How to print books for fun and profit

I’ve seen a lot of authors asking questions about printing books and getting dreadful advice, so I thought I would bring in my friend, printing expert Lily Wong to help me distill everything we know about printing.

I recommend my articles on Setting up your direct sales environment, Kickstarter for every Author Ecosystem, and Publishing is Changing—Why? And how to we take advantage of it to help round out this article.

Additionally, if you haven’t read our book Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter, then you can download it for free right here.

If you are not a paid member, you can read everything with a 7-day free trial, or give us a one-time tip.

I’ve always been fascinated with printing books. Even before I started printing them myself, back before I even considered myself a writer, I loved the feel and smell of books. So, when I made making books my profession, I dug in deep on the best ways to print books.

For years, I would try to talk to authors about how to print books in more economical, and more beautiful, ways, but my enthusiasm fell flat. Nobody cared. Why would you print and store books if Amazon could just print and deliver books whenever somebody ordered one?

With the recent uptick in interest regarding direct sales, people are finally catching on to all the different ways that producing beautiful books can be a boon to your author business. Besides, it’s fun to create something beautiful, especially when you have fans who appreciate the effort.

I’ve been printing books since before companies like Bookvault and 48 Hour Books significantly expanded what you could do with print-on-demand books, back when the only economical way to create hardcover books was to print 1,000+ copies.

Back then, we basically had Ingramspark, Createspace (RIP), and Lulu, which was a beautiful but ungodly expensive option in those days. If you wanted anything special, or you wanted to print books in color, the only option was to produce an offset run of books.

I see a lot of authors asking questions about printing, and I see a lot of well-meaning authors giving god-awful advice, so I thought I would dump all the information about printing that I’ve acquired over the last 15 years of printing books. I’ve asked my friend Lily Wong from Alpaca Color Printing to help me with this task. She’s been one of my printer reps since 2015 and helped me print almost all my offset runs1.

***This is a long post that will be truncated in emails. I highly recommend you go to this page to read the whole 4,500-word post without interruption.***

POD (Print-on-Demand) vs. Offset printing

It used to be that the only choices you could make when printing books POD was whether you wanted gloss or matte laminate for our covers (I always choose matte because the feel is delightful). There was a time when we couldn’t even choose paper weight or anything.

Now, companies like Lulu, Bookvault, Mixam, and 48 Hour Books have a million options from gold foil to glow-in-the-dark and much more. Digital printing used to look cheap, but over the last 15 years we’ve seen incredible advancements in the quality of POD books.

I should mention here that POD wasn’t always around. Before the early 2000s, you couldn’t even print digitally. The only option was an offset print run.

If you’ve been in indie publishing for fewer than 10 years, it’s likely that you don’t even know what offset printing is, which is wild to me since it used to be the only way to print books.

Aside from quality, which I think has vastly improved in the last 3-5 years on the POD side, the main reason to choose offset printing instead of digital printing is cost. While it costs more to do an offset print run, as you have to order a minimum of 250 copies, you save significantly when you start printing at higher volumes.

Cost difference in POD vs. offset printing

The biggest argument I have with authors is about long-term thinking vs. short-term term thinking and never is this more apparent than when we talk about print runs.

Why? Offset printing costs more upfront than POD, but it’s vastly more cost-effective over the long term. I still have books I printed in 2016 that I’m selling today at no additional cost to me.

Yes, it does take longer-term thinking to plan for the next 3-5 years of your life, but if you know you’re going to be selling the same books for a long time. The independent publishing industry is traditionally built upon “churn and burn”, where you put out a book a month until you burn out, but that model is changing. It was never healthy to begin with, but now we’re starting to see how toxic that model is and treating our books with the care they deserve.

If we’re focused on maximizing our backlist for years instead of churning and burning our books as fast as possible, an offset run makes more sense. As Lily says above, the more you print during an offset run, the more you save.

This is because almost all the cost of printing an offset run is in the first 500 copies. Why is this? Because it costs a lot to create the plates used to print your books. With digital printing, there are no plates, so the cost is consistent, but with offset printing, they create new plates for every job (which is what Lily means above with there being a lot of waste), so you get economy of scale.

Let’s talk numbers for a minute. For a digital print run, a paperback copy of Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter, costs about $6 to print through Ingramspark. The print quality is pretty good, but it’s not perfect. The color is pretty crappy, actually. Still, for a down-and-dirty print job, it’s fine.

