[Blowback for $1K] Printer roundup
Here are the quotes I’ve gotten from various printers, and how I feel about said printers. Unless otherwise specified, the quote is for a 50-page, perfect-bound, full color book, at a quantity of 100 books. My plan is to cover half the cost of the print run with money from the budget, and the other half of the print run with pre-orders. I don’t want to rely on pre-orders for the entire cost of the print run like I did last time: it works when you have a B&W book and can cover the cost of 4 books with a single pre-order. In order to make that happen with this book, I’d have to charge rather high prices, and I don’t want to charge more than I’m comfortable with. The final price point will probably cover printing somewhere between two and three copies of the book.
In descending order of cost:
Blurb.com: has the trim size I want, specializes in coffee-table books. Very high-end paper, a really luxurious feel. Also operates like Lulu; doesn’t give bulk discounts though. Price: a whopping $19.95 a book, and that’s if I trim it by 10 pages. I don’t see this as a viable option.
Collective Copies, Florence, MA: A local company. We use them for Mist-Robed Gate, and Vincent uses their Amherst branch for Dogs in the Vineyard. Our guy there, Steve, is an artiste. He does amazing work with no hassle and a quick turnaround time. No shipping, either! You don’t pay anything until you’ve got the whole order in your hands. Free proof. And he is always really excited about working with us, because our projects are a lot more graphically interesting than the brochures and stuff that Collective usually prints, and it gives him a chance to show off. I’d work with Steve every time I had a project, if I could. They don’t do 8×10″ landscape, however: their biggest landscape trim is 9×7″. I’d be willing to go smaller like that for Steve, but unfortunately, even with a print run of 100, he quoted us an astonishing $16.50 a book. In this case: even more expensive than Lulu. (Who is surprisingly competitive when it comes to bulk pricing on full-color, but we’ll get to that.)
Fidlar Doubleday: I’ve never used them personally, but heard very good things. They never responded to my website query, but a friend set me up with his representative, who was kind and informative and prompt. They didn’t have a problem with the 8×10″ trim size, which was refreshing. Unfortunately, when you divide the setup cost and distribute it through the print run, their estimate is $12.28 a book. However, the representative did email me a few days after the quote and said that if I was getting lower quotes elsewhere, to email him and let him know. Which I plan to do.
Lulu.com: Lulu has a reputation for being overpriced and, in some circles, a fiscally irresponsible choice, only useful if you’re too concerned about whether your game will sell at all to put up any money up front. (Also useful for international publishers who don’t want to hammer US citizens with seriously high shipping costs.) I printed a full-color zine through Lulu a few years back, and the quality was quite high: they use excellent paper, the binding is solid, and the colors seemed surprisingly true, considering the bad things I’d heard about Lulu’s color management issues. They don’t offer the trim size I want, though: their landscape is 9″x7″. However, for a print run of 100 books, their quote is a surprisingly competitive $11.65 a book. Still on the high side, but not THE highest, as I’d expected. Note the nearly $400 difference in total cost between Lulu and the local heroes. It makes me really sad. Even the cost for a print run of one single book from Lulu is only $14.50.
Publisher’s Graphics: Again, I’ve never used them, but people seem to either love or hate these guys. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard complaints about their quality, but I’ve certainly heard it about their customer service and wait times. Their estimate is a tempting $9.50 a book with no setup fee. I’d only feel comfortable using them if I got the manuscript done far ahead of schedule, though.
360digitalbooks.com: I was pointed to these guys by a friend who’d spoken to, but never used them. I don’t know anyone who has, and it makes me nervous, as does the extreme low-ball of $6.76 a book including setup fees. I’d really, really, really want to see a copy of something they printed before I committed my money to them– I’ve learned in the past that you get what you pay for.
Those are the printers I’ve talked to, and their current standings. Crazily enough, I am leaning towards Lulu, but still considering Fidlar. Any suggestions? Places I’ve missed? Ways to cut cost? People who might want to cut me a deal?
I’d also recommend looking at Lightning Source. I don’t know what their color offerings are like, but we used them for Penny and have been very happy.
Full color interior books via POD are a bit of a nightmare in terms of pricing. I see “$9.50 a book” and think “So that’ll have to have a cover price of $38, right?” so I get twitchy when thinking about these things. The math gets more flexible if you commit to selling only direct to consumers rather than also into retail, so my brain also starts thinking about doing a black & white “wide market” edition alongside a full color “premium” edition.
Anyway, Lightning Source. I like ‘em, but I’m not clear if you still need to have an ISBN in order to publish through them. IPR may have individual ISBNs it can sell to you, but you’d have to talk to Brennan about that. LS also has twitchy results when a book has bleeds, so I tend to go away from LS if I’m doing any kind of bleed in my layout.
Trim size of 9″ wide x 7″ tall is a sticky bit as well with many a printer. LS is no different here, offering full color in a limited set of trim sizes: 5.5×8.5, 8.5×8.5, 7×10, 8×10, 8.5×11. The first is “small paperback”, the second is “medium”, and the last three rate as “large”. Since 9×7 seems to slot into the large category, even though they don’t offer it, I’ll calculate out a large full color paperback based on your criteria of 50 pages, 100 copies. At 100 copies, you hit their second tier of bulk pricing, 10% off.
