Five Tips That Should Help You in Book Printing



Posted: Monday, November 16, 2009

by Terence Tam
Bookpal

The following five tips should be kept in mind if you are planning on printing a book without the aid of an external publishing agency.

Ensure that the book is in the proper format: There is a format that should be followed before submitting the book to be published. Appropriate editing procedures, including correction of sentence structures and eliminating grammatical mistakes, must be done before the book is published. Bear in mind that the printing company does not verify these before subjecting the book to printing.

Decide on the type of book printing service you will use. The content for printing the book can be submitted online or offline. Since it is likely that you will be typing the book on a computer, it is better to stick with publishers that accept the content online. You will have to submit the completed book in the format specified by the publisher. Usually in Pdf. It is best to get a professional typesetter to finalise your book before submitting, or some of the book printing services will also offer this service.

Find the best publisher who will accept works online. The niche is a lucrative one, and many have started this business of accepting work online and printing them in offline (real world) machinery. Make sure to look into the payment options accepted by the publisher. Also decide whether you want to engage a simple book printer, or a full service self publishing firm. A book printer will only have book printing services but you may save money with the print component. However that often means you will need to run around and spend a lot of time getting the other services of your book done seperately, which in the end, may cost you more.

Find out the delivery method preferred by the printing agency. Some agencies will pack and ship the printed books shabbily. A testimonial section listing the feedback of the previous clients should be present on the website. This should give you an idea of the credibility of the company.

Being able to ask for a sample copy is useful. Some printers are in the habit of printing a test copy and mailing the client for approval. If the company you are looking at provides this service, it is a good sign that the company takes business seriously. Sometimes you may have to pay for the samples but it is better to do that than be caught with a bunch of low quality books.

Consider POD (print on demand). This means you can have as little as one single book printed at a time. No inventory, no massive capital outlays and garages of unsold books. The per unit cost will be higher but your risk drops dramatically.

Hopefully this article gives you some good basic insight into book printing. Good luck!

2011 Bookpal Australia Pty Ltd - All Rights Reserved Worldwide
Terence Tam is the founder of Bookpal, he previously spent 6 years as an academic and was a contributing author for several academic books. Frustrated with the level of service he was getting with traditional publishers, he set up his own self publishing company to help other authors publish and market books with cost effective yet efficient solutions.

http://www.Bookpal.com.au is helping self publishers all around the world to successfully self publish and market their books with cost effective solutions to create bestsellers. The website offers a free book for budding self publishers, and many other free resources.

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Top-level comments on this article: (6 total)
» left by Mark Parsec
 2 years 190 days ago.
283 fans.
Hi Terrence,
 
Thanks for this very helpful article and welcome to SearchWarp.
 
Mark
» left by Terence Tam 2 years 89 days ago.
26 fans.
Mark,
 
I'm quite glad to be part of SearchWarp community Mark and I'm happy to be of help through my articles.
 
Terence
» left by Nenita Wells
 2 years 188 days ago.
298 fans.
Hi Terence. Very useful and informative article. Thank you for sharing this to us. Welcome to Searchwarp. Best to you and yours, ~Nenita~
» left by Terence Tam 2 years 89 days ago.
26 fans.
Nenita,
 
I'm glad you find this article useful and informative. Bests!
 
Terence
» left by Terence
from Australia 2 years 188 days ago.
Thanks guys, in hindsight there would have been a few things I would have improved. Anyways, will keep working hard to produce better content in the future.
 
Regards,
 
Terence
» left by Oh Boon Thong
 2 years 188 days ago.
4 fans.
This is great and useful tips. Thanks for sharing, Terence Tam
» left by Terence Tam 2 years 89 days ago.
26 fans.
Oh Boon Thong,
 
It's my pleasure sharing useful tips and information. I'm glad you like it!
 
Terence
» left by Dwight Clough 2 years 185 days ago.
6 fans.
Hi Terence
 
Thanks for the article. Could you help clarify the difference between Print on Demand and Publish on Demand? Is there a quick and easy way to identify which we're dealing with? What do you recommend for those who just want printing and nothing else; who want to keep their costs down as much as possible?

Dwight
» left by Terence Tam 2 years 183 days ago.
26 fans.
Dwight,
 
 
 
I believe print on demand (POD) merely refers to the printing of the books. Of course POD can also apply to printing of other material, such as marketing collateral, manuals, prospectuses etc as and when they are ordered or required.
 
 
 
From my understanding Publish on Demand on the other hand encompasses a wider range of services, such as ISBN registration, and marketing and distribution of the book. Apparently it is a term that is a little confusing.
 
 
The way to keep your cost as low as possible is to use a Print on Demand system. Wordclay is pretty good for that in the US. Bookpal in my biased opinion, is probably the best in Australia.
 
 
What this means is you pay a low set up cost and then you pay on a per book basis, as and when you order a book...so no massive upfront costs for you.
 
 
However when our authors have a strong book with a hungry audience and want to print thousands of books, we can then print it via our offset presses.
 
 
Sometimes we even organise for them to be printed in Asia to further reduce cost of production as that could mean saving around 30% or more vs printing in Australia...not sure about the US but I would think there would be some cost benefits there too.
 
 
Hope this helps,

Terence
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