A few years ago I printed 1,000 copies of the same book in hardcover, on beautiful paper, with ribbons and everything. That whole run cost about $4,000. So, for $4/book, I was able to get a higher quality print, on better paper, in hardcover.

That paperback version sells for $20, while the hardcover sells for $30, too. So, yes, if I was printing 100 copies, then it would probably be absurd to print those hardcover books…but that’s only if I thought I would never sell those books again.

You see, I still have hundreds of those books in my garage that have been paid off years ago. Every time I did a new volume of Ichabod, I didn’t have to print those books again. I already had them. Yes, I had to make that investment upfront, but by printing more I saved more.

And I didn’t even print a lot of books. I did the math once, and for every 500 more books I printed, it would have only cost me $750. I found that my best value was around 2,000 books, but that’s a lot of books to store at a time. Plus, the more books you have to sell, the fewer books of any one title you seem to sell. I sell roughly the same amount at shows now as I did years ago, but across dozens more books.

Upgrading your books economically

One of the other things that stands out about offset printing is that while it’s more expensive to get an initial order, upgrading to better and better options is way more affordable.

For instance, in order to upgrade to hardcover in most POD printers, there is roughly a $4/book upcharge, making hardcover not very economical. Not to mention if you want the binding to be sewn-bound instead of glue-bound. Lily is unequivocal on her preference here.

When I went to quote sewn-bound hardcovers from a digital printer, the costs went from $6 to $15, a wild difference, especially since with an offset printer, especially an international printer, it could cost as little as $.83 to upgrade from paperback to sewn-bound hardcover.

That says nothing about the other improvements you can make to books. One day I was trying to find a POD option for spot UV, a process that adds a shine to only certain areas of a cover, and found that you had to pay $5/book for that option on a book, whereas I could get it for $.10 or less from an offset printer.

That’s not to say there aren’t a ton of options when it comes to digital printing, but offset printing because way more economical as you start to create premium and then super premium books, especially the ones I see people offering on Kickstarter.

I should mention that in general, this pricing is only true for overseas printers like Alpaca Printing. Companies like Marquis in Canada or ones in the USA tend to vastly overprice these upgrades, which to me is the most compelling reason to look internationally.

Gang printing, gang binding, and split runs

Often, authors tell me that they could never sell 1,000+ books. I’m not saying it doesn’t take a lot of effort, but there is also an ingenious way to break up your print run to take advantage of several marketing. It is called gang-binding, or split runs.

The general idea is that you can bind a print run in several different ways to service different markets. For instance, let’s say you run a Kickstarter and need 50 leatherbound books, 100 hardcover books, and 200 paperback books.

Well, you might go to a POD printer for that order, or you can go to an offset printer and print them together to take advantage of those economies of scale, and since the interiors are the same, you would really be paying for 350 books with what is called a “change fee” of between $50-$250 per new cover.

Comics are notorious for using this trick to produce dozens of variant covers, including show variants and getting people to rebuy the same book multiple times. Any single book could have 10-20 or more variant covers, all with the same interior paper stock. All they are doing is changing the covers and getting their readers to buy the same book multiple times.

This isn’t something that independent authors have taken to as much, but it happens all the time in comics and book publishing and I think we should lean into it. We have:

• Paperback covers

• Mass market covers

• Hardcover

• Limited edition covers

• Book Club covers

• Retailer exclusive covers

• Kickstarter exclusive covers

• Convention covers

• Anniversary covers

• Leather covers

Plus more that I’m probably forgetting, but the point is that if you parcel these covers out then ordering 1,000+ books doesn’t seem that bonkers anymore.

If you want to save even more money, then you can order multiple books together, called gang printing. This doesn’t mean you have to order the books. You could create a little consortium of authors and order 2-5+ books at the same time and same. Maybe consortiums exist for the sole reason of saving on printing costs.

I ordered a book several years ago that cost $10,000 to bring 2,000 copies. When I went to place a second order, I was able to print books 1 and 2 in the series for $12,000, saving me a ton of money. Yes, there are price breaks with POD books, but you’re not saving as much as you do with an offset run. This is really how you game the publishing system for fun and profit.

One other thing I want to mention here is that every book size has a different unit of paper they consider their standard measurement. This usually ranges from 12-16 pages and is called a signature. 

When you print to the signature, meaning you have the exact right page count equal to their unit of measurement, then you save a lot of money. Printing to signature is one of the easiest ways to save money on a print run.

When should you consider printing locally, or POD?

I’ll be honest. Even though I know all of this, I haven’t printed an offset run since 2022. Why? Because most of my books are printed in 100-200 unit runs and I have a quick turnaround time.

