How do I find a printer to print my book cost-effectively?
Finding a printer is easy. Finding a cost effective Book Printer who wants to deal with the small publisher is a bit harder. Most printers can print books. Few printers are book printers. Few book printers want to work with the first time publisher. But there is hope.
Aside from not falling for the “we can assign you an ISBN” myth of the POD/Vanity/Subsidy publishers, selecting the right printer to print your books is as important as any other decision you will make as a publisher. It seems pretty easy. A quick Google search under the keywords Book Printing yields 102 million listings. Ugh. There are only about 50,000 printers in the whole US and only a handful of them are book printers.
The problem that novice print buyers run into is the fact that most printers can print books but most printers are not book printers. What does this mean? Most printers can print the pages of a book and the cover. The press doesn’t know what it’s printing. It’s only putting ink on paper. The bindery equipment used to bind a book while not found in most printers binderies, is a service that can easily be bought at a trade bindery. The finished product of the average printer out there and a printer who specializes in books will be pretty much identical. So what’s the big deal?
When I was coming up in the industry, the printers’ main pitch was “Price, Service, Quality… Pick two”. I can deliver a good product at a good price but you are going to wait forever for me to get around to doing it. Or, I can do it quickly and give you a great product but you are going to pay a premium for it. Or, I’ll print it quickly and cheaply but you will get a nasty looking product. This catchy saying held true until about ten years ago (although there are still some overpriced printers using it). With the advances in technology, the Quality aspect of printing, especially book printing, has become a non issue. Everyone produces good quality or they are already out of business. This leaves price and service and you can still pick two. It’s not quite tires off the rack but it’s getting there. With this in mind, the only way a printer can deliver that price and service is to specialize and be efficient.
You, the print buyer, figure heavily into how efficiently the printer can produce books. How, you ask? How’s the old saying go… time is money? Printers want to print. The profit margins in the printing industry are not that high to start with. If the presses aren’t running, the printer is not making money. A large part of this efficiency lies in producing as much printing for as few customers as possible. IE: It’s better to have one customer who can give you a thousand titles to print than a thousand customers who can give you one title each. Generally book printers fall into three categories.
The largest printers, like RR Donnelley and Quebecor are too busy printing Harry Potter
or the latest NY Times bestseller to bother with a small publisher. Sales people for these companies have huge quotas and work on very small commissions. Yes, they could technically print your book but they do not want you as a customer. Come back when you have a couple hundred titles in print and maybe they will show an interest in you. Until then, move on.
The second tier book printers like Edwards Brothers and McNaughton & Gunn aren’t much better. Their sales staffs also have large quotas. Like the Donnelley salespeople, these salespeople are instructed to concentrate on large quality publishers. Quality has nothing to do with how well your book is edited but how many titles you can send to be printed with the least amount of effort. You with your one title to print do not constitute a quality customer. As with the tier one printers, the second tier printers can certainly print your book but you are going to pay a premium because they don’t really want you and your one title. Come back when you have a whole list to quote on and maybe they will give you their B pricing. Their A pricing is still left for the “Big Fish”, not you.
Unfortunately, the reality is you are not much better with the third tier printers, for several reasons, although this is where most first timers end up. First, printers in this group do not generally have the latest most efficient equipment so even if they wanted to offer great pricing, they can’t. This group also work with commissioned salespeople but generally the commission rates are higher because these shops can’t support large sales quotas. This higher commission, of course, is passed on to the customer as higher prices. These printers usually say that they cater to the small publisher, mainly because they can’t compete with the large printers going after the large publishers.
The main problem, though, with all three groups is, with few exceptions, they want to charge whatever the market will bear. Your naivety and trusting nature will cost you money. If you are Random House or Simon & Schuster, you get consistent scale pricing based on volume. If you are Mr. & Mrs. Independent Publisher you are going to go back and forth on pricing similar to buying a used car on each and every project.
