Museum and historical association papers and documents as high quality books.

The old journals, meeting records, pictures, maps and "out-of-print" books that are a museum's or historical association's treasured assets can be made into high quality, professionally printed books for purchase by visitors, members and other important constituencies.    Book printers such as Poughkeepsie, NY-based NetPublications can turn these valuable assets into new revenue inexpensively and quickly by bringing "out-of-print" books back into print or printing new ones.  Whether old maps, journals or recipes that visitors have found interesting or "out-of-print" books that have been waiting to be reprinted, a book printer can produce high quality books similar to those found in bookstores and libraries.

Will your print materials be at the right locations on the right days?

Companies necessarily invest much time, effort and money to research, write, organize and complete training workbooks, HR manuals, instructional booklets and corporate procedural guidelines. But, if they are not where they need to be and not in front of the correct audience, at the appropriate time, they do not serve their intended purpose to teach, train and inform employees, customers and clients.

                                                                                                    

Even in today's digital environment, with the proliferation of online training courses and digital program modules, printed books, manuals and workbooks are necessary and essential to communicate sensitive and proprietary company information to its different audiences. 

Faced with the need to print and distribute such materials with tight timeframes and diverse logistical requirements, digital printing can efficiently and effectively meet the challenges that creating and distributing printed materials can produce:

l        Print-on-Demand - allows the printing of books, binders and manuals as few as one at a time and only when an order is placed. 

l        Cost effectiveness - with virtually no upfront pre-press costs, small print runs are cost effective. Traditional printing services have always required quotas or minimum orders when you used their services. However, because of the flexibility of digital printing, these financial boundaries do not exist.

l        Short Runs - digital printing is ideal for short-to-medium runs. Digital data is easily stored and updated; therefore changes can be easily accommodated. Digital printing allows more effective print management: there's no need for large inventories and no need to dump out of date stock.   

l        Speed - digital presses can be set up quickly and are capable of enabling next day or even same day delivery.

l        Personalization - each book, binder or manual can be personalized to include unique content and personalized materials.

  

To make more efficient the entire printing and distribution process, print document management companies such as NetPublications, Inc. offer a complete document management solution by combining printing, binding, storage, fulfillment and distribution in one facility, with one point of contact.

As a result, companies can focus on the businesses that make them successful and know that the printing and dissemination of their important and sensitive training, human resources and other corporate printed documents will be properly managed.

You have just completed your book...now what?

You have spent months, if not years, researching, writing, designing and editing your book. It is now finished and ready for sale.

Congratulations!

Now what?

You undoubtedly want your book sold and in the hands of readers. You want it distributed through retail channels, online outlets and other avenues that sell books.

Many options exist to distribute your book through these diverse channels. Each offers its own advantages and disadvantages and understanding and choosing the correct one for your particular needs can be overwhelming. 

Traditionally, books have used a distribution channel consisting of book distributors and wholesalers.

Book distributors actively sell books to bookstores, retailers, libraries and online stores, usually from a catalog. Personal sales calls and visits can also occur as long standing relationships typically exist between a distributor and retail outlets. Distributors offer a full range of services to stimulate demand and sell books through the distribution channel.

Book wholesalers make books available to retailers but do not typically engage in actively selling books to the retail market. They process orders and ship books but do not generally create demand for books. They do not offer the full range of services that distributors provide. Publishers and authors still have to pitch, market and sell books to book retailers. But wholesalers might offer a relatively inexpensive method compared to distributors to have books made available to a multitude of potential buyers.

With the growth of self published authors has come a viable alternative method for authors to reach potential book buyers…directly online. Social media and single focused book sites offer book reviews and relevant articles and the opportunity to sell directly to readers. For example, bookhitch.com allows authors and readers the opportunity to “meet,” sell and buy without having to go through distributors or wholesalers.

                                                                                               

And, should authors choose to sell books from personal websites, companies such as NetPublications’ NetSource distribution service can establish a shopping cart connection allowing the fulfillment of orders and processing of payments placed via authors’ websites.  

Each of these methods offer a unique value proposition and each must be thoroughly considered and evaluated to understand which offers the best distribution route, and value, for an individual’s particular situation.

But, ultimately, they all allow authors the opportunity to put their books in front of an audience of potential buyers after the solitary time spent writing and completing their books.

www.netpub.net

Your books cannot earn revenue if your books are not in print.

Over the years, museums, historical societies and cultural sites have published town histories, event books, documents, journals, meeting records and cookbooks.

While these printed books and documents serve to preserve history and to offer insight into past lives and events, they also represent an opportunity to create needed revenue for these institutions.

Now, however, many of these publications are either out-of-print or exist in very low quantities. And, if these books are not in print, they are not available for sale.