Setup: $37.50 for interior. $37.50 for cover. Total: $75.
Perfect bind, 50 pp: $1.50 per unit + $0.10 per page = $6.50 per unit.
$6.50 x 100 copies = $650. Knock 10% off. $585.
This doesn’t include shipping, of course, but for the moment I’m assuming the other guys aren’t giving you that either.
$585 + $75 setup = $660
You’ll probably want to get a proof after you’ve provided all this, which is usually handled with a $30 flat fee, so $690.
If you’re willing to adopt a format that fits the limited set of trim options, with no bleeds, and go through the account sign-up process with LS, and add in any costs of getting an ISBN to go with your book, I think you’d still be looking at a pricepoint here that would beat your PG quote, potentially coming in at under $8/book even when shipping gets into the mix.
I won’t say their online tools are as easy or as good as Lulu’s. They aren’t. But when LS is the right fit for the job (or when I’m willing to make my job a right fit for LS), their pricing tends to be very competitive, and they are very, very fast at printing up the books.
I did the layout for a book that was printed at 360digitalbooks. Unfortunately, the book was laid out to be printed in color, but the publisher decided to print it in black&white after I had delivered final files, and the results were not pretty. All of the nice color photos came out dark and muddy.
On the other hand, the color cover came out pretty nice, with snappy colors, and they even managed to keep the red leather texture looking realistic.
Also, have you checked out Guild of Blades for their pod pricing? http://createpodbooks.com
Not sure if they do 8×10 landscape, but you could contact them and ask.
Ha, whups! Misread, thought you were talking 9×7, but you were talking 10×8. My Lightning Source breakdown still stands, tho, since that’s a really rare trim size you’re going for.
Part of the reason comes from understanding what a lot of POD hardware prints on: those big 11″ tall, 17″ wide tabloids. So 8×10 fits on there just fine, since two pages side by side are 16″ wide, 10″ tall. 10×8 as your format means you’re going for a 20″ wide side-by-side thing, which requires paper sizes in excess of that 17″ wide limitation. With this as a factor (assuming I’m at all right — see below) you’ll find that most places limit their printings to 8-8.5″ wide per page.
This knowledge is something I picked up quite some time ago, so it may be outdated — after all, Lulu’s 9″x7″ format is 1″ wider than I’m anticipating, so I may have the dimensions wrong anyway.
Ed: Here’s the thing about Guild of Blades. I’ve used and liked them in the past (although their cover printing does rub off, unfortunately, and I ended up with a few smudged covers), but for this project I chose not to consider them. Here’s why.
They did such an awesome job for me, customer-service-wise, that I recommended them to a friend who had a perfect-bound, full-color landscape book. His print run showed up, mangled, halfway through GenCon. They did a great job with IC, minus the smudges, but considering how close in spec my game is to the game I saw completely messed up? I just can’t afford to risk it.
Awesome to know about 360, though. I’d probably still order a proof, just to be sure.
Fred: Yeah, I know, I’m crazy for doing a full-color book. I might do a black and white book at some point, but it’d require completely redoing the layout. I’ve envisioned Blowback as a full-color book since the moment it lept into my mind, and since it’s a labor of love, that’s the version I want to concentrate on for the time being. The profit margin isn’t going to be as strong as it is for MRG, but I’ll make sure it’s one I’m comfortable with.
I’ll talk to my Lightning Source rep about this, thanks Paul/Fred. I went through the rigamarole of signing up with them just so that I could get my eyes on their price list a while back.
Elizabeth, can you talk a little about the choice to pre-print in the first place? I haven’t heard a compelling reason for it so far (at least not backed up by numbers) and given Lulu’s low-ball figure it seems like you could do pure POD (as in, literally, print on demand — the customer’s demand) through them and get your cover price down by not sharing with any other middle-men.
Brad: Sure, I’d be happy to.
It’s Complicated was my first game. I printed through Guild of Blades. It cost me $2.10 a book for a 40-page partial-color saddle-stitched book. I sold copies for $16. My profit was $13.90 a book. Put another way: one preorder paid for a little over seven copies of my book. I paid for my entire print run with pre-orders.
I looked into doing that book on Lulu. There’s no such thing as partial color to Lulu: everything’s either printed color or printed black and white. It would have cost $11.50 a book, reducing my profit to $4.50 a book. There was no reason on God’s green earth to flush that $9.40 (nearly $1000 total for the whole print run) down the drain.
Lulu is surprisingly competitive right now, but it’s still not the most competitive option. I’m okay with setting half my budget aside for a print run, because that will earn me more profit in the long run. As I mentioned, the individual cost per book (without printing ANY in advance, as you say– that means no bulk discount) is $14.50 a book. In comparison to the $6.75 of my lowest quote, or even the $11.28 of the most highly-recommended printing house, that’s still leaving hundreds of dollars of profit on the table. I know that I am in a place where I can sell 100 books in a reasonable amount of time. I’ve got a marketing plan and I’m willing to play the crap out of my game until people see how awesome it is. I brought It’s Complicated to GenCon almost by accident, and sold out of my print run there.
I guess it is just a numbers thing. 100 isn’t a lot of books, but 300-500 is a lot of bucks.