Book Printing

I had the idea of printing a book from my recent round the world trip that involved quite a lot of diving ( I know, sounds weird, but hell, this is a lifetime memory).

Does anyone have any experience/recommendation on doing this ?

Ideally I would like some kind of coffee table book. As the pictures are JPEG, 4MP and 5MP I think a A5 size would be more reasonable. But a A4 size with 1 or 2 pics per page and some caption text might also be interesting. What do you think ?

I emailed a printer in Hong Kong and got the following quote:

TPS: 8.5" x 11" Upright

Extent: Text 96 pages + 8 pages endpaper + PLC

Stock & Printing: Text printed 4cx4c ( all process color) on 157 gsm matt

art (equivalent to 100lb)

Endhsheets printed 1 color on 140 gsm woodfree

Cover printed 4cx0 on 140 gsm glossy art plus

one side matt lamination wrapped over 3mm grey board

Binding: Square back, H/T bands/ hard cover binding ( no dust jacket)

Materials supplied: all arts and high rez images supplied on Cd's by

client

Qty and prices: 300 cps at US$19.00/cp CIF Port of La Harve, France, port

only. Price do not include the Custom clearance in France & local delivery.

Of course that's 300 copies. $6000 is a damn lot of money which means I would have to market it to find 300 people to buy it so that I don't lose too much money on that (if I go this way).

I expect it would take me about a year to go through all pictures and create the book draft (as well as save the money )

Any comment on this insane idea will be extremely appreciated.

i found a reference to this site:

http://www.mypublisher.com/default.php

on another board, i think it was digitaldiver.info

i have not used, don't know what type of printing they use, but hey it's cheapish so could be worth at least one try.

if you do try i'd be interested to know your feedback

/paul

MyPublisher is what iPhoto uses to make your books. The print quality is mediocre -- more suited for creating a keepsake for a family member than for creating a coffee table book...

Would 96 pages mean 96 x 2 photos? (front and back)

If so, $19 seems pretty good if the print quality is good. Do they have any samples to show you?

On the other hand, you will literally have to GIVE these things away - I know your photos are excellent, but I wouldn't count on selling more than a few of them.

Cheers

James

It's unclear if there is any limit of color items for the printing. It looks like no, but indeed, I would prefer to make sure I understand the same. Ideally I think it is better to send a prototype version of the book to make sure we understand each other, I would not want to fork $6000 and get something I don't want.

And yes you're right of course. I would not expect to sell more than 50 items to friends, relatives, colleagues and such. As I'm not jumping all over the place to get my face known (no budget for marketing , 300 copies is a damn lot.

This is the first time I've heard of MyPublisher.com. Thanks for that link! I've been taking stuff down to Tijuana to have this kind of thing done (around $18 per book) but that was just the hard cover binding and did not include any printing. Of course I'm really gonna miss those margaritas.

300 copies is a very short press run for full color unless they are doing this using a fully digital process, like on an Indigo press. So the price you got sounds like a bargain to me.

Years ago I took on a project with the Coral Reef Research Foundation to help them publish the book "Tropical Pacific Invertebrates". It was completely self-published, 300 pages, full color, 8"x10.5", soft cover. I did all the prepress work from Kodak Photo CD and we made film proofs for about half of the book before it went to press. We printed 9000 copies.

Much different than what you're doing, but this might give you something for comparison. We got printing quotes from Taiwan and Hong Kong in the range of $100,000 to $120,000, In the US the quotes were coming in at $180,000. What we didn't like about printing overseas was that they were still using petroleum based inks (compared to water based) and the printing process was very environmentally unfriendly. Seemed like kind of a conflict to us.

We ended up getting them printed in the US for around $100,000 which came to $11 per book. We found a printer that was trying to pull themselves out of hard times and needed the work. They did the job at what they estimated to be slightly over their costs. If you choose to have it done in Hong Kong, contact me. I have several friends who are print brokers.

I'd love to hear what you decide to go with.

Bonnie