Today’s printing technology allows for these “old” and treasured books to be reprinted quickly and easily while permitting the printing of books for the very first time.

Digital printing provides the ability to scan pages of previously printed works and put them into digital image formats. A case in point was the reprinting of a book that was out-of-print for over fifteen years and has now resulted in sales of $1500 a year for one historical society.

Real-life nostalgia articles on "how it was back then" can be reformatted as books. Fragile and fading original documents can be preserved and protected, and their reprints utilized for museum and store displays or sold on-site at the gift shop or at special events. Books and documents can be printed as needed, in small quantities, ordered online with excess inventories stored and fulfilled by an outside vendor.  

Museums, historical societies and cultural sites can take the first step to uncovering overlooked and potentially valuable documents by conducting a thorough inventory of their books and documents to identify those that will be in demand and capable of generating additional revenue.

Summer and the tourist season are upon us. Now is the time to start preparing to generate revenue from books and documents that can easily and quickly be reprinted.

NetPublications Historical Publication Services

How to Select a Binding for a Book

Not all book bindings are created equal. When considering a print project, it is important to be knowledgeable about the available options. There are three basic type of bindings utilized in book manufacturing - case, paper, and mechanical. The decision on what type of binding to use should be determined prior to a job being printed so that layout and design staff can make the proper accommodations.  

To guide in choosing a binding, the following factors should be taken into account: 

•  The type (format) of book being bound:  novel; reference book; training manual;  presentations
•  Total number of pages   
•  Type of paper stock (weight)
•  Book Dimensions (determines page count) 
•  Appearance
• Durability
•  Budget

Trade and mass market paperback books (novels) generally use perfect binding, also referred to as adhesive or notch-bound binding.  This popular, soft-cover application uses paperboard or thick paper stock and involves gluing or adhering the text to the inside spine. With this type of binding, large quantities of books can be produced quickly, with lower costs, but the book cannot lie perfectly flat when open because the spines and covers are glued together. A perfect-bound book accommodates approximately 1500 pages. 

The most expensive (and durable) binding option is case binding. It results in a hard binding or hardcover book made from thick cardboard wrapped in cloth.  A trimmed book is bound by rigid boards (binder’s board, chipboard, pasted board) on each side and then glued directly into a spine.  A case-bound book is traditionally the most aesthetically-pleasing binding application, often used for coffee-table books, first-edition fiction, or collector’s editions of classics.  It accommodates about 1500 pages.

Mechanical Binding uses some type of mechanical device to hold pages together, typically with a type of snap-on mechanism, rod or ring.  Examples include:  

• Saddle Stitching (Saddle Wiring) is commonly used for smaller documents, such as booklets or catalogs or magazines with no more than 70-90 pages and is stitched together with staples.  With this type of binding application, you cannot showcase the book on a shelf because there is no spine.
• Plasticoil Binding or Coil Binding consists of a continuous, spring-shape, crush resistant material that allows a book to lie flat when open. It is appropriate for documents such as technical manuals, notebooks, and calendars. This type of binding is usually available in multiple colors.
• Ring Binders are used for documents that will be assessed, photocopied, and updated frequently, such as a cookbook. Full color spines and covers can be printed for a professional presentation for a business. 

This video gives a brief overview of book binding.

Six Basic Printing Terms to Know if You Want to Print a Book

1.  Bleed - When printing a book, "bleed" is a necessary design element to ensure that a book cover is trimmed correctly. It refers to the area extending beyond the finished (trim edge) of a document.  Bleed protects the trim edge of a document when it is being cut to its proper size during the final stages of the book production process. Without bleed, white edges would appear on a final document. Proper bleed area is 1/8 inch from the edge on all four sides of a book, which means that an 8.5” x 11” document with proper bleed would be 8.75” x 11.25”. 

2.  Trim - The trim size is the final size of a document- the dimensions of a book in its final bound size. 

3.  Safety Zone –The safety zone is a protected area 1/8 inch smaller than the trim size of a book. Any critical information, including type (text) logos, graphics, or page numbers must remain within the safety zone or these elements will appear crowded when the document is trimmed to its final size.     

4.  Crop Marks – These short little lines are found at the outside corners of each page indicating the exact trim size of a document.  Crop marks are an essential element during the bindery process so that documents are trimmed correctly.

5.  Embedded Fonts - This refers to the fonts that are necessary to print a job; fonts are embedded in the PDF file so that they appear exactly as they were intended to be seen by the author of the document.  The fonts will appear the same to different users in all applications.

6.  Image Resolution - All images should be scanned or saved at the correct resolution required by a printer, which is usually a minimum of 300 DPI (dots per inch).