Designers with printed books: who do you print with and how's their service?
Anna Kreider:
Hi, folks.
So for my initial print run of Thou Art But A Warrior, I wound up going with Publisher's Graphics. I had very vague anecdotal reports about their service ("I heard Joshua printed Shock: with them", "I heard Space Rat was Publisher's Graphics and it looks great"), but price wound up being my determining factor since I wound up going for interior color illustrations.
My initial experience with them was honestly not very good. The biggest issue among several was that there were communication problems which, when combined with lack of experience on my part, led to some minor but very noticeable layout snafus with the first print run.
Now when I contacted them to do the second print run, I expressed my reservations and told them about the problems I had the first time around. It turns out that the project manager I had worked with was no longer there, yadda yadda. They'd take good care of me. Blah blah blah. Against my better judgement, I went with them again. And am now seriously regretting it. It took them two weeks to complete and ship my proof, which I still don't have (though that's UPS's fault, not theirs) - despite their initial promise of NO MORE than 3 to 5 business days. And once I do get the proof and approve it, I'm still looking at another MONTH before my books are done.
I started the reprint process in October, and all of this means I won't have copies to sell during the holiday season. Which sucks.
SO. What I'm looking for is what printer are you using? And what has your experience with their service been? Price is an important factor, but I'm not going to continue to let PG abuse me just because they're the cheapest for what I need to do.
Thanks,
~Anna
Eero Tuovinen:
A stupid question, but where do you want your printer to be situated? USA? Canada? Do you need a printer in Europe? We have some bitching printers here in Finland.
I might carefully recommend Guild of Blades. "Carefully" because I haven't had them print books, only cards, so I don't directly know about their book printing quality and pricing. But I liked their responsiveness, ability at proofing the work and understanding of the issues, which are anyway some of the most important points when choosing the printer. A good choice for the uncertain or inexperienced publisher, I'd say; if I had to choose an American POD printer where I could expect the printer to actually look at what they're doing and suggest corrections for obvious mistakes, this'd be the one. They come to POD from "below" (as opposed to large printers that down-scale their operations to achieve POD functionality), so expect a slight veneer of home office style in their choice of tools, materials and procedures. Easily enough for the average rpg, though, so I wouldn't worry.
We also had a pretty good experience with McNaughton & Gunn when we printed the Solar System. Their prices are probably not competitive with smaller runs (we did a thousand copies), but they were above average in responsiveness, had no technical issues at all and did a high-quality work within the parameters. They also do work for several rpg houses at reasonable prices. I'd say that they're a good choice for any but the first-time print service user.
Also: I agree with you 100% about the awfulness of working with the average printer. I can't understand how it's possible for there to exist a whole field of business where not responding to customer communications and messing up their projects with abandon is the standard practice. In this environment simply answering your email within a couple of business days and not making promises you can't keep is such a huge exception that I'm going to happily pay what, something like 20-30% extra over the competitor just for these basic qualities. Truly a wretched state of affairs. Apparently anybody could take this market simply by focusing on quality service with follow-through and a focus on creating long-term customer relationships.
guildofblades:
Hi Anna,
We might be able to help. We are able to do POD for books with mixed B&W and interior color pages and bill each page accordingly. That is _IF_ we can work with you to get the color profiles on your PDF set up properly for that.
Give us a call at 248-430-4980 on Monday sometime. We could potentially have your book's files all set up and ready for print by the end of this week, if we get going quickly enough. And if we get you signed up to our retailer program, the books themselves could be available for purchase both in our B&M store and on our e-commerce store by this weekend. Now, depending on the volume of books you want, if might take a bit after that before we can complete the whole run and then a bit after that to get it to you due to shipping times (especially this time of year). But individual copies of the book could be shipping to fill orders from our stores by a week from this Monday, if not before.
Couldn't really tell you about price. Other than if you are working with a standard book we are basically $2 ($1 for the color cover, $1 for the perfect binding) plus $.022 per B&W page and $.10 per color page. Minimum run of 10 books for an order shipped to you (we do print as needed to fill retail orders through). How much that would add up to for your book depends on page count and how much is B&W vs Color, and assuming we can get your color profiles set up so the printer can recognize the difference.
Thanks,
Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.guildofblades.com/retailgroup.php
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com
Anna Kreider:
Eero: Good question! I should have specified.
In an ideal world, I want a printer in Canada. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a printer in Canada that has competitive rates – everywhere I’ve looked doesn’t use POD technology. I’ve been quoted as high as $7 per copy by the Canadian printers I’ve gotten quotes from!
So, realistically, I’m looking for a printer in the States.
Ryan: I’ve got some vacation stuff to wrap up today, but I might do that. I’m already committed to doing the print run with PG, so it’ll depend on if there’s money in the budget for a second small run to tide me over.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Anna,
One of the most important strategies for an independent publisher with print products is to stay flexible regarding printers. Today's excellent first-choice company is tomorrow's waste of money, time, and space. I've been using Publishers Graphics for a while now but will (a) confront them about your situation and (b) review what happens on the next job very carefully.
Check out the thread Shopping around for a POD printer ... for some useful links, including one all-the-printers page with contact information.
More recent threads include:
Can Anyone Wholeheartedly Recommend A POD Printer For me?
Printer Roundup, or Help Me The Forge, You're My Only Hope
Again, the specific recommendations aren't the point, because they're dated (e.g. Publishers Graphics comes off very well in them).
Best, Ron
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