Details

WE MANUFACTURE BOOKS OF ALL TYPES.  Soft cover, hard cover, black and white text, 2 color text, and full color text. We work with files of virtually any type, paper originals, or existing books that require scanning. We do prepress processing and proofing on all books we manufacture.

 

WE GO BEYOND BOOK PRINTING FOR YOU.  We want to make it easy for you to have your books printed.  To do this we have conquered all of the supporting areas that customers have asked us about over the years.

WE SUPPORT YOUR DECISION-MAKING. When you are looking at long lists of printers, all flashing their lights and waving their arms, how do you decide who to use. The first-impression quote price can be very misleading; the final price may be a lot higher. The quality of your books may not be what you expect. The whole experience of dealing with the printing company may be lengthy and unpleasant.  A little care at the beginning can save money, assure top quality, and make the whole experience pleasant for you.

COMPETITIVE EDGE. We excel in certain ways, described here. 

FILE UPLOADS and DOWNLOADS.  We use WeTransfer for file uploads. When you're ready to upload your files, let us know and we'll e-mail a secure link that you can use for your upload. This link is unique to you, and is not shared.  So your files are completely protected from prying eyes and hands.

We also use WeTransfer to send out any PDF proofs that are needed.

 

MEET YOUR SCHEDULE NEEDS.  Our normal turn-around time for perfect bound books is 3 weeks, and for saddle-stitched books 2 weeks (plus whatever amount of time you want to review your proofs).   For domestically produced Smythe sewn books or full color books, the turnaround is normally 4-5 weeks.

 

For books printed in Hong Kong, the turnaround is normally 4 weeks (plus 4 weeks transit time). If you have a pressing schedule requirement, the prices may be so attractive that you can afford for us to air freight a "starter kit" of books, and have them in your hands within a 4 week turnaround. With normal economical ocean shipping, the transit time to your door is  close to 4 weeks. We have an excellent record of meeting schedule commitments. We take pride in our excellent service, competitive prices, top quality, and aggressive scheduling.

If you have a critical schedule need, such as a book signing or conference,  please discuss your schedule with us.  We will develop a specific schedule based on your files-in date, proof review turnaround, production time, and shipping time, and ink this into our production schedules. Please do not base scheduling for a critical event on the general guidelines given above.  The loading in the plant, time to obtain special paper, holiday and vacation times, and other unknowns may affect the actual schedule.  The only way to be sure is for us to develop a specific schedule for you.   And then, I suggest you allow some buffer time for things to go wrong (snow storms, floods, transportation delays, etc.)

 

RUN LENGTH.  We do not normally quote for fewer than 500 copies of black and white soft cover books or fewer than 300 copies of hard cover books or books that are mostly in color.  We can produce any quantity above that which you want.  At the low end, it's all a matter of economics.  As you can see from the  chart below, the unit cost -- the cost per copy -- starts high and drops as the quantity of books  increases. 

This chart compares the approximate cost per book for various order quantities of perfect bound black and white books.  For example, if you order 2000 books, then each book costs only half (53%) as much as if you order 500 books. This is an example, not a universal formula.

A NOTE ON PRACTICAL QUANTITIES. Not all combinations of specifications and quantity will yield a price that is practical for you. For example, if you are interested in buying 300 copies of an 8.5 x 11 full color book with 400 pages, the unit cost will be very high. There may be a special circumstance in which such a high cost is worth it for you -- for example, for a special company consulting report.  In most cases it just won't work for general books you expect to sell.  When we see such a circumstance, we will respond to your quote request with a note about the high cost and information about reducing the unit cost with larger quantities.

Want to Print Out pages from this web site?  If the image runs off the edge of your sheet, set your printer to print Landscape.  Then it'll fit.

Anti-Virus.  We have also found a solution to viruses that works great for us: NOD32 from Eset software. It does not seem to slow anything down.  It was easy to set up.  It has a great record for catching viruses.  You can get more information at www.eset.com.  (I haven't put a link here because their web site won't let you return to here when you've finished looking through their site.)

What's a Page?  Unfortunately the term "page" is used in common conversation to mean two different things: a page or a leaf.  We count pages as the page numbers normally run.  Each leaf in the book has two pages, one on each side; in fact, each leaf has two pages even if one of them is blank. There are twice as many pages as there are leaves.  If the pages in a book are numbered from 1 to 250, then there are 250 pages in the book and 125 leaves.  It's really confusing to us when you ask for a quote with a page description of "320 pages printed on both sides".  To me that means 320 pages (160 leaves) and they are not blank on the back.  If you mean 640 pages when you say this, we won't get your quote right for you.

Moire. In printing, moire is a pronounced and ugly pattern (checkerboard or parallel lines) that results from the interaction (technically called interference) of a screen pattern in the original image with the screening that's necessary for making printing plates. Since moire results from this interaction, it may show up on the final printed work but not in a proof, and vice versa. There are no safe assumptions when it comes to moire - except to not have screened images. The only safe approach is to descreen any image that has a screen pattern; that is, remove the visibility of the screen itself by carefully blurring the image.  The best time to do this is during scanning of the screened image; most good scanners have a descreen function that can accomplish this without noticeably degrading the image.

Where does the screen pattern come from in the first place?  From scanning a printed image. In order for the image to be printed in the first place, a screen had to be applied during plate-making. You can easily see the screening in a newspaper photo, and you can also see it in high quality images with a magnifying glass.

What do I do now if I have images with a screen pattern? Each image needs to be descreened.  We use gaussian blur in Photoshop, with the radius setting depending on the details of each individual screen. The objective is to just barely remove the visibility of the screen, so the process causes the least harm to the image.  This process has to be carried out on the images, not on a finished layout file.

Pantone Colors. The Pantone Matching System (pms) describes a huge range of colors for printing. Each color corresponds to a specific ink that can be used, and many of these colors can be closely approximated in 4 color process printing. (Note "many" and "approximated"; some pms colors can not even be approximated by 4 color process and many can not be exactly matched).

When you are picking a color you want, say for the background of a cover, the pms colors are convenient references, as long as you realize (1) what you see on your monitor is not exact, and (2) what can be printed in 4 color process does not exactly match the pms color.  But it's better than having to say "you know, a kind of pinkish red that's not too light or pale".

You can see Pantone colors on the web at http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/color_xref.aspx and you can buy an ap for your iphone or ipad for $1.99 (as of this writing) that gives you this information.  Generally you'll be interested in the guide for "coated" paper.  There's another ap that I like better, Color Expert. This ap will also show you the best 4 color process approximation of each pms color.

Bleeds, Safe Zone, Spreads, Spines.  For information about manufacturing tolerances and their effect visit here.

Image Issues, Screen Values for Good Printing.  Visit here.

CMYK vs RGB colors, and color conversion.  Visit here.

Color Match Proofs and Matching Colors.  Visit here.

For file submission standards, visit here.
 

Signature Book Printing   has been a Book Printer   of choice for the past 25 years. We have been on the web since 1997. From the beginning, we have focused not only on Book Printing   but also on smooth, easy customer service, excellent quality, and very competitive prices .  We have broadened our Book Printing offerings significantly from the beginning. Check out Signature Book Printing  as your Book Printer . As a Book Printer , we have earned the confidence and recommendations of a wide variety of customers nationwide to support their Publishing . Our capabilities include Hard Cover Book Printing , Full Color Book Printing , Case Bound Book Printing , Perfect Bound Book Printing , Smythe Sewn Binding , Soft Cover Book Printing , and Web Book Printing for longer runs.

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