Konica Minolta’s unrivalled AccurioPress line of hardware lets you tap into self-publishing markets that would once have been unprofitable – or simply not existed at all.

Book publishing used to be a complicated business. As we all know, however, the times – and technologies – are a’ changing. Whereas publishing used to be an offset printing domain, on-demand publishing is now a high-growth sector, letting budding authors everywhere produce books, calendars, magazines or photo albums on demand, even in tiny print runs.

As such, it has become a potentially huge business opportunity for digital print shops. Flexible print providers can benefit from this trend by producing a range of bound documents including books, calendars, magazines, and photo albums. InfoTrends expects the book-printing market to grow by 16.7% over their seven-year forecast period, meaning print volume from book publishing will come to almost 54 billion pages by 2016. In other words, on-demand book publishing is a new business field that’s well worth looking into!

On-demand publishing enables authors to self-publish books, or even “sell first, then print”. The big advantage of on-demand publishing is that it makes even tiny print runs of just one copy possible and profitable – and shortens a book’s time to market. On-demand publishing could prove a lucrative source of new revenue for your business.

But how are you going to squeeze the maximum benefit out of this market? Konica Minolta’s unrivalled AccurioPress line of printing hardware, which incorporates both AccurioPress and bizhub Press product series, offers a wide range of benefits that will let you do just that. AccurioPress systems are perfect for expanding digital printing environments, with professional modular finishing, outstanding colour and registration stability combined with excellent print quality. The AccurioPress systems give print providers the opportunity to handle a wider range of essential digital printing services and printing applications, including colour print products such as business cards, flyers, brochures, banners, envelope printing and many more.

An inside look into the perfect binding process at BookBaby.

Choosing the right book binding is as important as any other decision you make for your book. Your cover’s finish, your paper stock, and even your trim size—it’s the little things that add up to a unique book that’s reflective of your work. You put your heart and soul into your novel, so make sure that it’s printed in the most sensible style for you and your readers.

In book printing terminology, what exactly is perfect bound binding or a perfect bound book?

Why you should choose perfect binding for your book

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of a sleek, lightweight paperback novel in your hand. Perfect binding is a popular choice for fiction books across various genres such as romance, mystery, and fantasy. Perfect bound book printing is also often preferred for creative non-fiction, children’s literature, business books and graphic novels.

Because perfect binding is more cost-efficient than case binding, authors are able to print more books that can be distributed to the most prominent literary retailers, both in-store and online. Also, the back of the binding is cut evenly and square, so title information can be printed prominently on the spine, helping your book standout on the shelf.

Our formula for great custom book printing is very simple: BookBaby is a book printing company staffed by professionals utilizing the world’s best book printing and binding equipment. While every individual book project is different, the results are always the same:

• Eye-popping colors.
• Crisp and even ink coverage.
• Quality paper stocks.
• Sturdy, tight book binding.
• Carefully packaged shippers delivered to your door.

Choose your book style	Is offset book printing for you?
BookBaby offers the widest range of book trim size and binding options for every book type or genre, from glossy hardcover photography books to softcover trade fiction volumes.	Professional book buyers trust BookBaby for high-quality bulk book printing projects on budget and schedule every time.

With over 50,000 projects successfully delivered last year, we know what authors, publishers, speakers, and other book buyers require and expect from their book printer. Whether you need 2500 copies or 10,0000, Custom Book printing is the leader in book printing services and support:

Cover design

Authors spend so much time writing/rewriting/editing their books, but at the end of the day, that is the third most important element in determining if someone will buy it. After all, if you’ve done a poor job of crafting your metadata, readers will never find your book. And if your cover design sucks, no one will click on it. It’s that simple.

Viewed through that lens, cover design is just as important as — if not more important than — the contents of your book.

“A cover only has seconds to make an impact,” says Becky Rodriguez-Smith, Design Services Manager at BookBaby. “Our purpose is to create visuals that will grab a potential reader’s attention so that they click on the book to read more about it. To that end, the bolder the better.”

Of the three elements I mentioned above that determine your book’s ability to sell, two of them are things you can do on your own. Cover design, unless you are a professional designer, is not. You may have a great idea for a cover, but you won’t be able to execute it adeptly. So just get that idea right out of your head.

Cover design at BookBaby Printing

When ordering cover design from BookBaby Printing, you are asked several questions. Here they are, so you can get a sense of how to think about approaching design.

• Please give a brief description of the mood of your book.
• Describe the audience for your book.
• Do you have a cover design concept? If so, describe below.
• Do you have any color preferences?
• Please provide links of sample book covers that reflect your vision.
• Please enter any text for your back cover (e.g., quotes, book description, author bio) below.
• Is there any additional design information you’d like us to know about your front or back cover before we start your design?

There’s a bit of tension when it comes to design. On the one hand, you want something that instantly conveys your book’s genre and captures its tone. (If it’s a funny fantasy book, it needs to look like a funny fantasy book.) On the other hand, you don’t want it to look like every other book out there.

Those are all nice covers, but I knew I didn’t want that.

Conveying humor on a cover is challenging, too. Covers are either “wacky” or slapsticky, or there’s a picture of a someone deadpanning in a way where you can almost hear a trombone go “whomp, whomp, whomp, whomp!” In general, humor covers are, as my daughter would say, cringey.

So, to recap, I wanted something that screamed fantasy but didn’t look like every other fantasy book out there. And something that said funny, but not wacky.

Easy, right?

Well, surprisingly, yes. BookBaby got it right on the very first try. And I was convinced, right up until the moment when I opened the proof, that they wouldn’t.

When ordering, BookBaby asks if you have any covers or images you like. I had a hard time finding any covers I liked, but I sent them an image of “Brave” Sir Robin from Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, saying “I know you can’t use this, but that’s kind of the tone I’m going for.”

My designer emailed me a series of photographs of people dressed as knights making faces. None of them were right. BookBaby uses Getty Images for their stock photos, and although there are roughly 1.21 kabillion photos on Getty Images, there is not a single decent photo of a medieval person making a suitably funny face. (Lots of pictures of people dressed as knights smoking cigarettes, for some reason, and medieval people in slightly risqué situations, but no good, non-slapsticky photos.)

So, I wrote back, worried that my cover was doomed, and said, “Hey, if you can’t find a good image of a person, here are some elements from my book that might work.” I figured, perhaps we could suggest humor by highlighting an image that might seem out of place.

The first element I mentioned is a titmouse, a character that plays a prominent role in my book. But none of the images of titmice I could find seemed to work, so my hopes were not high.

A couple of days later, I got an email saying I had proofs to approve. I clicked on the link, held my breath, and opened my eyes.

This is the cover (front and back) BookBaby’s designer came up with.