The only exceptions to this are the companies who have their pricing available on their websites for all to see. Unfortunately there aren’t many of these out there. I started online instant pricing about eight years ago. I would have figured that all printers would have online pricing by now but they don’t. The reason is not that there is any secret technology involved; it’s that they want to size you up and get every last nickel they can out of you. For those of you who haven’t seen an instant book printing quoting system before you should check it out at www.selfpublishing.com. It’s easy. Select from a few dropdowns and click a few buttons, and you have a price within seconds. The same specifications a week from now, yields the exact same price. You get the same price, if this is your first title or your twentieth.
How do you find a book printer to cost effectively print your first book? I would suggest you do your research. Look for the printers with the online instant pricing and buy from one of them. If the printer you are thinking about won’t put their pricing online, steer clear and save some money. If one of these printers come in with a high price but then lower it to match one of your online prices, chances are they will add charges to it along the way to get back to their original price. That’s what printers do. Help put the used car method of printing sales in the past. It’s pretty easy but it’s up to you.
Last 5 posts by Ron Pramschufer
- What do you think about Amazon’s announcement that small publishers need to print with their printer in order to be listed on Amazon? - April 17th, 2008
- What are the steps are involved in Self-Publishing a book? - March 24th, 2008
- Do you know any good book printers? - February 11th, 2008
- What do you think of Facebook as a marketing tool for self-published books? - December 5th, 2007
- Did you change your mind about authors buying a single ISBN? - October 22nd, 2007
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March 6th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
I think your artical was good and it was informative. But I disagree with your opinion of printers that don’t post thier prices online. We had our pricing online and stopped, believe it or not with novice authors, pricing can be confusing. I like to talk with the customer, perhaps make recomendations on paper or amounts to run. Many times enthusiastic authors want to print 2500 books or more to start off with, I tell them to start with 250 or 500 and see how fast they sell, you can always print more.
Thanks Brian
March 6th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
I publish technical books and I shopped around very thoroughly for a good quality printer. I found a good price (but not cheap) and their book samples were excellent. After a month of good sales I started getting emails from people complaing that the book was falling apart. I found out that the way you glue the spine is a bit different for technical books because people like to prop open the book wide to look at code samples and this breaks the spine. I called the printer and they said it wasn’t their problem. For my second print run, I found a new printer who glues the spine properly and haven’t had any problems since. I later had a new printer trying to give me a better price, but I told him that I would rather pay more for a print job I trust than get a cheaper price and take a chance on the book falling apart again.
March 6th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Half the time, having pages fall out is due to the printer running wrong grain paper. You also have the option of specifying “lay-flat” binding which is a special adhesive binding which is made to lay flat. There is no reason to pay more just to get a book that doesn’t fall apart.
March 6th, 2006 at 8:12 pm
Answer the question for me. I am looking for a company to
publish my poetry volme for a decent price with reasonable services.Do you provide those services?
March 6th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
I just need an ISBN for one book. Bowker wants 275 for 5 books or whatever and a yearly fee, and I really can’t see that for a limited edition run of one book.
what is the way around this, if any? is bowker the only option….or can a publisher get an isbn
March 7th, 2006 at 8:16 am
Ir you are just doing a limited number of copies of a single title you don’t need an ISBN. If you are looking to try to put the book into bookstores, no matter how limited a basis, you need one. If you want to be listed as the publisher, you have to buy from Bowker and the minimum is 10 numbers and the price is $225 plus a handling fee. If it doesn’t matter to you whether you are listed as the publisher or not, you can use one of the various POD Publishers online. Just remember that the ISBN that they “assign” you is theirs, not yours.
March 7th, 2006 at 8:19 am
Probably 20% of the self-published books I work with are poetry books. Spend a little time at http://www.selfpublishing.com and order a free copy of the book, Publishing Basics- A Guide for the Small Press and Independent Self-Publisher. You’ll know where to go from there.
March 10th, 2006 at 10:26 am
This was really good information for me, however, what do I do to determine exactly what is needed to make the best presentation of my book i.e., text paper and cover
March 20th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
Best place to start is to go to http://www.selfpublishing.com and order a free copy of Publishing Basics - a Guide for the Small Press and Independent Self-Publisher
March 21st, 2006 at 8:12 am
“How do you find a book printer to cost effectively print your first book? I would suggest you do your research.”
