Book Printing Help
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- 5timuli
We (company I work for) have a small (4.5" x 6"), 68pg book designed and we'd like to get a short digital run printed and perfect bound (between 10-25). Quotes so far have been around the $20/book range, but do you experienced print designers know of a way to get this somewhere cheaper, maybe around the $10/book range? Do you think that's even possible for a run of this size?
The reason is the project started out as a print project but the client defected to electronic distribution. We want some for our portfolio but think it might actually convince the client to go all out and get some printed once he sees them.
- 5timuli0
Done a lot of seraching but thought some of you might have used someone for something like this and got some great deals. Maybe.
:/
- skt0
i doubt you will get it cheaper than that, given that's what it would cost you to do with lulu or blurb. not exactly high end quality.
- monospaced0
lulu.com prices your book at about $7
- skt0
$200 really to much for a company portfolio piece?
- skt0
was trawling through all the reviews last night for lulu and blurb, still none the wiser for a personal project. you used either monospaced?
- monospaced0
I have seen them and they are as good as any digital printer is going to get. Fortunately they have enough business to keep improving.
- 5timuli0
- They do a size very close. Look at my post on the next page to see.monospaced
- version30
i've used blurb, on both books the image was distorted and stretched on the back. i actually printed that book i wanted to print and it came out darker than i expected. scarabin printed my chick of the day book and he said the quality was great. on my book though, color did not go all the way into the spine, so full spreads had a line of white down the middle, i didn't really care to complain or ask, just saw it as a limitation. ask scarabin if the COTD book has the same issue
- version30
blurb has a new size now too
http://www.blurb.com/learn_more/…
i bought the 7x7 hardcaover and that's what the COTD book is too
- skt0
you two are so fucking creepy.
- version30
wassat?
- ismith0
Have the pages printed on decent paper, put the cover on good stock, give to an intern *COUGH COUGH* who will then cut down the pages individually, assemble, and return for you to show the client.
- Scotch_Roman0
All the commodity online digital printing companies such as lulu and blurb turn out a product that's mediocre at best. For a studio promo piece, I'd say either do it up right or not at all. I actually think $20 per 68 page book at that quantity is a pretty good price.
For a perfect bound book, you just can't get cheaper than this. It's the setup cost that's killing you at your current quantity.
Out of curiosity, are you looking at an Indigo, Nexpress or some sort of Xerox printer? Because I have a digital printer here in town, they use Indigos, and do great work but aren't the cheapest around. Indigo is really the best call, especially if you're printing on uncoated.
- skt0
blurb uses Indigo by the way gramme.
- inhaler970
Ive seen some pretty bad results through blurb, but I wonder what kind of color profiles were used, or if the authors even were using it. Some if the books Ive seen, its as if they compressed them to srgb (which i know is the norm, but adobe rgb is soo much nicer) and images had pronounced magenta, or a lack of Cyan, which again I wonder if it was the author's doing or blurbs, because it just looked terrible.
- version30
I just flipped through my book and there are excellent representations of every color without banding/bleeding. it shows me my mistakes more than my screen did as far as over/undercontrasted colors. on photos that received little to no processing, it seems a very natural representation of the scene/subject
i've got great yellows, blues, oranges, pinks, reds, grays, greens. all the sunsets show rich vibrance and smooth color transition
- duckofrubber0
Can't upload designs as PDF or any format with vector information on blurb, which makes it pretty well useless for books with body copy.
- skt0
yeah, the main problem i'm having with it. going to give it a go anyway using 300 dpi png's for everything (including text) as the picture quality is meant to be much better than lulu.
not ideal but... at $20 a go i can't be too fussy.
- tesmith0
Is it 4/4? Sounds like a reasonable price if so. I would suggest you don't do it on line if it is a presentation piece. As Scotch Roman said it sounds like a job for an Indigo or iGen.