Watch the following video to learn the differences between perfect bound books, hardcover books, saddle-stitched books and coil bound books.This information is useful when pricing your book with printers.

A big decision self-publishing authors need to make is how many books to print. Unless an author has a solid sales history and/or sales plan, I recommend authors print 250 books to get started. I like this number because the price per book is reasonable and because authors need to have some inventory to promote their book. Going through 250 books is not hard as most authors find they need to give away a certain number of books in their promotional efforts. The following video shows a digital print operation (ZDocs) and a future video will show what an offset press is. The quality between the two types of printing is fairly equal with a slight edge still going to offset, but what drives the decision between digital and offset is the quantity of books you wish to print. If you know you will need 5 to 10 thousand books, then printing offset is the more cost-effective option.