Printing

Printing is the critical step of the book production process. We partnered with experienced offset and digital printing houses to provide our clients with top printing quality. Please fill in this form to receive an estimate.

What is digital printing?

Technology

The machines used in digital printing work on the same principle as a desktop printer. Multiple pages (up to 8, depending on the book size) are printed on sheets of paper which are subsequently cut to size and assembled together in the right order. The separately printed cover is glued together with the inside pages. Strong and flexible adhesive gives the book the necessary stiffness and enables it to be easily opened without breaking the book spine. For extra protection you can choose a bit more expensive stitched binding.

Advantages

Probably the biggest advantage of digital printing is the low setup cost. This means that the price of your order will (almost) linearly depend on the number of ordered books. Therefore, digital printing is a great (and cheap) solution if you need 100 or even 20 books.

Disadvantages

One disadvantage of digital printing is the slightly lower print quality as compared to the offset technology. This is mostly visible on large light-gray surfaces. These appear more grainy and rough, whereas offset printing produces smooth and uniform color. The quality of other elements like black text or color images is almost on par with offset, at least to an untrained eye.

What is offset printing?

Technology

Offset printing is a printing technique where the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket, and then rolled onto a sheet of paper. It’s called offset because the ink is not transferred directly onto the paper. For a more extensive description of the offset method you can visit this site.

Advantages

First, offset printing means quality. Offset is still unbeatable when it comes to color and detail reproduction (although some of the last generation digital presses come very close). We print our books on top-of-the-line, modern printing presses that guarantee the highest quality. Our bindery is equipped in full range of machines to deliver precisely assembled books fast. Second, the unit costs (price per book) of offset printing decrease rapidly with increasing number of produced books. This is because the initial setup costs (fabrication of the plates, machine setup etc.) are relatively high, but the production costs are very low. So offset printing is recommended to high-volume orders (> 300 books). Third, books containing a lot of full-color pages are usually cheaper to produce using the offset method. But again this strongly depends on the book number.

Disadvantages

Probably the biggest disadvantage of offset printing is the high initial cost. This makes printing of, for instance, 50 books almost as expensive as 200 books. Second disadvantage is that all produced books are identical, so if you wish some of your books to have a slightly different content, you have to pay almost double (because new offset plates have to be produced).

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