In my recent series, we looked at the advantages and disadvantages of both traditional offset printing and print-on-demand services if you are self-publishing your book. If you want to look back at any of these, here’s the list:
- Traditional Offset Printing or Print-on-Demand? – Advantages of Offset Printing;
- Traditional Offset Printing or Print-on-Demand? – Disadvantages of Offset Printing;
- Traditional Offset Printing or Print-on-Demand? – Advantages of Print-on-Demand;
- Traditional Offset Printing or Print-on-Demand? – Disadvantages of Print-on-Demand.
As a quick reminder, traditional offset printing means that individual (usually metal) plates are created for the pages of each book. These plates are then coated in ink, which is then transferred onto a rubber sheet. The rubber sheets, now with the ink on, are used to print the pages. These will then be trimmed and bound in the way you have chosen. There are more options for this with offset printing, the print quality is slightly better and there may be a lower cost-per-unit, despite there being upfront costs.
Print-on-demand means that the pages are printed directly from the electronic files of the book (almost always in PDF form). These pages are then trimmed and bound in a similar way. This method means that books can be printed in very small batches or even one at a time and there are no upfront costs for making the metal plates required in traditional offset printing. However, there aren’t as many options for customisation, so print-on-demand may be less suitable for gift books or children’s books, for example.
What method will be suitable for your book depends on many factors, such as what your book is and what requirements it has, how many you expect to sell and what your budget is. In this blog, we will be looking at a fictional case study to consider what the best option is for the subject of this.
Some of the points in these may well apply to you or your book, but your exact situation will be unique, so there is no “right” option. It will also depend on how you feel about each option and what compromises you are prepared to make for one method.
Rose
Our first case study is Rose, who is working full time and has some money to invest in her book, but not that much. She has decided to self-publish it and knows that she wants a print copy to be available but is not sure what method to use. Some facts about the book:
- It is about the local history of the area Rose lives in.
- It has a lot of high quality black-and-white and colour photographs and detailed maps in it.
- These photos and maps also mean that Rose would prefer the book to be printed in landscape orientation.
- It has been copy-edited and proofread multiple times and Rose is confident that it is in the best shape it can be for publication.
Now, some facts about Rose herself:
- She has enough money saved for some upfront costs and would prefer to spend money this way and have a lower unit cost.
- This is her third book and she is quite well known in the area for giving lectures and talks on the local history.
- She has already been marketing her book and has a reasonable expectation of sales based on the response to this.
- She has arranged for several local bookshops to stock her book.
Looking at all of these factors, it seems likely that traditional offset printing is the best option for Rose. One advantage of this for her is that offset printing usually has a lower unit cost than print-on-demand services, but higher upfront costs. However, she has some money saved that should be sufficient to meet this and she would prefer to pay in this manner. Some traditional printers may also discount or waive upfront costs for larger orders.
As Rose already has a good idea of her likely sales, she should not face too much risk in ordering a full batch to be printed. If you are unsure of predicted sales, choosing how many copies to have made can be something of a gamble, but Rose also has the experience from her other books to help her better judge how many copies she will sell.
As Rose has invested in multiple rounds of copy-editing and proofreading, she hopefully won’t need to issue corrections to her books. This makes having all the copies printed at once with offset printing less of a risk, as no alterations can be made after printing. Offset printing will also allow her to easily have her book in a landscape format.
As Rose has some money set aside for costs, she should also be able to pay for storage for the copies if she chooses to use an offset printing method. This will ensure that the books are kept in the correct conditions and may also deal with distribution on her behalf, so this would save her some time and make things a bit easier.
As bookshops have agreed to stock Rose’s book, she can reasonably expect to sell enough copies to make offset printing worthwhile. In addition, she may well be able to sell books at her talks, so she has another marketing opportunity here and would need some in stock for this.
Conclusion
It seems that offset printing is the best option for Rose. It will allow her to have her book in the format she wants and there is a low risk of the book needing major corrections. She has enough money put aside to cover upfront costs and storage, so this element is covered. Finally, she can expect sales to be high enough that having a whole batch printed is not too much of a risk. Exactly how many she has will depend on her predicted sales, but Rose has some experience in this area.
Next time we will be looking at another case study from this topic, so come back in two weeks for that. Thanks for reading!
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