Self Published Book Printing

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, we have made it really easy for you to self-publish a book with your name on it. Literally.

There are no illogical restrictions on quantity or size – it’s your book! 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 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 ones in the past!

We are proud of our beyond-the-call-of-duty levels of customer service. We care about your printing and take a keen interest in your project from the outset – whether you require a one-off proof or a long run of self published printing for national distribution.

Design tips

Have a look through the images below depicting a wide selection of recent books we are proud to have printed. 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.

Paper choices

We’re always happy to send out a range of our paper samples so you can make an informed decision on the kind of appearance that will work best with your book. All our samples are printed so you can see exactly how the different finishes adapt to ink. Just let us know the best address for postage and we’ll send a set out.

The sample pack will be with you in a couple of days but in the meantime have a look through our paper choice pages for ideas.

https://www.exwhyzed.co.uk/resources/paper-choices/
http://www.pinterest.com/exwhyzedprint/ex-why-zed-paper-selection/

We can also design your book too!

Our team are friendly, efficient and we charge competitive prices. Click to visit our Design for Print page and discover more.

Binding Tips

The easy way to choose which binding method best suits your publication is: wire stitching for up to 40 pages and perfect binding for 40 pages or more. We can bind books from A6 to A4 and larger.

Wire Stitching

Wire stitched booklets are bound by folding a sheet in half to form 4 pages. These are then stapled on the left hand edge. When designing your booklet, always bare in mind that the total number of pages can be divided by 4. Ie: 24, 28, 32 page etc.

For more advice check out our wire stitching set up guides.

Perfect Binding

The perfect bound method of binding will give your publication a square spine and professional looking finish.

For further advice follow our perfect binding set up guides.

Premium Options

To make your publication stand out from the crowd a range of bespoke and eye catching papers from GF Smith, Fedrigoni and Antalis.

File Set Up Tips

The technical side of setting your file up can be a jargon filled minefield so we aim to provide you with a jargon flak jacket, expert knowledge and advice before your job goes to press. We fully understand this might be the first time you have sent a job to print so we’ll check your file and come back to you with any tweaks before pressing the big red button of no return.

When you come to prepare the artwork please do take 5 minutes to read through our step-by-step file set up pages. The guides really simplify the process and will help answer 99% of the questions you may have.

Self publishing book set up guide
Perfect binding book set up guide
Wire stitching booklet set up guide

Pricing

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 please email us with your spec taking into account the following factors and we will get a quote back to you asap.

• Book Size
• Total Number of Pages
• Cover Stock (Matt Lamination is always advised on 170gsm+ covers to prevent cracking when folded).
• Text Pages Stock (Your inside Pages)
• Binding Method (see Binding Options to the left)
• Full Colour or Black & White printing
• Number of copies (if you’re undecided we’re happy to supply prices for two or three options)

Alternatively fill in our quote form which is pre-loaded with all the options we need to know to provide an accurate quote your new self-published book.

Money saving tips

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?

Crowd Funding your project

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.