FAQs

Most books that you will find on the shelves in bookstores are perfect bound. This means a cover is printed and coated, the interior pages (book block) is printed and trimmed separately and then adhered using glue to form a spine. Spiral bound uses a plastic coil to hold the pages together and is more traditionally used for business documents, cookbooks, or classroom materials. If you are wanting a book that will lay completely flat on a table in front of your reader, spiral bound is the way to go.

The first important note is that the cover of your book should not be included in your page count, and that it will always be printed in color. Even if you have a truly black and white cover, we will print it on a color press to give your blacks the richness they deserve. Secondly, you want to count the actual printed sides in your book, NOT the number of pieces of paper in your book (i.e. if your PDF is 200 pages that means we’ll use 100 sheets of paper, but print on 200 sides – we want the 200 number). Finally, any page in your book that has color on it, even if it is only one letter or one tiny little dot, is counted as a color page. Grayscale images can be counted as black and white pages, but please be sure that your image was created in black and white – sometimes what looks black and white on screen will be recognized by a digital printing press as color. Please note that a blank page counts as a black and white page, and your final page count should always be an even number. Page count is one of the biggest things we’ll be looking at when you upload your files and our pre-press team analyzes your files against your quote.

Our minimum order quantity is 50 copies. This number allows us to defray labor costs enough to offer a competitive price on your prints. It's also important to note, our pricing is volume based. The more copies you order, the lower our cost to produce, and we pass those savings on to you. Those price breaks are at 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 750 and 1000 copies. 

Absolutely! The sizes available in our price calculator are reflective of industry standard sizes, and those which will be the most economical choices for your book. If your book doesn't quite match up we can send you a custom quote for the size you're requesting. Click Here to fill out custom book form. 

This is much a matter of aesthetics and personal preference, but there are some details we can give you to consider. Obviously gloss will be shinier and matte will be duller, but there are more properties beyond these with the different films. Gloss lamination will give a truer representation of the colors you selected for your book's cover, whereas matte lamination tends to mute the colors a bit and distort them just slightly. Our standard matte lamination is also a much more durable film than the gloss, and is very scratch resistant, whereas the gloss film is likely to show scratches and fingerprints much more easily over time. The gloss film will give a slicker feel to your book, and the matte film has a more velvety, soft feel to it. It's tough to go wrong with either option!

Click on the “Page Layout” tab in Word, then on “Size” and then on “More Sizes.” You will be presented with a dialogue box where you can enter in the dimensions of what you want your finished book size to be on the “Paper” tab. This will likely be recognized as a custom size by the software, but that’s okay. In the same window click on the “Margins” tab and enter in your custom margin sizes. For most books you will want .75” on the top and bottom, .625” on the inside and outside. 

ISBN stands for International Serial Book Number and is a unique number assigned to all books which will be made available for sale. It is very important for you to have if you plan to sell your book through bookstores or online, and it maximizes the discoverability of your book. Bowker is the official source for ISBNs in the United States and we recommend always purchasing and registering your number through their system. The barcode that will go on the back cover of your book is based on this number and we will be happy to create that barcode for you so it will be recognized by scanners at any retail outlet. 

The answer is always PDF. The PDF file format is the safest way to make sure your printed book will come out looking exactly like it does on your computer screen at home. It won’t matter what software you created your book in, or what fonts you used, a PDF will show up on our presses just like they do on your screen. You are able to upload a Word document, or other types of files through our uploader, but please note you will likely have an additional fee applied to your invoice, and you will want to be very careful in reviewing your proof file, as using different versions of Word on different computers can cause text and layouts to shift.

A bleed is the area at the edge of the page that will be trimmed off after printing (or for a book after it is bound). Though printing technology has come a long, long way it is still relatively impossible to print exactly to the edge of a sheet of paper. In our system at Writual Press we like to use an eighth of an inch bleed on any cover or page that has printing intended to go all the way to the edge of the finished book. For example, the front cover for a 5.5” x 8.5” book should actually be 5.625” x 8.75” as we will trim .125” off the outside edge as well as the top and bottom after binding