BOOK PRINTING & SELF-PUBLISHING FOR LESS

If your scanner came “free with a rebate” with your computer, don’t use it. It won’t give you the quality you are looking for. It’s as simple as that. If you have a scanner that scans at 1200 x 1200 dpi or higher you will be OK doing your own scans.
* Scan your image at no less than 300 dpi and as close to the size it will be in the book.
* Save image as a TIFF
* Convert all images to CMYK
Now images are ready to be placed in your layout software.

Fact: Some items do not translate accurately to CMYK. Fluorescent colors, metallic and many Pantone colors for example.

In our experience PDF files created from Quark or InDesign are less problematic than those created with Pagemaker. If you are not familiar with any of these page layout programs, we strongly recommend that you talk to a book designer. A full color children’s book is a major investment of time and money and the amount you should spend using a professional designer is a relatively small portion of your total and most likely worth it. (Think of a home repair project- if you are fixing something that only your family will see, it’s OK if you do it. If, however, it’s something that the public will see, you may decide to hire a professional. It’s the same with books- if you are just giving the books to your friends and family, go ahead and design it, but if you want it to be in bookstores, or gift shops, think about a professional book designer.)

Using the “bold”, “italic” or “underlined” command from the toolbar can have unpredictable results. It is better to use italics or bold by selecting the real font, i.e. Times New Roman Bold, Times New Roman Italic, etc.

TrueType fonts are sometimes incompatible with Postscript printers/image setters and can have unpredictable results because they do not have a separate printer font- they are all inclusive.

Be sure to check the fonts used in any of the graphic files you are using or importing into your specific page layout program. You can quickly see whether you have used fonts correctly by checking “usage” in Quark. When you collect for output in Quark however, the program will not check to see if the font in the graphic is included. It’s a good idea to flatten images and/or outline fonts created in image software before importing into your layout. If you have problems printing on your desktop printer, chances are you will have problems with the commercial printer too.

Be careful when creating any type in color. Any color is printed with tiny dots of the four process colors and so type that is too thin or too small will not be crisp. It’s tempting to make children’s books colorful, but as a rule of thumb, let the artwork be the color, and keep body copy in black.

Be careful when creating rules. Be sure not to create rules that are too thin. Don’t use a printout from your laser as a guide to the thickness of the rule. The thickness of the rule your printer outputs depends on its resolution. Being lower resolution than an image setter, a hairline output from your printer will look a lot thicker than the same rule output on an image setter. Do not use any rule thinner than .5

Consider creating a new color (i.e.” rich black”) when doing large solid areas of black (100% black with 60% cyan) on your jacket/casewrap.

Give the printer a fighting chance: Don't create something that is difficult to print. It is very difficult for instance, to trap a color piece to a black outline if the outline is very fine. Any element created too close to the trim (remember the printer’s .25” margin requirement) may not look a uniform distance from the trim due to tolerances needed in printing and in trimming. If you have designed a cover that is solid yellow, with only the spine in a solid blue that is requiring the cover to be put on “exactly” each time, and binding equipment, while very good, is sometimes not that exact.

Be aware that color looks different under different lighting conditions (daylight, incandescent, fluorescent).

Your monitor is not an accurate representation of what the printed piece will look like.

In order for your file to be used to print your job please keep in mind:
* Distiller settings should be set to embed all fonts and not to subset fonts
* Files must be CMYK

Below are screen captures of how your Adobe PDF Settings should look. In Adobe Acrobat, under the Edit menu, choose Preferences, then General. Make sure “Convert to PDF” is highlighted on the left column, and “Microsoft Office” is highlighted in the right column if you are converting from Microsoft Word. Then, click “Edit Settings”. In the window that comes up, click “Edit…”. This brings up another window with six tabs for PDF settings.

The “General” tab should be open. Adjust your settings to match those here






Under “Font Source”, make sure the menu lists your font folder. Then select all fonts and add to the “Always Embed” window. This ensures that your fonts will all be embedded.



The “Advanced” and “PDF/X” tabs will not need to be adjusted. When finished, click OK and proceed to converting your file to PDF.

Print out a copy of your PDF file.
Remember that just because your file looks fine on your monitor or prints well on your desktop printer, it may not be the same for a printing press and that is why we pre-flight your file before sending it to the printing plant.