The Tricky Business of Book Printing

Book printing has it’s own jargon which can be intimidating if you’ve never worked with it before.

As technologies evolve and options increase, it’s getting more complicated to figure out exactly which printing method is the best one for your book. Having an expert on your side before you take this important step can make a world of difference.

Each book printer will respond to a request for a quote in its own way, and it’s not always easy to compare apples to apples. Because printing companies are often overwhelmed with requests for quotes, it’s not uncommon for them to forget to include an item that you requested. When this happens, a quote can look less expensive, and you may not find out until it’s too late that the final product is not what you expected.

Then, there’s the issue of perceived experience. A printer will immediately determine your level of experience (or inexperience) on the first call. If you don’t know what questions to ask, you might fall prey to unscrupulous printers who don’t bother to explain the quality differences between toner-based printing and ink-on-paper printing, or the difference between adhesive case binding versus Smyth-sewn binding on hardcover books. These are just two of many possible examples.

At 1106 Design, we’ve rescued several clients at the last moment, when we found they had chosen the wrong printing method for their book. Not too long ago, we layed out a book filled with black and white photos. The client decided to find a printer on his own, rather than ask for our help. We recommended ink-on-paper printing, but just before the book went to press, we discovered he had chosen a toner-based printer.

Now, toner-based printing (often referred to as POD printing) is fine in many cases, especially for books that contain only text and for publishers who want to order a small number of books to test the market. But toner-based printing is not the recommended way to reproduce photos.

Oh, I know others will disagree, and some have written books on how to tweak the grayscale settings in Photoshop to get good results from toner on paper, but their arguments miss the point…or more precisely, they miss the dot…the “halftone” dot.

If you look at any photo in a newspaper or book under a magnifying glass, you’ll see they don’t consist of continuous gray tones, but rather a pattern of black dots called a halftone. These dots trick our eye into seeing gray tones, even though only black ink or toner is used to create them. The more dots in a given area, the darker the tone. The more halftone dots per inch, the greater the range of gray tones that can be reproduced, and the smoother the photo will appear.

Because toner must physically adhere to the surface of the paper, the size of the halftone screen used is usually around 100 dots per inch. With ink-on-paper printing, the ink soaks into the paper. It doesn’t have to stick, and so it’s possible to use much denser halftone screens, starting with 150 dots per inch and going all the way up to several hundred dots per inch for high-end art books.

We explained these issues to our client, who was still determined to find his own printer. The next time around, he did find a good offset (ink-on-paper) book manufacturer, but unfortunately, he worked through a printing broker. Had he worked with us from the beginning, he likely would have paid a lower price, and received the correct advice the first time.

In any business, it’s important to “know what you don’t know.”  It’s just good business, not a sign of weakness, to call on experts for support in areas where your own experience is just beginning to build.

What do you want to know? What topics should we explore together? How can we help you along your publishing journey? Everyone here at 1106 Design wants to help. Post your comment here or email us at office@1106design.com

Michele DeFilippo, owner, 1106 Design