Printing Companies
  1. About Printing Industry
  2. Printing Services
  3. Print Buyers
  4. Printing Resources
  5. Classified Ads
  6. Printing Glossary
  7. Printing Newsletters
  8. Contact Print Industry
Who We Are

Printing Industry Exchange (printindustry.com) is pleased to have Steven Waxman writing and managing the Printing Industry Blog. As a printing consultant, Steven teaches corporations how to save money buying printing, brokers printing services, and teaches prepress techniques. Steven has been in the printing industry for thirty-three years working as a writer, editor, print buyer, photographer, graphic designer, art director, and production manager.

Need a Printing Quote from multiple printers? click here.

Are you a Printing Company interested in joining our service? click here.

The Printing Industry Exchange (PIE) staff are experienced individuals within the printing industry that are dedicated to helping and maintaining a high standard of ethics in this business. We are a privately owned company with principals in the business having a combined total of 103 years experience in the printing industry.

PIE's staff is here to help the print buyer find competitive pricing and the right printer to do their job, and also to help the printing companies increase their revenues by providing numerous leads they can quote on and potentially get new business.

This is a free service to the print buyer. All you do is find the appropriate bid request form, fill it out, and it is emailed out to the printing companies who do that type of printing work. The printers best qualified to do your job, will email you pricing and if you decide to print your job through one of these print vendors, you contact them directly.

We have kept the PIE system simple -- we get a monthly fee from the commercial printers who belong to our service. Once the bid request is submitted, all interactions are between the print buyers and the printers.

We are here to help, you can contact us by email at info@printindustry.com.

Book Printing: Self-Publishing in Print Is Still Alive

I read a PrintWeek article today that bears out my experience as a commercial printing broker selling book printing (and other custom printing services). The article is called “From Blog to Book: the Art of Self-Publishing,” and it was written by Jenny Roper (http://www.printweek.com/news/1136582/from-blog-book-art-self-publishing/).

Over the last several months I have helped five new clients who are publishing print books of poetry, fiction, and photography. I had thought these clients would prefer the lower prices of online vendors such as Lulu and CreateSapce, but I was mistaken.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe online self-publishing venues serve an important purpose. In fact, I love the idea that people of modest means who write can distribute their work in this way. We don’t all have to be John Grisham to get our work out there.

That said, I had expected most people to choose the lower prices and limited hand-holding of the online self-publishers.

But in the case of my five new clients, I am seeing a desire in certain clients for the personalized service of a printer, or custom printing broker. An organization with only an online presence may give you a good deal, but they will not send a representative to your house to show you paper samples, discuss various binding options, or show you how spot gloss varnish on a book cover can contrast with spot dull varnish in subtle and artistic ways.

The Print Week Magazine Article

Back to the article. Jenny Roper notes that “we are now in an age of feverish self-publishing.” People want to make their voices heard.

The article goes on to say that some book subjects lend themselves more than others to physical print books. She includes poetry, novels, and photo books, and says that computer books lend themselves more to the ebook format. (I would think that technology and business tomes don’t require a tactile—or emotional—component but do require the immediate upgradeability of content for which ebooks are ideal.)

Reasons to Self-Publish a Print Book

Jenny Roper notes that people self-publish for a number of reasons:

  1. Some people start with ebooks to gauge the interest in a piece of fiction or nonfiction (it’s cheaper than print) and then roll out a print version if the interest is high (because people still seem to want print books, interestingly enough).
  2. Others write blog posts and eventually either collect them into a print book format or someone else collects their posts and publishes them in print.
  3. Still others want control over the distribution, pricing, proceeds, and rights for their book. Roper notes that this “inevitably involves a print element as well as an online one.”
  4. As noted above, self-published books focusing on art, photography, and cooking lend themselves to print books in large part due to the higher resolution of print images when compared to 72dpi on-screen images.
  5. Self-publishers often choose print books for volumes of local or personal history. According to the article, books of memoirs seem to be printed first rather than published first as ebooks. This is counter-intuitive, since ebooks cost less to produce, store, and distribute (and self-publishers are bearing the cost themselves). However, for a product that focuses on “a culmination of a lifetime’s expectation and many years’ work,” people often choose to produce a print book first. To them, there’s something about having a permanent item they can hold in their hands, even if the book will be read by only their friends and family members. It’s more “personal,” as Roper notes.

Back to My Print Brokering, and to Print Sales in General

My experience bears this out in spades. I have five clients who have paid slightly (or a lot) more to publish their life’s work in print, and they have been a delight to work with. Furthermore, most of them know each other.

Printers should keep alert. A little hand-holding in the arena of self-publishing goes a long way. In fact, printers who can offer such ancillary services as editing, design, marketing, storage, distribution, and procurement of ISBN numbers, in addition to custom printing, will have an edge in this niche market.

What Can We Learn from This?

Print books are not dead. At worst, they are becoming more specialized. Certain people still prefer print on paper for certain items. Most of their reasons focus on its personal, tangible, tactile, and unchangeable nature.

Comments are closed.

Archives

Recent Posts

Categories


Read and subscribe to our newsletter!


Printing Services include all print categories listed below & more!
4-color Catalogs
Affordable Brochures: Pricing
Affordable Flyers
Book Binding Types and Printing Services
Book Print Services
Booklet, Catalog, Window Envelopes
Brochures: Promotional, Marketing
Bumper Stickers
Business Cards
Business Stationery and Envelopes
Catalog Printers
Cheap Brochures
Color, B&W Catalogs
Color Brochure Printers
Color Postcards
Commercial Book Printers
Commercial Catalog Printing
Custom Decals
Custom Labels
Custom Posters Printers
Custom Stickers, Product Labels
Custom T-shirt Prices
Decals, Labels, Stickers: Vinyl, Clear
Digital, On-Demand Books Prices
Digital Poster, Large Format Prints
Discount Brochures, Flyers Vendors
Envelope Printers, Manufacturers
Label, Sticker, Decal Companies
Letterhead, Stationary, Stationery
Magazine Publication Quotes
Monthly Newsletter Pricing
Newsletter, Flyer Printers
Newspaper Printing, Tabloid Printers
Online Book Price Quotes
Paperback Book Printers
Postcard Printers
Post Card Mailing Service
Postcards, Rackcards
Postcard Printers & Mailing Services
Post Card Direct Mail Service
Poster, Large Format Projects
Posters (Maps, Events, Conferences)
Print Custom TShirts
Screen Print Cards, Shirts
Shortrun Book Printers
Tabloid, Newsprint, Newspapers
T-shirts: Custom Printed Shirts
Tshirt Screen Printers
Printing Industry Exchange, LLC, P.O. Box 394, Bluffton, SC 29910
©2019 Printing Industry Exchange, LLC - All rights reserved