That’s it? The article should be titled “Why you can’t find a printer for your book.” 3/4 of the article was spent telling me what is unavailable, and at the end tellimg me to do my research!
How about suggesting some links to printers who are interested in self-published authors and give a good service?
April 3rd, 2006 at 1:26 pm
I am brand new to the publishing world. I will be publishing a book for my father and another one for my husband. Without ever reading a self-publishing book, I started my quest with the ISBN website. After reading their list of printers, I found booksjustbooks.com. In order to compare printers, I continued my search through google.com. Once I got passed all the POD printers (actually publishers), I found the real printers. The majority of printers will make you fill out all the details of your book like the ISBN, title, genre, etc. to get a quote from a rep. They claim they need to know all this so they can give you an accurate quote. I couldn’t figure out why they needed to know all this when all I wanted to know was how much a book with various print specs would cost. Now I know why thanks to your article.
April 3rd, 2006 at 1:48 pm
I would like to make a comment to the first comment on this page. From a potential customer’s perspective, I would prefer to have the up front costs publicly listed for comparison’s sake and then have a rep work with me to decide on how many copies I should buy. Also, I want to see the various discounts for 500, 1000, 2000 etc. copies even though I may only be buying 100 to start with. Why? Because I want to forecast my future costs and plan my marketing efforts accordingly. If your authors were confused with your online pricing, then you should convey your information in a more creative matter (i.e. color coded charts, online calculator, explanations, etc.). I have learned over the years any company that does not list their prices up front is usually too expensive. If you can’t compete as being the cheapest printer, then add value to your service.
April 18th, 2006 at 11:04 am
I have published the same book with 2 different ISBN#’s. One is from Aardvark and the other is from Lulu. So, I could turn around and publish with booksjustbooks and get another ISBN for the same title?…Does this confuse retail bookstores if there are this many ISBNs floating around, with the same title?
July 21st, 2006 at 3:52 pm
I want an old established printer to print 2000 books. I want one that’s been in business for 100 years, and I can’t find one. I have researched, but can’t find anything online. I find all kinds of “printers” that send out to somebody else or they give higher prices. I find printers that’s been in business for several decadaes…….Can’t find a good old printer.
November 6th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
You CAN get a single ISBN from Bowker, it is just not
advertised by them (for obvious reasons). I recently bought a single one for my book. You can email Lisa for the form and you will have it in about a week…
Lisa.Merritt@bowker.com
November 27th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
Gus, what are the obvious reasons? They should be servicing the industry if they hold the monopolistic rights for ISBN assignment. I purchased my ISBN from another source just because I could not take their attitude. So far I have not had a problem.
December 3rd, 2006 at 9:30 pm
what was the cost for a single isbn ?
$125
December 10th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
Hi,
I have a problem with the size of my book. The book is non-fictional account of murder and it is very doubtful it can be reduced by omitting text. The book presently contains 1076 pages, has been finalized and is in Quark Express format ready for printing.
It seems there are very few printers who handle this size book. additionally, the few that have returned my inquiries are very expensive and thus the project becomes mute as the selling price would seem too expensive to make the required profits. Do you have any sugguestions?
Regards, RD Stewart
January 31st, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Very informative site. Great no nonsense answers.
April 15th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
What are the ramification’s of buying just one ISBN from Bowkers?
The one only ISBN is in their name. Do they become listed as the publisher?
Digital printing is a cost effective way to publish a book, but some require an ISBN or they will use a generic ISBN. What problems can that create? ie: Lightning Source.
May 8th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
I am so happy! This article has given me answers to my question, “Why can’t I find a book printer? Why won’t they give me a quote? why do they ask so many questions!” I am starting a new publishing company, and I don’t know the type of paper if there are 8 different kinds, unless I know how much each will cost me (and if I can see a sample). So far, asides from One company in Japan, I have had no luck finding a book printer. Reason? I need a audio CD slot in the back cover. GRRR!