I'm looking for a company to print a book for me

ccosgrave

Hi

My dad wrote a historical piece about an ancestor of his who was a missionary in South Africa which was published in a local magazine last year. Over time, various additions has seen this article grow to become about 150 pages in length and now he's interested in having about 15 or 20 copies of it printed to give to family members. He asked me to have a look online for some companies that would print it for him and, after a brief look, the only Irish company I came across was a company called BetaPrint. To be honest, I have no idea what I'm looking for, really and I doubt he even knows the specifics of how he'd like it to be printed.

In summary, I'm simply asking if anyone knows of an Irish or European company that'll print a small amount of good-quality books for a decent price. If anyone could help me out, that'd be very much appreciated. Thanks!

fabbydabby

Have you considered just getting it bound?

You could print it out on a decent printer and get it nicely hard-bound in a bookbinders. Cost you maybe €20 a book and have it done in a week for you. They look very tasteful too. Lots of college theses/ dissertations etc are done in this way.

Have a look at this: http://www.kennys.ie/BookBindery/

brianthebard

I agree with the binding idea, the smallest print you are likely to get is probably 1000 copies of a book I imagine. Even if it where 100 its obviously much more than you want op. Bound copies are the way to go.

Antilles

I have got some stuff (not books) created on cafepress.com. I know one of the things they let you do is create a book and they will then sell you copies of it.

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/sell/books.aspx

cormie

Arghh, trying to remember the name of a company that one of my customers runs. If I remember right, they do exactly what you want. Will have a snoop tomorrow and see if I can remember!

Matt Holck

lulu

cormie

I got the name and number of the customer, so I'll pop him a text at a more sane time

randylonghorn

Boards photography forum used this online publishing company to do their first Photography Year Book recently (see my sig) and it was a great success. Certainly worth having a look at.

That said, if you're sure you only want 15-20 the advice about just printing it on a good printer and getting it bound is probably good.

But be warned, I've seen a few of these ventures and often someone else comes looking for a copy and then someone else and someone else ...

Still, if you make a list of everyone you can think of and then double the number you've probably got the absolute max., and you probably won't in fact hit that.

ccosgrave

Thanks for all the responses. I asked him a little more about it today, and he seemed to also realise that most companies don't do extremely short-run printing, certainly not at a reasonable price.

When I told him I'd have a look for him, I was thinking of Cafe Press, I just couldn't remember the name, unfortunately. Can anyone vouch for the quality of the books they produce? Blurb looks pretty good too, might be a tad expensive though. I'm not sure how much of an issue cost is for him, to be honest.

The binding is a good idea, it just looks rather expensive. I'll definitely mention it to him anyway, he might actually prefer that.

Many thanks for the responses, you've all been wonderfully helpful.

rockbeer

There's no cheap way to do it right, unfortunately. That's the nature of the publishing business. You have high setup costs right down the line, from typesetting to imposition to jacket design to plate creation and cleandown of the presses. The only cheap elements of the process are the consumables, so it costs virtually as much to print the first copy of a book or magazine as the thousandth.

Any press will do a run as short as one, as long as you pay the setup costs.
If you really want it printed the traditional way, the best way to get it done on the cheap is probably to do as much of it yourself as you can. If you can get all the artwork print-ready yourself it will save you a big chunk. Getting it printed abroad, eastern Europe for example, will be vastly cheaper then doing it here.

Otherwise it's definitely worth your while having a look at print-on-demand services like http://www.blurb.com/

They make it 'easy' to prepare the book yourself, and prices start at 24.95 per copy for a softcover 150 page book plus shipping. It might just be feasible.

barry737

Try www.eprint.ie