The biggest thing that prevents me from printing more books in an offset run, besides space, is that I want to deliver books within a month of a campaign ending, and usually within 2 weeks.

While my longer series could warrant an offset run, printing 12 books is prohibitively expensive, even if I take advantage of all these tricks, especially since people usually only buy 50-100 of any single title during a campaign.

I’m also not offering a lot of filigree or enhancements to my books. They are no-nonsense paperbacks, which is when you see the least value in offset printing. While paperbacks are cheaper when ordered at scale, the delta between them and ordering from a POD printer is nominal compared to hardcover or other enhancements.

What are some of the enhancements I should consider for my books?

Not every printer does every type of enhancement, but these are some of the coolest enhancements I have seen.

Diecutting means part of the cover is cut out revealing the artwork underneath. If you work in comics, this is an amazing enhancement to your work.

Embossing and debossing allow you to raise or lower parts of the cover so they stand out more from the rest of the book.

UV Spot allows you to add a pop of gloss to make certain parts of your image shine. I prefer matte covers, so I use them all the time. Another one I use all the time is adding a ribbon to my books.

One I am too scared to do is sequential numbering as it’s hard to make sure somebody gets the right number, but it’s a popular one.

Glow-in-the-dark is super popular with fans. I only have one cover that glows and it’s generally regarded as people’s favorite cover we’ve ever done.

You can also add glitter, gold foil, silver foil, or other types of foil to the cover.

You’ve probably seen a lot of people adding gilded or painted edges to their books.

You can also add a dust jacket, though I find them more of a pain than a help, as they often tear leading to complaints. I’ve seen some people do cool things with half or quarter-dust jackets.

If you have a black-and-white book but want to add some color illustrations, you can create an insert inside your book that shows off the color images without paying for full color.

You also have some options for cover material, like cloth or leather, that can make your books feel special.

Finally, you can create a slipcase for your book that protects it in a specially-made box.

I’m sure there are more, but those are the main ones I’ve seen that work for indie authors.

What about shipping books to me?

There are five terms you need to know when shipping books internationally.

In general, I always choose DDP, because I know I won’t owe any additional costs once the boats cross the ocean. As Lily has told me many times, this is easily the most expensive option. I know that I’m spending a premium, but I just don’t want the hassle.

The number of complaints I’ve heard from friends who were hit with additional charges when they chose FOB or CIP or had to rent a truck to pick the books up at a port is extensive. Unless you know a freight forwarder or would like to learn all about logistics, I highly recommend you bite the bullet and pay more for DDP.

What if I want to ship books to a fulfillment company and never want to touch them?

One of the biggest questions I get asked by authors deals with hassle. They don’t want to ship their books or store their books. While you can ship books to a fulfillment company like Merrick Books or Shipbob, there is one big issue with this; signing the books.

Luckily, there is a solution for you; tip-in sheets.

When you order tip-ins, the printer sends you a box of paper to sign. Then, you ship them back to the printer and they add them to the book after printing. This is how all big publishers deal with signed books. Brandon Sanderson doesn’t get delivered a million books to sign. He gets a million pages to sign and then the printer deals with it.

I want to thank my friend Lily Wong from Alpaca Color Printing. If you want to talk to her about printing your books, then you can email [email protected].

So what do you think?

• Have you ever done an offset print run?

• Are you using any cool enhancements for your own book?

• Are you still petrified with fear in talking to a printer?

Let us know.

The last thing I wanted to do in this article was to provide a glossary of terms you could use for discussion with your printer contacts. These might not be the only terms you need, but they will get you a long way to speaking the same language as your printer.

• POD - Print on Demand. It's a printing technology where books or other documents are printed individually as orders come in, rather than in bulk.

• Offset - A traditional printing method where ink is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket and then onto the printing surface.

• IngramSpark is a publishing platform that allows authors and publishers to create and distribute print books and ebooks. It's a service provided by Ingram Content Group, one of the largest book distributors in the world. IngramSpark enables users to print on demand, meaning books are printed and shipped when ordered, eliminating the need for large print runs and storage of inventory. It offers various formats, including hardcover, paperback, and ebooks, and distributes to a wide range of retailers and libraries.

• Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) is Amazon's self-publishing platform. It allows authors to publish their books in digital format (ebooks) and in print through Amazon's print-on-demand service, formerly known as CreateSpace. With KDP, authors can upload their manuscripts, create book covers, set prices, and make their books available for sale on Amazon's various global marketplaces. KDP also provides various promotional tools and analytics to help authors track their sales and performance.

