If you&#;re self-publishing your work, you&#;ll likely be interested in how to print books cheaply. Every upfront cost, from bookbinding to cover design to marketing, ultimately eats into your bottom line.

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After all, you still have to market your book, and that&#;s a costly process too.

Cheap book printing services exist, and they can allow you to get your book into the hands of readers without destroying your bank account. To that end, what is the lowest-cost book printing you can trust? Let&#;s find out in this blog, along with tips to lower the cost of custom book printing.

Looking to print books cheap? Get a quote here!

How Much Does It Cost to Print a Book?

Custom book printing costs anywhere from $2 for each copy of your book to as much as $10 or more. The lowest-cost book printing may be relatively no-frills, lacking assets such as full color or hardback covers, but you shouldn&#;t sacrifice quality book printing and binding services for quantity.

Keep in mind that these costs are only associated with printing a book. If you&#;re planning on self-publishing, there may be a host of other costs to take into account &#; from editing, proofreading, marketing, distributing, and more. 

No matter which printing and binding services you consider, make sure they have a good reputation for making quality printed materials, and remember that you get what you pay for.

Springing for the lowest-cost book printing or bookbinding service can be tempting, but it may offer prints of a much lower quality than you&#;re looking for. Readers want to know that they&#;re picking up a high-quality book, or they may not be willing to buy it, so take the time to ensure the balance between the level of quality you want and the price you&#;re willing to pay.

7 Tips for Cheap Book Printing

It&#;s okay to be picky when you&#;re trying to find the lowest-cost book printing. It&#;s your reputation and your book on the line here. Though you can pursue digital-only publishing, consider whether you want to have a physical book to sell as well.

Studies continue to show that people prefer to read physical books and retain information better when they do. Here are ways you can make publishing and printing your book a reality.

1. Weigh Buying in Bulk vs Print-on-Demand

Many printers require a minimum number of copies, which is how they keep costs low for both themselves and the authors. However, they require an upfront investment.

Print-on-demand book services are another alternative and are wonderful if you&#;re low on cash now, but buying a large batch of prints all at once may ultimately be more economical in the long run. However, there&#;s a big IF &#; you&#;ll need to make sure you can sell the books.

If you&#;re unsure whether you&#;ll actually be able to sell all the books in a given order, opting for a print-on-demand book model may be a better choice and a less risky bet.

Learn about cheap options for print-on-demand books

2. Choose Standard Paper Sizes and Weight

When it comes to printing materials, the size and weight of the paper can significantly impact the overall cost. For instance, if you&#;re printing trade paperbacks, you&#;ll find that the cost is far less compared to producing hardcover books. This is because hardcovers require durable and premium materials, driving up the expenses.

Choosing standard paper sizes and weights for your printing needs can also save you from incurring additional charges for custom specifications. Standard options are more cost-effective and readily available, making them a practical choice for most projects.

3. Binding Type

Consider the style of the bookbinding service you plan to use. Case bindings are traditional for hardbacks, and though they provide an air of quality, they involve a time-consuming process and cause books to be heavy. You can always charge more if you think people will be willing to splurge!

Perfect binding is used for paperbacks and softbacks, in which the cover is made from heavy cardstock and then laminated. The cover and pages are held together with strong glue, making perfect binding a much cheaper alternative to case binding.

4. Book Size

Mass-market paperbacks are small: At just 4.25 inches x 6.87 inches, they are meant to fit in most backpacks and pockets. Trade paperbacks can measure either 5.5-inch x 8.5-inch digest size or 6-inch x 9-inch U.S. trade size. Hardcovers measure between 6 inches x 9 inches and 8.5 inches x 11 inches. In any case, the bigger you print, the more you spend.

5. Optimize Page Count

Like with the book&#;s size, the higher the page count, the more money it will cost you. Remember that each page of a book takes up one side of the actual paper, so you get only two pages per piece of paper.

Also, keep in mind that you can only make the text so small before it becomes unreadable, so you&#;ll have to balance between text size and page count when you&#;re calculating what you&#;re willing to spend.

