Most of the creative team at Burnt Sky Media has either worked in the book publishing industry, book printing, book design, and other book related fields. In the course of all our collective time we have worked with some really great book printers, and some, and this is being nice, not so great.
Here are some things to look for when choosing a book printer.
- Do they care about your specific goal with the printing of your self published book? If your goal is to post the book on Amazon, and have some copies for your local bookstores, but in your head think you should print 1000 copies, a good printer should want you to print shorter runs to save on upfront costs. The quality of digital, short run, printing is at an all time high and you can get more copies printed in a very short time if needed. Don't be stuck with boxes and boxes of books in your basement. Choose your book printing quantity on your realistic need of 3 months inventory.
- Is your book printer acting like a book publisher? A book publisher does not charge you to print and market your book. Simple as that. We see more and more book printers getting into this game because they know that writers want that feeling of being "published" and it is easy to capitalize on that emotion and turn it into profit for their company. All they can really do for you is to put your book on their website bookstore, and lets me honest when I go online to buy a book I don't go to Trafford I go to Amazon, or post your book on Amazon, which you can do yourself. Come up with your own publishing name and you will have more rewards, and more fun, with publishing your book.
- Digital or Offset? If you will be printing in groups under 800-1000 you will get better pricing with digital. Anything over that it will be more economical to go offset. Unless you have some upfront demand in place we recommend doing shorter runs to gauge interest. You can then order more and/or make changes to your book based on feedback and go back to print. In terms of quality the new digital equipment is so good that it is hard to see a difference although offset still has a slight lead, but to the average reader there is minimal difference.
We hope this helps and feel free to contact us for free consultation on choosing, or dealing, with your book printer.
Burnt Sky Media
Here are some things to look for when choosing a book printer.
- Do they care about your specific goal with the printing of your self published book? If your goal is to post the book on Amazon, and have some copies for your local bookstores, but in your head think you should print 1000 copies, a good printer should want you to print shorter runs to save on upfront costs. The quality of digital, short run, printing is at an all time high and you can get more copies printed in a very short time if needed. Don't be stuck with boxes and boxes of books in your basement. Choose your book printing quantity on your realistic need of 3 months inventory.
- Is your book printer acting like a book publisher? A book publisher does not charge you to print and market your book. Simple as that. We see more and more book printers getting into this game because they know that writers want that feeling of being "published" and it is easy to capitalize on that emotion and turn it into profit for their company. All they can really do for you is to put your book on their website bookstore, and lets me honest when I go online to buy a book I don't go to Trafford I go to Amazon, or post your book on Amazon, which you can do yourself. Come up with your own publishing name and you will have more rewards, and more fun, with publishing your book.
- Digital or Offset? If you will be printing in groups under 800-1000 you will get better pricing with digital. Anything over that it will be more economical to go offset. Unless you have some upfront demand in place we recommend doing shorter runs to gauge interest. You can then order more and/or make changes to your book based on feedback and go back to print. In terms of quality the new digital equipment is so good that it is hard to see a difference although offset still has a slight lead, but to the average reader there is minimal difference.
We hope this helps and feel free to contact us for free consultation on choosing, or dealing, with your book printer.
Burnt Sky Media
1 comment:
Heard about your new blog in the bulletins and came to check it out. This is a good article, I think many companies are tricking people with vanity publishing. I also see new ways people are using the anthology process to get money from contributors, some are of course legit. But some are charging the contributors for the cost of the printing promising a small percentage of the future profits which will mostly come from those same people!
I guess people have to be careful.d
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