Print-On-Demand (POD) question - colour photos in a black and white book?

Gentle *bump*

Contact Vervante - On Demand Publishing they are a high touch company who might be able to assist you or at least point you in the right direction.

If you have color in the book, you will pay color printing prices.

There is another option. Put all of the color photos in one section. Books printed on offset presses are printed in signatures. That means that many pages (e.g., 16 or 32) are printed on one large sheet of paper. The paper is then folded and trimmed and it creates a signature. Several signatures are bound together to create one book.

If all of the photos are printed in one signature, the printer may be able to "tip" the color signature into the middle of a black and white book. Although this is usually cheaper than printing the entire book in full color, it is not cheap.

You probably will not find a POD printer to do this, but there may be a digital short run printer that can. One I have used (but not for a color project) is 360DigitalBooks. You might start with them. (With digital short run printers, they print in small quantities, say 50 or 100, but not one at a time like POD.)

Spudnick,
to my knowledge a POD is either color or black and white. A traditional printer can handle this request - but you'll need to order books in quantity. And color is just more expensive due to the set up.

If you still want to go the POD route (Createspace/Lulu/iUniverse etc) then have you thought of offering a pdf download as a bonus (get their names on a list!) with the full color images in that rather than the book - and just use nice gray scale images in the printed book? or a screen show of the images etc?

Cathy has a great idea as well - thanks! - but you will have to go offline.

good luck,
--Jack

Thanks for all the help Warriors. I amy be able to live with black and white photos, and may be the easiest / cheapest route to go.

Thanks again.