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

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Hi Warriors,

Am looking into using a service such as Createspace or Lulu to self-publish an electronic book in hardcopy.

I have had a bit of a look at the different paper, colour and binding options.

For colour, there seems to be the option of Colour or Black and White printing.

Colour printing is A LOT more expensive than black and white (which makes sense I guess).

What if you have a black and white book (text) that has a few photos scattered through it that you would like in colour? Do you have to pay the cost of prinitng a full colour book just so a few photos will come out in colour?

Is there not a middle ground?

Thanks for any help,

Spudnick
#main internet marketing discussion forum #black #book #colour #photos #pod #printondemand #question #white
  • 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
    • [1] reply
    • Thanks Jack. The pdf download option is a great idea.

      Problem is I already sell this as an electronic download, and worry that people might get upset if I start giving it away for free with the purchase of the hard copy version? Or do you think this would be 'ok'?

      Has anyone had experience with selling both a digital version and a hardcopy version of a book at the same time? (I may have to start a new thread to ask this question).
  • 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.
    • [1] reply
    • You may already know this, but just in case...

      Make sure the photos in your book (B&W or color) are high resolution. Something that looks great in an ebook can look like garbage in print. Photos should be at least 300dpi. For the screen, 72dpi can work fine and keep file sizes manageable.
      • [1] reply
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