Booklet Printing

 

Booklet printing is a specialist business, and you may do better employing a large company rather than your friendly local printer.

Booklet printing is what the young poet should be considering, and not the 500- page 'complete works' that many seem to enquire about. Juvenilia first dates, and then becomes an embarrassment. Better to test the market with a few chosen pieces, which you can follow up with a more substantial volume if sales extend beyond friends and family.

Poetry sites and societies often offer a 'chapbook service', which is the same creature as booklet printing. Rates can be excellent, but you should shop around for bench marks. Also remember that companies with reputations to protect will be far more demanding and critical than the fledgling poet. Sales literature is especially important, and if a publishing company can turn out brochures, booklets and flyers day after day to the most exacting standards, they can handle your work. Ask for specimens if you're not sure what's being offered.

Booklet Printing Costs

How is booklet printing costed? On paper quality, binding, colours employed, type of reproduction (line work and half tone is obviously more expensive) and print run. A sliding scale operates, and four hundred copies are often little more expensive than two hundred. But don't order 2,000 simply for the economies: you'll have to store the unsold copies somewhere and this soon becomes burdensome.

Commercial printing paper comes in two categories, coated and uncoated, and is subdivided into weights. Text stock is the lighter weight paper used for the inside of the booklet: 50# and 60# white offset text are the more usual weights. Cover stock is the heavier and more durable paper used for the outside: 80# or 100# gloss cover are often preferred, especially for colour printing. Heavier paper costs more but suggests quality.

Booklets under 80 pages are generally saddle-stitched, i.e. stapled.

High quality, full color printing uses a four-color build process called CMYK, quite different from the RGB of your computer monitor. There will be differences between this printing and what a colour laser or ink-jet printer can produce. Logos or simple graphics will use Spot Colours, commonly matched against the Pantone PMS color system when an exact match is required.

Delivery costs are often extra, and small jobs tend to get slotted into a convenient space, i.e. the turn-around time may be longer.

Your Input

What does a booklet printing company expect from you? Their terms and conditions should make things plain. It will be 'camera ready copy' of some sort, usually clean pages produced by laser printer at 600 dpi or better, with crop marks shown if important (as they often are for covers or illustration work). Some will accept digital copy, however, usually Desktop Published or MS Word files, which can be sent by email attachment or ftp.

On the whole, booklet printing companies are friendly and easy to deal with, but they respect professionalism, and expect you to be reasonably conversant with their jargon.

You'll find more information, and Internet references on poetrymagic.co.uk.

 

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