There’s a magical quality to walking into a local print shop and seeing the sights, sounds, and smells of books being printed on paper. When you’re an author or publisher, it’s even more important to take time and care when working with a printer to ensure that your book looks and feels just the way you want it to. That’s because the quality of your book can have a huge impact on its sales and reader satisfaction.
This article will discuss tips for navigating the printing process so that you can work with your local Detroit print shop to create the best possible book. We’ll cover everything from book size and paper stock to binding and more.
The first step in the printing process is prepress. During this stage, the printer creates plates using laser-etched aluminum that will be used to transfer ink to paper when the book is printed. This can take quite a while, especially if the author or publisher provided a print-ready manuscript that doesn’t meet the printer’s exact specifications.
Once the plates are ready, the book’s pages are printed. Depending on the type of printing, this can be done digitally or through traditional offset presses. Traditional offset presses use ink, and full-color books are printed with four different colors of ink (cyan, magenta, yellow and black, or CMYK). Pages are printed on large sheets of paper that are then folded into 32- or 48-page blocks called signatures. The completed signatures are then bound, either by gluing, stitching or sewing, to create the finished book.
Adding color to a book takes additional time, and it’s important that the author or publisher understand this ahead of time. It’s also important to consider how many copies a book will be printed, because it will significantly affect the cost and turnaround time. Typically, the higher the number of books that are printed, the lower the cost per copy.
Another factor that can greatly affect the printing process is whether or not a book has an inner spine. If the book has a spine, it can add up to a week to the overall printing time. Finally, if the book includes illustrations, it’s important to factor in the amount of time that will be needed to hire and work with illustrators and make sure that the artwork is sized correctly.
Once the pages are printed, they must be collated and sorted into their correct order. This can also add time to the printing process, particularly if the book has an interior text that needs to be lined up with the page numbers in the back of the book. Once the collation and sorting are complete, a proof is created to verify that all of the text and pictures are lined up properly before book printing. This is an important step because it can save authors and publishers significant money in the long run by avoiding costly reprints and corrections after the book has been printed.