Online Community for Authors

Digital printing uses toner-based equipment to produce books. As set-up is fairly easy, digital printing is a great option for book runs up to about 2,500 copies. Offset printing uses ink and as setup is more complicated than with digital printing, offset printing is more cost-effective for print runs over 2,500 books.

Thousands of companies provide digital or offset printing and a quick search on the Internet will land you on many good websites. We also encourage you to get pricing from our parent company ZDocs (www.zdocsonline.com).

One thing to keep in mind is that it is best to start shopping your book after it has been designed as your printer will need to know what size your book is and how many pages. The printer will also need to know how many black and white pages, how many color pages, the type of cover and binding.

Book printing is one of the biggest expenditures a self-publishing author will have. At ZDocs, we like to recommend authors get quotes for 250, 500 and 1,000 books. We then recommend authors start off with 250 books. If you are serious about promoting your book, you will find that you will go through 250 books fairly quickly. You will also - probably - find mistakes or want to make changes. Digital printing is ideal for the beginning author.

Once your book starts selling and you are confident there are no more changes, you may begin looking at printing larger print runs on an offset press. The key point is keeping a good eye on your inventory. While you can get the cost of your book down by printing larger print runs, if those books do not sell, then you are stuck. Use the two technologies - Digital and Offset - to your advantage and print in short runs in the beginning and longer runs as momentum for your book increases.

Print-On-Demand is a viable option for many authors. Your marketing plan will help you decide if POD printing is for you. POD printing lets you literally print and sell one book at a time. However, as most POD printers don't actually print their own books, the cost per book is generally higher than when you self-publish. If you need just a few books, the POD publishing may be for you. If you want 250 or more books, then Self-publishing may be the better choice.

Many POD companies can also help you with cover design, editing and other professional services you may need. POD companies are a cross between Self-publishing and Traditional publishing. In other words, a traditional publisher will pay you for your book and pay all the printing and marketing expenses (or some of them).

When you self-publish, you pay all the expenses and you find experts to help you accomplish your goals. When using a POD, you pay all the expenses, usually share the royalties and have access to the POD's professionals. You have more control than when you use a traditional publisher, but less control than when you self-publish. There are many POD companies in the market offering varying levels of service. I list just a few here that I feel are reputable. Please let us know of other POD companies you would recommend to our associates and any you would recommend we avoid.

This video shows how a book is perfect bound, the term used for softback books, the most common book for self-published authors. The standard turnaround time for a perfect bound book is 10 days, but for rush jobs there are smaller binders that produce professional perfect bound books as well as the monster machine you'll see in this video . . .

The following video shows the production process to manufacture a hardbound book. In general, it takes about 30 days from start to finish to produce a large run of hardbound books. After seeing this video, you'll see why it takes so long . . .