6. Look for Ways to Save on Shipping Costs

Big books take up more space and are heavier, which makes them expensive to ship, so keep this in mind when you&#;re finalizing your book&#;s design. Talk to your book printing and binding services about your specific book&#;s size and weight to make sure you get an exact number that will fit in a box.

Even ordering one more book than what will fit will probably result in an entirely new box, with its shipping costs &#; all for one book.

One possible way to save on shipping costs is to bundle printing with shipping. Print Bind Ship, is a dedicated book printing service and a fulfillment company.

When you place an order, we&#;ll not only print books but also ensure that they reach their final destination and customers in time. Learn how to cut down on print costs by combining book printing services with fulfillment for your brand here.

7. Shop Around for Printing Quotes

By obtaining quotes from multiple printing companies, you can easily compare their prices and services side by side. This helps you to make an informed decision and ensures that you get the best value for your money. Additionally, shopping around allows you to identify any hidden costs or fees that may not have been obvious at first glance.

Moreover, comparing quotes also gives you an insight into the quality of work offered by different printing companies. You can request samples or browse through their portfolios to assess their level of professionalism and attention to detail. This way, you can be confident in the print quality and the final product that you will be receiving.

For the highest quality book printing service that&#;s also affordable, we recommend Print Bind Ship. With decades of experience printing everything from comic books, paperback books, hardcovers, and more &#; we have all types of solutions at some of the best print costs on the market.

How to Find the Lowest-Cost Book Printing?

The best way to find the lowest-cost book printing services is to talk to printers and fulfillment companies about their prices and get quotes in writing. Find out about all the services they offer, including whether they will ship the books and whether they can design covers.

If you work with a book printing and binding service like Print Bind Ship (PBS), you won&#;t have to worry about any of those questions, as we&#;ll handle every aspect of your book&#;s printing.

Working with a third-party logistics (3PL) fulfillment company like PBS also provides you with great flexibility. If your book becomes a success and you want to introduce a hardback version or start offering print-on-demand services, you can do that. You&#;ll also get the benefit of fast worldwide shipping to satisfy readers anywhere around the globe.

Cheapest Way to Print PDF Books

Looking for the cheapest way to print PDF books? Send your files over to us at Print Bind Ship!

Many factors go into the cost of printing a book, which can be overwhelming for new authors. However, partnering with an experienced printing company like Print Bind Ship will ensure that your book is produced with quality, gets shipped to customers quickly, and comes at a price you&#;ll be happy with.

Plus, Print Bind Ship also offers much more than book printing. We&#;re a full-blown fulfillment partner and a print-on-demand provider for books and we manage printing, storing, packing, and shipping as orders come through.

Looking to print books cheap? Get a quote here!

FAQ

How much does it cost to print and distribute a book?

Costs can range dramatically based on the options chosen, but on the cheaper end, authors can spend as little as $500 in total or $3 per book. If you want to start adding in extras like dust jackets or you want to increase your book&#;s overall size, prices can creep toward $8 to $10 per book.

How can I get a book published for cheap?

Shop around for printers that print large batches and offer reasonable shipping rates, and consider formatting and designing everything yourself so you don&#;t have to pay someone else to do it.

What is the cheapest price to publish a book?

It&#;s possible to spend as little as $100, but you&#;ll have to weigh that price with the ramifications of the quality. Take the time to consider whether readers will be happy with the final product.

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Printing Industry Exchange (printindustry.com) is pleased to have Steven Waxman writing and managing the Printing Industry Blog. As a printing consultant, Steven teaches corporations how to save money buying printing, brokers printing services, and teaches prepress techniques. Steven has been in the printing industry for thirty-three years working as a writer, editor, print buyer, photographer, graphic designer, art director, and production manager.

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PIE's staff is here to help the print buyer find competitive pricing and the right printer to do their job, and also to help the printing companies increase their revenues by providing numerous leads they can quote on and potentially get new business.

