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BOOK PRINTING
JUST GOT CHEAPER by Dan Poynter
Book publishing is changing—for the
better. There is a New Model for book writing, producing, selling and
promoting. Now you can break into print faster, easier and cheaper. One part of
this revolutionary change is in printing.
Digital printing machines
produce books from an Adobe Acrobat PDF file. This short run printing uses a
higher speed direct-to-image (disk to drum) electrostatic process with a toner
blend that reproduces photographs well. There is no film or plate. The process
is cost effective for quantities from 100 to 1,500 copies. It is no longer
necessary to print 3,000+ books; 100 or 500 can be produced at a reasonable
per-unit cost.
Color covers are usually done with the same digital
process. Putting a lot of ink on paper is now just an option; a good one if
there is large prepublication demand such as advanced sales to bookstores
and/or a sale to a book club. There is no longer any reason to print 3,000 or
more copies of your book on spec. In the future, most books will not be
manufactured until after they are sold.
Costs. Let’s evaluate
prices for traditional ink-press printing, PQN and POD. We will compare a
softcover (perfect bound) 144 page 5.375 x 8.375 book with black text and a
four-color cover. Prices will vary with the cost of paper and labor so use
these numbers for comparison only. 1. Press (ink on paper): $1.55 each but you
have to print at least 3,000 to get a price this low. So, your print bill will
be $4,650. See below. 2. PQN printer (short run):
500 copies for $2.80
each or a print bill of $1,400, or 100 copies for $5.30 each and a print bill
of $530.
3. POD (single copies): May run $6 to $10 and are often
bundled with other services. It is expensive to make one book at a time.
Print-On-Demand is a good option when a book has run its course, your
inventory is exhausted and you still receive orders for a couple of copies a
month. Rather than invest in inventory, you can have books made oneat- a-time
as needed.
By the way, Print-on-demand is not a printing method, it is
a way of doing business. It means that you do not print the (individual) book
until after you have received an order for it.
Hardcover. Most books
are manufactured with soft covers, called “perfect binding.” In
traditional printing, hard or “case” binding runs about $1.00 extra
per book. For PQN production, hard covers cost about $3.00 more. Those prices
include the hard covers and the dust jackets. Case-binding machinery requires a
lot of set-up time. So, you have to run the numbers on quantity and price.
The quality of the toner-based digital printing is actually better. The
softcover or hardcover books look just like traditional books. There are no
light and dark pages as in ink-on-paper printing. The density is maintained
electronically unlike offset printing where a density variation of 5% to 10% is
a regular occurrence.
Time. Delivery for digitally-printed books is
normally five days from proofs and reprints take two to three days. One reason
is that the printer does not have to wait for the ink to dry before folding the
pages. With your disk on file, reprints can be initiated with a telephone call
and the books may be shipped directly to your buyer.
The signatures of
PQN short-run printing are just two pages because the print engines print the
cut-sheets of paper two pages (both sides) at a time instead of 32 or 48. Now
you do not have to design your book’s page count in large signature
increments.
Mass customization. Because the printing process is
computercontrolled, you may customize your book for your customer. If you make
a premium sale to a company, it will cost just pennies to bind in a letter from
the CEO or to add the company logo to the cover. For fiction, you could even
make the buyer the hero in the book. Think "mail merge".
Multipurposing. Once your manuscript is written and converted to a PDF
file, it may be re-purposed: put on your Web site for download, uploaded to
eBooksellers such as Amazon.com, B&N.com, CyclopsMedia.com and
BookLocker.com, read on eBook readers, put on a CD and you can send the disk to
any of the three types of book manufacturers. Now you can provide your book in
any version (edition) your customer wants and wring maximum value out of your
work. Yes, today, we are no longer sure what a “book” is.
Color digital printing is here. Four-color children’s and coffee table
books can be manufactured in quantities as low as 100 copies with the Xerox
iGen press. The iGen technology eliminates the color separations and long print
runs. See http://www.gkls.xerox.com/docucolor/
----------------------------Sidebar----------------------------------
Digital
printers.
DeHart's Printing Services Tatiana Promessi 3265 Scott Blvd.
Santa Clara, CA 95054 Tel: 408-982-9118 Tatiana@DeHarts.com
http://www.DeHarts.com
Tri-State Litho Kumar Persad 71-81 TenBroeck
Avenue Kingston, NY 12401 Tel: 914-331-7581 tristate@ulster.net
http://www.TriStateLitho.com
BookJustBooks.com Ron Pramschufer 51 East
42nd Street New York, NY 10017 Tel: 800-621-2556 customerservice@rjc-llc.com
http://BooksJustBooks.com
TPC Graphics Len Metz 518 Coles Mill Road
Haddonfield, NJ 08033 Tel: 856-429-2858 Fax: 856-429-0644 TPClen-Pat@erols.com.
Small run digital and conventional book manufacturing. Case, soft
binding.
Fidlar Doubleday Steve Rozewicz 6255 Technology Avenue
Kalamazoo, MI 49001 Tel: 800-632-2258 Tel: 248-761-9435, cell Fax: 888-999-0655
SteveR@Fidlar.com http://www.fidlardoubleday.com
Alexander’s
Digital Printing Doyle Mortimer, Barry Merrell 245 South 1060 West Lindon, UT
84042 Tel: 801-224-8666 Fax: 801-224-0446 http://www.Alexanders.com
Infinity Publishing John Harnish 519 W. Lancaster Ave. Haverford, PA
19041-1413 Tel: 610-520-2500 Fax: 610-519-0261 jHarnish@BuyBooksOnTheWeb.com
http://www.infinitypublishing.com
DigiNet Printing Guillermo "William:
Perego 5723 NW 159th Street Miami Lakes, FL 33014 Tel: 305-825-9260 Fax:
305-825-9294 gPerego@DigiNetPrinting.com http://www.DigiNetPrinting.com
Morgan Printing and Publishing Terry Sherrell 900 Old Koenig Lane #135
Austin, TX 78756 Tel: 512-459-5194 Fax: 512-451-0755 mprinting@austin.rr.com
Sir Speedy-Whittier Tim McCarthy 7240 Greenleaf Avenue Whittier, CA
90602 Tel: 562-698-7513 tim@ssWhittier.com http://www.sswhittier.com
Sir Speedy-Scottsdale Sheri Statt Bercaw 7373 East Camelback Road
Scottsdale, AZ 85251 Tel: 480-947-7277, Ex 111 Fax: 480-946-3957
sstatt@SirSpeedy21120.com
Adibooks Thomas G. Campbell 181 Industrial
Avenue Lowell, MA 01852 Tel: 978-458-2345 tcampbell@KingPrinting.com
http://www.adibooks.com
Dan Poynter does not want you to die
with a book still inside you. You have the ingredients and he has your recipe.
Dan has written more than 100 books since 1969 including Writing Nonfiction and
The Self- Publishing Manual. For more help on book writing, see
http://ParaPub.com. ©
2003
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