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. 

MEET YOUR SCHEDULE NEEDS.  Our normal turn-around time for perfect bound books is 3 weeks, and for or 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 need the prices are usually 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 about 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 to develop a specific schedule with us.   And then, I suggest you allow some buffer time for things to go wrong (snow storms, floods, transportation delays, etc.)

 

SALES TAX.  We are located in Maryland.  If we deliver or ship your books outside Maryland, we do not need to collect sales taxes.  If we deliver them within Maryland, we are required to collect sales taxes unless you have a Maryland Sales and Use Tax License.  You can get more information about this license by visiting business.marylandtaxes.com/taxinfo/salesanduse/default.asp and you can apply for a license at in1.comp.state.md.us/comptrollercra/entrance.asp (click on Begin Registration).

 

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 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,  and if you order 200 books, each book costs twice (195%) as much as if you order 500. 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 you.  When we see such a circumstance, we will respond to your quote request with a note about the high cost.   

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.

Spam.  We have found a solution to spam that works great for us:  www.spamstopshere.com  It works this way: Your e-mail traffic is routed through the servers at spamstopshere, where it is tested against criteria that you can customize.  The most important filter eliminates e-mail with links to known IP addresses or phone numbers for spammers.  I don't use any of the formulas that might stop e-mail that I want to be sure to receive.  I don't know of any e-mail that I've lost by accident, and my spam-in rate is very low.

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're 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 not to 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.

book printing | book printer

Dyn 1 - ver 10.3.10.1  © 1997 - 2010  Signature Book Printing, Inc.           Updated 03/10/10 06:47