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Book Printing: a Handful of Ways to Save Money Buying Print Services

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If your job involves either buying commercial printing services or designing print products, your experience over the years will teach you that some custom printing processes cost a lot. It&#;s easy to spend money quickly on a print job. However, you can also be mindful when designing or specifying a print project and make choices that actually save you money.

The Best Book Size

In this light, a colleague recently contacted me regarding the best size for a particular print book. The question was posed from a marketing perspective. Which format would sell better: 5.5&#; x 8.5&#;, 6&#; x 9&#;, 8&#; x 10&#;, 8.5&#; x 11&#;, etc.?

I told my colleague that I didn&#;t have the experience to speak to the marketing aspect of the question but that I could address the commercial printing aspect.

I said that the goal would be to lay out as many pages on the front and back of a press sheet as possible, side by side in a standard press-signature format. Of course, this would necessitate knowing the size of the press and press sheet, as well as the space needed for bleeds, printers&#; marks, and the press gripper (which grabs the press sheet and feeds it into the press).

The overall approach would be as follows: for instance, a 40&#; press will accept a standard 25&#; x 38&#; press sheet. If you draw out on a piece of paper a sketch of a press sheet with a width of 38&#; and a depth of 25&#;, and then draw four pages across and then another four pages immediately below them, you have a diagram of a press sheet containing a sixteen-page signature (four pages across on top, four across immediately below, and the same on the back of the sheet for a total of sixteen pages). Without bleeds, printer&#;s marks, and room for the press gripper, you will have just used 22&#; x 34&#; of the total 25&#; x 38&#; sheet (11&#; x 2 pages down and 8.5&#; x 4 pages across). So you will have a little wiggle room for the bleeds and other printers&#; requirements.

My Colleague&#;s Question

So, to return to my colleague&#;s question, you can do the same kind of math for any of the other page sizes, based on the size of the press sheet. Your goal is to group pages in multiples of four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, or sixty-four. Remember, you&#;re dividing by the two sides of the press sheet. Moreover, since some presses are as large as 50&#; (rather than 40&#;), you can get more pages on a press sheet if you&#;re designing smaller pages. That said, I wouldn&#;t necessarily do the math without involving the printer. Just ask about the ideal page size and the number of pages in the &#;most efficient&#; press signature based on this approach.

And remember, if your page size yields a print book that feels good in the reader&#;s hands but that wastes a lot of paper (i.e., maybe you&#;ve chosen an unusual page size, and you can&#;t quite fit as many pages on both sides of a press signature without a lot of unused space around the pages), you&#;re still paying for the unused paper that lands on the trimming room floor.

Marketing Thoughts

Now here&#;s one marketing perspective. The size and weight of the print book make a difference on several counts:

1. 1. If it&#;s too heavy (maybe an 8.5&#; x 11&#; format), the book may be uncomfortable to hold when reading.

 

1. 1. If the book is too large in its length and width, both the envelopes used to mail copies to clients and the postage may cost more than you expect.

 

1. 1. If the booklets need to fit in a display rack for marketing purposes, their size will matter. Find out where and how the print books will be displayed.

 

1. If the print book has a small format (let&#;s say 5.5&#; x 8.5&#;) and therefore has grown to 600 pages in length, it may be very difficult to trim. (More on this later.)

Oblong Books

My colleague&#;s colleague (a writer and publisher) recently printed another book, which had an oblong format (wide and squat rather than narrow and tall). Sometimes this is called a &#;landscape&#; rather than &#;portrait&#; orientation. The publisher was amazed by the high printing cost and vowed never to design an oblong print book again. He had assumed that the same book dimensions would cost the same to produce in either an upright or oblong format. Ouch.

Why is this not true?

To go back to the pages laid out on a press sheet (from the prior example), since facing pages touch at the short dimension in an oblong book, and since the double-page spreads are significantly wider than for standard upright pages, you might not be able to lay out as many pages on one press sheet in one press signature.

(A wild guess might be that four pages will fit on one side of the sheet and four on the other, rather than eight per side, or that eight pages will fit on each side of a press sheet rather than sixteen. In this case, you would need twice as many press runs, significantly increasing the overall commercial printing cost.)

