Getting an Estimate

Before you request an estimate for either the page layout or the printing and binding of your book, you will need to have the following information:

Finished Size: Check out the books at the bookstore or the library and decide what size would be most appropriate for your project. The most economical sizes for softcover books are 5.5 x 8.5 inches or 6 x 9 inches.

Approximate Page Count: Find a book that is a similar size and typeface to what you would like for your book and count the characters per page. Then count the characters in your manuscript (the word processing program will do this) and divide by the characters per page. Then add 7 pages for preliminaries (title, copyright, table of contents, etc.). Finally, estimate how many pages will be taken up with photographs or other graphics and add these to the total.

Is the text on disk? If the text for your book is not yet on a disk, you will have to pay for keyboarding or scanning.

Number of photographs or images, will they need to be scanned, and will any be printed in colour: Images can be supplied as digital files or your book designer can scan them but in either case you need to supply the approximate number of images to be used in the book.

Including colour images inside the book will be more costly than including greyscale images. Note that colour photos can be turned into greyscale images when they are scanned. If you are planning to scan your own images check with your book designer first in order to obtain the correct specifications.

Inside ink: Printing the insides in black ink only will be much less expensive than using colour inside. If you want to include colour images in the book, the most economical way is to group them together into 4- 8- or 16-page groupings so that only the pages with coloured images need to be printed on the more expensive colour printer.

Cover: Covers are usually full colour unless you want to have a black-and-white cover. A colour cover is usually more eye-catching and you will save a very small amount of money by having a black-and-white cover.

Binding: Softcover binding is called perfect binding. Otherwise, specify hardcover with or without a dust jacket. These days, unless you are printing a large quantity of books, hard cover books are usually bound by hand and so are very expensive.

Quantity to be printed: The more books you print the lower the cost per book, but try to estimate how many books you can sell. These days, by using digital printing, it is possible and not too expensive to print only a few books at a time. With traditional offset printing, the smallest paperback print run that is economical is usually 400 books.

Other printing options include Print on Demand where a book is printed only when an order comes in, a PDF version of the book that can be downloaded and printed out by the buyer, and various e-book formats that don’t require printing at all.

See Printing and Binding for more information on printing options.

CONTACT US at info@self-publish.ca for a free estimate for design and layout.