Where to get a book printed - print on demand

Hi Everyone !

Just wondering if anyone can recommend a printing shop that would produce a book for me. I have the book in PDF format, its a souvenir of my round world trip.

I will be looking to get 50 copies and have it properly bound, soft cover etc , though no ISBN required.

One print on demand place is charging me 524 pounds Sterling ,I find this pretty expensive !!

Anyhow if someone has an idea on this then let me know.

THANKS in ADVANCE !!

@the Eagle, there's a copy-dog shop at Ostbahnhof (at street level) which as far as I know do this type of stuff...

Hi Eagle,
how many pages are in your book?

Book printing is a quite complex affair, it isn't just a case of having PDf format files, but you need the files to be arranged into a specific order as books are not printed in page order, but in sets of pages on much larger sheets of paper which are then folded and cut into book-page order.

This is also quite difficult to explain here in words, but one printed page will probably hold 6 or 8 book pages and each book page on the sheet will not be printed in the same orientation. as I mentioned, the large printed sheets will then be folded by specialist machines and edges will be cut to make individual book pages in sets of 6 or 8.

This all takes a lot of specialist software and machinery as well as a good few hours of page re-setting, so I am not surprised at the price you were quoted.

Thanks for the info..I will investigate further. !!

drop sarabryd a PM she is looking at doing a cook book and has done some digging into this

Having some experience in this area, since I've worked for a company which made High Volume Printing Systems, focusing on Printing on Demand at the time, I would like to add some info.

Malt-Teaser is right in saying that in order to produce a proper book, the costs are not only in printing the stuff, but the pre-production work of getting the pages right (orientation etc.)

If you are just thinking of getting your pages printed, and have them bound in some form, there is a lot you can do in the way you have already described, just by having these pages printed and bound together with glue or these lovely wire-o thingies. Design a nice cover, print the stuff, and done!

Now, if you are happy with a simple book with DIN A4 pages bound together in some form, here are my thoughts about costs.

Assuming that you have written about 200 pages, printed double-sided would lead to a book of 100 pages. 50 copies lead to 5000 pages. Charging you 0,08 euros per page (seems like a decent price to me, considering the volume you want to have printed (B/W)) would lead to 400 euros. I am out of this business for quite some time now, so prices could be better in the meantime, but still, if you take a euro for a (full colour) cover and the finishing, you're still way below the 524 pounds you mentioned.

Any decent-sized copy shop should be able to do this. I would look for them in the Universitat-area, I am sure a lot of students want to have their reports printed in the way I described.

Mr. V.
Maybe we used to work at the same company.

?

I'm doing a family history that I hope to have published later this year.

I'm looking at using lulu.com. They offer many sizes, color, soft cover etc, etc.

For a hundred page, color, perfect bound, 8.5" x 11" book, the price is US 19.53. They also ship internationally. I believe some of the books for Europe are actually printed in the UK.

You do need to use their format however.

There are lots of web based self-publishing companies.

@ the eagle, don't know if it helps now but I walked by a place called The Lab on Herrnstrasse the other day right across from the Havana Club, and among other things it said "Ausdruck vom Datei" on the door, no idea if that involves a whole book and what their prices are but I thought it'd be worth mentioning. If I remember I will try to take their number down for you next time.