So why not turn everything on its side on the press sheet? Good idea. But maybe that will change the orientation of the paper relative to the paper grain. After all, you want the paper fibers to be parallel to the spine in a print book, or you may have trouble turning the pages easily. Or, as another option, maybe your printer can use paper with the grain going in the perpendicular direction.

As you can see, things get complicated, and complication drives prices up. The best solution is to ask the book printer about such things early in the design process. That doesn&#;t mean you shouldn&#;t design an oblong book. You should just understand the potential cost ramifications.

Ways to Save&#;or Spend&#;Money

As with most things in life, buying commercial printing often requires trade-offs. Often this also involves paying a higher cost for higher quality. But not always.

Binding

For instance, it costs less to saddle stitch a book than to perfect bind it. But perfect binding gives you a printable spine and (presumably) feels more professional to the reader. Maybe you still want the perfect binding, and you&#;re willing to pay more for it and then pass the cost on to the customer.

Or let&#;s say you&#;re printing an ultra-short press run of 50 books. (A client of mine prints 50 galley copies of a book for reader reviews, and then prints 1,500 to 2,000 more copies&#;with a more elaborate book design&#;incorporating the readers&#; suggestions.) Preparing a large perfect binder for 50 copies will be expensive. Possibly the 50 copies would cost the same (considering makeready and spoilage) as 200 copies for the binding component of the job. In this case it helps to know a printer with a tabletop perfect binder, which is made especially to bind short runs of books economically. (So in this case in particular, it helps to know what equipment your vendor has and to also have a good network of potential printers for your jobs.)

Trimming

Here&#;s another actual case study from my colleague&#;s colleague. He produced a 600-page book (noted earlier in this blog article). It was too large to be comfortably trimmed by the printer. So the printer&#;s automated trimming equipment had to be slowed down significantly. This caused workflow bottlenecks and raised the overall price. Maybe my colleague&#;s colleague had actually been lucky. The next step would have been to hand trim each print book. For a long press run, this would have been extraordinarily expensive.

Mechanical Binding

For short-run books (let&#;s say a book for 50 people attending a convention session in a hotel), GBC binding (also referred to as plastic comb binding) is ideal. You don&#;t need to pay makeready and spoilage costs for an automated perfect binder (or bind 1,500 copies to reap reasonable per-unit bindery costs).

However, GBC binding is done by hand on a little machine (hooking the pages onto the plastic combs). Handwork is expensive and takes time. So for 50 copies, your unit cost will be high. And if your press run goes up (let&#;s say to 500 copies) and you still choose GBC binding, your overall cost (as well as your unit cost) will be high.

Cover Coatings

Maybe you asked your printer to film laminate the covers of your books. Let&#;s say he doesn&#;t have in-house laminating capabilities but he can aqueous coat your print book covers in his shop. Consider this seriously. (Substitutions are often a smart option, for cover coatings, paper choices, etc.) Making your printer subcontract out the lamination might well cost you a lot more than accepting the printer&#;s in-house aqueous coating capabilities. It might take less time, too.

(A good rule of thumb is to ask for specific results, such as a gloss or matte cover coating, rather than to ask for a specific technology, like laminating, UV coating, or aqueous coating. It&#;s also a good idea to ask for samples. Always make decisions based on what you can see and feel, whether it&#;s a choice of press papers or cover coatings.)

The Takeaway?

What can we learn from my colleague and her colleague? Here are some thoughts:

1. 1. Ask your printer about the most efficient page sizes and press signature configurations based on his presses and the press sheets they accommodate. You want the largest press signatures produced with the fewest press runs.

 

1. 1. Develop relationships with a handful of printers. Learn what equipment they have and learn how this determines ideal page size, press signature size, cover coating capabilities, etc. Be able to choose a particular printer for a particular job based on your knowledge of the equipment he has in his pressroom and bindery.

 

1. Study all of these subjects in depth. The more you know, the more effective you will be at economical print design and print buying.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 4th, at 3:55 am and is filed under PrintBuying. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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