• Bookvault - a POD printing company specializing in printing high-end books and providing integrations to direct sales web stores.

• Lulu - Lulu Press is a self-publishing platform where authors can create and publish their own books.

• Mixam - A printing company that offers various printing services, including book printing.

• Gang printing - Printing multiple different projects or copies on the same sheet to optimize paper usage and cost-effectiveness.

• Gang Binding - Binding multiple different printed projects together as a batch.

• Tip-ins - Additional pages or materials that are inserted into a book after it has been bound.

• Shipping - The process of transporting goods (in this case, books) from one place to another.

• DDP - Delivered Duty Paid. It refers to a shipping arrangement where the seller is responsible for all costs and risks associated with transporting goods until they reach the buyer.

• DDU - Delivered Duty Unpaid. In this shipping arrangement, the buyer is responsible for the import clearance and any applicable taxes or duties upon arrival.

• FOB - Free On Board. It indicates the point at which the seller is no longer responsible for shipping costs or liability for the goods being transported.

• CIP - Carriage and Insurance Paid. It's a trade term where the seller pays for transportation and insurance to deliver goods to a specified destination.

• Signature - A printed sheet folded to become a part of a book with a certain number of pages. Printing a book to signature will save you money.

• Register - The accurate alignment of different colors or elements in printing.

• Change Fee - A fee incurred for changing the covers on a book at a printer.

• Alternate covers - Different cover designs for the same book.

• Insert - Additional materials placed inside a book, such as cards, maps, or other supplemental content.

• Binding - The process of fastening or securing the pages of a book together.

• Paperback - A book with a flexible paper or cardstock cover.

• Hardcover - A book with a rigid cover, usually made of cardboard wrapped in cloth, paper, or leather.

• Board Book - A book with thick, durable pages made of cardboard, often designed for young children.

• Trade - In the publishing industry, it refers to books that are meant for general retail sale, as opposed to specialized or academic books.

• Case Binding - A type of bookbinding where the book block is glued to a cover made of thicker material like cardboard.

• Die-cutting - A process of cutting paper or cardboard into specific shapes using a die or mold.

• Embossing - Creating a raised design or pattern on paper or cardstock.

• Gloss - A shiny and reflective finish applied to printed materials.

• Matte - A non-reflective, dull finish applied to printed materials.

• Lamination - A thin layer of plastic or similar material applied to the surface of printed materials for protection or enhancement.

• Paper weight - The thickness and heaviness of paper, often measured in pounds or grams per square meter (GSM).

• H/T - Acronym for High-Touch, referring to a personalized or customized approach in printing or customer service.

• Sew bound - Binding pages together by sewing them along the spine.

• Glow-in-the-dark - Materials or inks that emit visible light after exposure to light.

• Spot UV - A coating applied to specific areas of printed material to create a glossy, raised effect.

• Bleed - Printing that extends beyond the trim edge of the sheet, allowing for a margin of error in trimming.

• CMYK - Acronym for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (Black), the four colors used in color printing.

• DPI - Dots Per Inch. It measures the resolution of printed images.

• Foil - Metallic or colored material applied to printed materials for a decorative or reflective effect.

• Overrun - Producing more copies of a printed item than originally ordered.

• Ream - A quantity of paper, usually 500 sheets.

• Saddle stitch - A binding method where folded sheets are stapled along the fold line to create a booklet.

• Scoring - Creating a crease in paper or cardstock to help it fold cleanly.

• Spine - The edge of a book where the pages are bound together.

• Split run - Printing different versions of a document in the same print run.

• GSM - Grams per Square Meter. It measures the weight or density of paper.

• Proofing - The process of reviewing and checking a sample print for errors or quality before final printing.

• Metal - In printing, it could refer to metallic inks or foils used for decorative purposes in printing.

• Slipcase - a protective box used to keep books or special items safe. It's usually made of strong material like cardboard or wood and helps shield these items from damage, dust, and light. They're often used for collectible books or special editions, adding both protection and a nice look to the collection.

If you enjoyed this article, then please consider becoming a paid member to fund further articles.

I recommend my articles on Setting up your direct sales environment, Kickstarter for every Author Ecosystem, and Publishing is Changing—Why? And how to we take advantage of it to help round out this article.

Additionally, if you haven’t read our book Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter, then you can download it for free right here. If you are not a paid member, you can read everything with a 7-day free trial, or give us a one-time tip.