Approving digital proofs for your book

Digital proofs are output and one entire set is sent to you for your approval.

Digital proofs and press proofs are available. So, what is the difference?

Digital Proofs from output devices.

Digital proofs are generated from a digital output device. This is toner on paper. One round of full color digital book proofs is included in your quote. If you need additional sets, or another round of proofs because of changes you make, there will be an additional charge. Most often, the color you will see in these digital book proofs will be close, but not exactly like the book will be when printed.

Book Printing is more Art than Science.

Press proofs from printing presses.

Press proofs or wet proofs may be required instead of digital proofs.

Full color press proofs are made when we set-up the press to print only one copy of the book. Actually, two copies of the entire book print, because if we have written approval to print, we need a copy for the pressman, (or women!) After that, the job is broken down and the press is set-up for another title to print.

Printing a single copy of a book is very costly. We only do press proofs for very high-end books where color must be as close to an exact match as possible.

In either case, you get to keep the full set of color proofs.

Return the approval form. You need to send us back the  form. We include a print-out with the proofs, but if you misplace it, here is another copy: Book Approval form.

We’ll advise you about color and your options.

Frankly, we have expertise working in color houses before desktop publishing even came about, and this is expertise is not typically known by on-demand publishers, or those printing only black and white books. In fact, most printing sales reps don’t understand color. We do. Our digital proofs are fairly accurate.

We feel we are a valuable resource for those who are not satisfied with ‘pleasing color’, but need ‘exact match’. We will also tell you when you are being unreasonable! Yes, really. We work for you; not any of our printing partners. We side with the client 99 percent of the time, but because high-quality color book printing is an art, minor imperfections or deviations are expected. And, I stress ‘minor’.

As a side note, on-demand books most often are output digitally, a page at a time. We print our books on commercial printing presses, and often print in 8-page, 12-page, or 16-page signatures. Most often, we do digital proofs.

We go to such lengths to print high-quality books. On-demand will just not do for coffee table books, art books, photography books, cookbooks, or any book of quality.

We only print the best books! Most often, our digital proofs are used to proof a book before going on press.

If you are designing your book, please use InDesign or for a novel, Microsoft Word.