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Making money and cutting costs.  In tough economic times, these are the 2 great commandments for any businesses.  In reality, can we really achieve these goals in the book publishing business?  First we have to dig out the biggest chunk of expense in the cycle of book publishing.

To publish a book, the major cost mainly comes from the printing stage.  Of course, that may well depend on how much promotional fees you are willing to spend, how much you are willing to pay for the illustrator and writer etc.  But speaking in general, the majority of the cost to create a book is the production cost itself.

Most publishers and independent authors nowadays are more focused on cutting their budgets to print shorter runs by printing books digitally, or by what they call On-Demand Book Printing services.  The advantage to run books digitally can offer smaller initial runs and quick turn around time.  Usually the price per book for a 60 pager 8.5″x11″ full color paperback will cost from $11-$14 per book, based on initial runs of 250 pieces.  The total cost for print runs of 250 paperbacks will be around $3,600 including set up fees.  It seems the start up fee to print books had dropped a lot compared to while back.  But don’t forget cutting down cost by making smaller print runs doesn’t mean you have saved money on production cost.  What it really means is “you are willing to pay higher amount of money per book in order to get a smaller amount of print runs.”

Despite the vast printing quality difference between the two, digitally printed books also don’t offer many finishing solutions as traditional offset printing do, such as spot varnishing, embossing/debossing, metallic inks and PMS inks.  According to market responses, readers are more likely to purchase a book by the sense of attractive appearance, including cover design (different finishing options) and printing quality (vividness of colors and optimal resolution).  With lack of ability to offer different finishing options for book cover and lesser printing quality, it will certainly affect the sales of a book.

In the last decade, many domestic printers had made their moves to adapt to the new changing economy.  Many have either upgraded their equipments to offer the ability of on-demand printing or have relocated their facility to overseas or partnership their business with overseas printers.  The advantage of a domestic printer merging to overseas facility is there will be no communication barrier for the North American customers, while having books printed professionally with much cheaper prices.  With the price mentioned previously for 250 paperbacks may well enough to produce 300 full color hardcover books, finishing with casebound, Smyth sewn, cover finished with lamination and mounted on 2.5mm board.  This is the typical specification for a professional looking hardcover book similar to the premium collection of Harry Potter that’s selling at Indigo and Chapters.

The question is how safe and secure to deal with overseas printers, or having transaction done remotely?  The answer is you don’t deal with company located on the other side of the world, you are dealing with local printing company or North American company that already have their production line relocated or combined with the overseas power force.  Which means transaction is done domestically and production is done remotely.  We called them “domestic-overseas printer”.  The main objective to print with “domestic-overseas printer” is to save money without sacrifice the quality.  By doing so, “domestic-overseas printer” will provide color proofs (mostly digital proof that is 90% close to the quality of the final product) and a set of white dummy (specific paper stock assembled in the exact format of the final book).  The proofs and dummy will be well enough to ensure the outcome of the final product and it will be sent to your door for approval before mass production.  In addition, you can also request for press-proof with minimal fee to reassure printing quality and color accuracy.

In the North American book industry, cost difference between paperbacks and hardbound books is substantial.  Hardcover books with nicely designed dust jackets can sell at much higher price than paperbacks.  By taking the advantage of using “domestic-overseas printer”, the cost for making hardcover book can be reduced 30% up to 60% compare to local printers.  The amount of money saved can be utilized to other areas such as promotions and marketing to increase the book sales.  Certainly, Save and Sale is an essential strategy for those small to medium size publishers and independent authors to profit on book publishing during the time of recessions.

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