Books are great!
You can write them, collect them, sniff them, stroke them, discuss them, ban them, put them on your bedside table or lend them to your friends.
Have you ever tried to sniff a pdf?!
There are no illogical restrictions on quantity or size – it’s your book printing, your decision! You didn’t work through the night fine tuning and tweaking it to then send it off to the printer and for him to tell you “Nope, you can’t do that, we’re going to print it at A4 onto a really shiny glossy stock that makes all of your words illegible”.
Thankfully, we’re not that printer. Ex Why Zed have a forward thinking attitude to print and we will always try to find a print solution to even the most bespoke request – we’ve printed some challenging publications in the past!
We have compiled a feature-length, definitive video to methodically guide you through the entire process. Labelled a zine printing guide but all of the decisions on sizing, paper choices and finish apply to self-published books too. This super informative video highlights how publications have proved the perfect solution for artists, small presses and independent publishers to promote their creative work. We showcase illustrated, photography, poetry, skate and music zines and dissect the winning combinations.
Have a look through the images below depicting a wide selection of recent books we are proud to have printed.
Books. You’ll have seen them by now? They have them all over the place these days! At Ex Why Zed, the generous souls we are, have made it really easy for you to self-publish a book with your name on it. Literally.
For layout ideas our Pinterest boards are packed with further designs to inspire and consider. If that wasn’t enough, our Portfolio digs deeper into a selection of our favourite and most unique self published books. So have a browse and then choose a spec that suits your project.
There are almost infinite possibilities on size, finishing and papers so we offer expert knowledge and advice before your job goes to press, a competitive zine print quote to stretch your budget and a high quality standard of printing delivered nationally throughout the UK and worldwide too.
We charge fair prices and want to save you money so here are some tips to help reduce your costs:
• Choosing one of our ‘house’ stocks which come in an uncoated, silk or gloss finish will keep your price down. Each each come in a wide selection of weights from 120gsm (which is great for your text pages) through to 300gsm and even 350gsm which are perfect for your covers. Branded papers (GF Smith, Antalis and Fedrigoni) do look great but cost more so save these for the bigger budget jobs.
• The three factors that affect the cost most significantly are size, number of pages and quantity. The bigger the book, the more pages or the more copies you need – the higher the cost! Simple and obvious. Sometimes less is more – is there any scope for further editing your project to help reduce your price?
An increasing number of our clients have successfully used Kickstarter, indiegogo or Crowdfunder to raise funds, increase awareness and interest in their books. Art books seem to do particularly well on Kickstarter. How great would it be to have your book fully funded before you go to print?! By offering a range of incentives to backers it can provide invaluable funds which could ultimately mean you are able to print more books than originally planned.
Also do have a look at securing financial help through The Arts Council. They also regularly support many of our clients.
We have compiled a super helpful blog post about these ideas and many more.
Have a look through the images below depicting a wide selection of recent books we are proud to have printed.
The print spec of Confluence coffee table book:
260x210mm Books
Unprinted Napura Canvas (NAC8052) Cover
White foiling to outer cover
Wrapped over greyboard case
2x4pp Unprinted Endpapers
onto 135gsm GF Smith Colorplan Ebony
192pp Text onto 160gsm Uncoated 100% Recycled
Four colour print throughout
Trimmed, collated and case bound
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1031632900/confluence-book-celtic-and-arabian-visions-and-sto
This is an exceptional 192 page hard back book that you really need to read and enjoy.
We have done our best to give you a huge wealth of information on this page and in our guides but if here are some frequently asked questions to help you get your work into print.
The bottom line is we want to get your book into print so we charge very competitive rates that enable you to sell at a price your readership is willing to pay.
So how much will it cost? Well, printing offers a huge number of variables and as a result it would be impossible to price up every eventuality online, so jump, on our intuitive Project Builder or email us with your spec taking into account the following factors and we will get a quote back to you asap:
Book size, number of pages, cover paper, inside page paper, full colour or b&w and the number of copioes you would like to print.
This does depend on the print spec and how many copies you are print but the general rule is we will aim to deliver the finished books in 4/5 working days after receiving your print-ready artwork. If you are working to a crucial hand in deadline then we strongly advise leaving more time in case there are any artwork issues with your files or courier problems with delivery. For larger litho printed job, best to allow 8-10 working days.
Additionally there can be a day or two of amends required to the artwork before it’s print ready which we’re more than happy to help with but you’ll need to factor that in to timings.
Remember, we’ll need a hi res pdf file with 3mm bleed and crop marks on each edge to go ahead please. Sending it over correctly first time means we can go straight to print. Do have a last check through our file set up guides to make sure all the boxes are ticked. <link>
‘A’ sizes are great and fit neatly into ‘C’ size envelopes but why not mix it up and rebel against convention by choosing a bespoke and custom size for your zine.
You absolutely can. All of these options really an add eye-catching extra dimension to a book. Jump over to premium extras page for more ideas and pictures.
No, sorry. 32 pages is the minimum thickness we can bind otherwsie there is simply not enough surface area to glue. If you have less than 32 pages then we will staple bind your work.
The max portrait size will be 420mm high x 297mm wide. The maximum square size is 297x297mm. The maximum landscape size is 210mm high x 297mm wide.
Matt Lamination works best with silk and uncoated covers. We would suggest using gloss lamination if you are aiming for a super shiny, high impact cover. Soft-touch has a velvet, illustrious feel but does attract finger marks REALLY quickly so best not eat your lunch before reading!
We don’t but you can go direct to https://www.nielsenisbnstore.com/ who are the UK distributor. They have a very simple system for buying the ISBN and generating a barcode which you then add to your back cover artwork.
Yes, ‘text’ pages is our common term for the inside pages of your publication. They can be filled with illustrations, photography, full colour artwork…or just text if it’s a poetry book.
For the purposes of our quoting, we call a page one side of content. So, a sheet of paper has two pages – a front and a back. If you ask for a quote for 40 inside pages, that will be 40 pages of content, 40 pages in your artwork file / pdf and in the book 20 leaves printed on both sides.
