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PRINTING BOOKS
DIGITALLY by Dan Poynter
In self-publishing, you are both the book
creator and book producer; you are the author and the publisher. You will need
creative writing talent to become a published author and money to become a
publisher. Of course, that is an over simplification but the point is that
writing is a creative act and publishing is a business.
Anyone can be
a publisher. The right to publish is guaranteed to you by the First Amendment
of the Constitution of the United States. You do not have to get a license or
register with anyone to publish a book. But it does cost money. In fact, one
definition of “publisher” is the person or company that makes the
book happen; the one who puts up the money. Until recently, book printing was
expensive.
You may sell out to a publisher or publish yourself.
Getting your book published is what is important. How you break into print is
not. A publisher will edit, design, typeset, layout, proofread, print and
distribute your book. You may also perform these functions yourself or hire a
book designer, deal with a book printer and use a booktrade distributor.
Design. Go to a bookstore and look on that shelf where your book
will be. You will notice that each genre or category as a different design. For
example, business books are usually in hardcover with a dust jacket and go for
$29.95 or $34.95. Professional books—for doctors, lawyers and
accountants—are often in hard cover without a dust jacket and sell for
much more. Children’s books are over size, are in full color, have exactly
32 pages and if you put a dust jacket on them, they sell for five dollars more.
And travel books are low-priced, on light-weight paper and are tall and narrow
so they will slip into a pocket or pack. Your book must look like the rest on
the shelf. Respect your category; This is not a time to be creative.
Select a design you like. Check the color of the paper, the size of the
type, the design of the book and so on. Buy that book. Use it as a model for
your book. Someone else has invested a good deal of time and money to design a
book that you like. Adapt that design.
Typesetting. You can
typeset your book yourself with MS-Word but your pages will look even better if
you learn a page-layout program such as PageMaker, In-Design or Quark.
Once you are done with the typesetting, you can convert the text file into
a graphic file with Adobe Acrobat. Most of the files received by book printers
today are in Adobe Acrobat PDF.
Printing. Traditionally, the
printing of the book has been most expensive part of the publishing procedure.
Due to the setup costs, printing is a numbers game. It used to be necessary to
print at least 3,000 copies to achieve a reasonable per-unit cost. That meant a
large printing bill. For example, if you were printing a 144-page softcover
book measuring 5¼ x 8¼, your 3,000 copies might produce a print
bill of $4,800. And, you could not print less without the unit price going
up—way up.
Types of printing
POD, Print On
Demand: Digital printing of one book at a time—after it is ordered by a
customer. POD is more expensive per-unit because all the overhead must be
charged to a single book.
PQN, Print Quantity Needed: Digital
printing of a small number of books for stock and promotion.
Press: Traditional ink-based printing requiring a minimum of 3,000
books to be economical.
Now we have digital (Print Quantity Needed)
printing: high-speed, computer controlled, toner-based production. These
machines print both sides of the paper at the same time and do not require a
period for the ink to dry. Press setup time is virtually eliminated. Excellent
color covers are usually done with the same toner process.
The same
144-page book might cost out to 400 books for $1,200. The per-unit price is
higher but the invoice you have to write a check for is much lower.
The quality of the toner-based printing is actually better. There are no
light and dark pages as in ink printing. The softcover or hardcover books look
better than traditionally-printed books.
Delivery time for
digitally-printed books is normally five days from pressproofs and reprints
take three to four days.
Writers have benefited from offset printing,
computers and the Internet. The next technological revolution is digital PQN
printing. Digital book printing is faster, easier and cheaper.
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 an automatic requirement to print 3,000 or more
copies of your book on spec. Price is no longer an excuse for procrastinating
on your book.
Here is a list of 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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