work on many e-readers as well as iPads and tablets.

Contact us at info@self-publish.ca for more information.