THE HOWS AND THE HOW LONG
Seeing a reader smell through the pages of a book with deep appreciation was inspiring for me as one of the indie publishers who showcased books at The Indie Publishers Collab PH (TIPCPH) booth of the 2022 Manila International Book Fair.
The connection with a book is not just intellectual. The act of absorbing a book’s aroma and feeling through the texture of its pages is also emotionally gratifying for a book lover, even if this experience takes only a few seconds.
Behind this scene, however, is a series of scenes that takes creative people months and even years to write, edit, illustrate and design the book. Then, once it is sent to a printing press, it takes days put together by workers of the print industry so that, once it’s out there, a book worm gets to appreciate the physicality of it and swim or fly in the imaginary world it offers.
Self-published authors and indie publishers are concerned with the physical quality of the book they publish as well as the quality of their writing, of course. And always, rushing through the printing process of book production spells disaster for the output — a waste of time, money and effort because coming out with a quality book requires care and attention, and concern for the workers sweating it out behind the scenes.
Some books may be produced digitally, but the current costs for publishing a book digitally are quite prohibitive these days. So we put this out — the process of producing a book using an OFFSET machine — for self-published authors and indie publishers, to help our clients plan a good and realistic timeline for each book project.
The infographic below shows the various process of producing a book and how much time should normally be given to the printing of a book.
So how long exactly do it take us to print a book from start to finish? Our production supervisor says, as per experience, it takes an average of ten (10) days. On a stretch, books may be rushed to finish over 8 days, but note that this costs, especially in terms of overtime energy on the part of workers who need to work beyond the regular 8 hours a day on your book project. The following work process timeframe is considered for SVPP’s offset-machine produced book:
In many of our experiences, clients provide little time for the book production timeline, sometimes causing problems in the quality of the final output. As in almost all cases, rush jobs mean a more expensive process, and quality issues arise. Allocating more than ten (10) days in the print production process ensures that we avoid any of these issues. ###sfp
Southern Voices Books 