As an overseas publisher trying to break into the English language market, I needed a quick, responsive and accurate consultant who could adapt my books to fit the demands of my print on demand service and the market in general. Falcon provided this service and more. I received the best possible response with first class customer service, a dedicated contact person, superb attention to detail and a very pleasing price tag. Colyn and his team have been excellent and are now my go-to partners for pre-press services.
Publishing Manager, Ehrlin Publishing
With modern digital presses it has become cost effective to produce small numbers of books and get them out in the marketplace. Companies like Amazon and Ingrams even offer print on demand services where you can upload your digital content and they will print and distribute a single copy of the book when an order comes in.
The issue with short run and on demand printing is that printing a proof isn’t cost effective, so you need to know the files you are supplying will print correctly.
Ehrlin Publishing, a Swedish based publisher, wanted to produce several of their foreign language titles in English. A designer converted the files and they were sent to Lightning Source to produce copies, but when the books arrived the cover and interior artworks didn’t bleed correctly, with some unexpected results.
Ehrlin came to us for help. The first task was to prepare the interior artwork so it met the Lightning Source recommended specifications, with not only the correct trim page size but also the correct amount of bleed on every page.
You can see from the two examples shown here that it is vital the images bleed correctly. There was a bit of resizing and tweaking of the illustrations, making sure the text still read correctly and line endings remained the same. Now the files had been prepared correctly the printed copies worked well.
The same process was needed with the book covers. Lightning source provide a template for the cover of each title when it is ordered. Paperback covers are fairly straightforward, but for a hardback the template includes a much larger bleed area to ensure all wrap around areas have sufficient coverage.
After a few calls to Lightning Source on Ehrlin’s behalf we were able to work out exactly what was required and redesign the cover artwork so that it complied with the template and met the Lightning Source requirements. The results were beautifully produced final copies and a very happy customer.
If you have issues with prepress problems and need some expert advice, we are happy to help. With over thirty years experience across most aspects of prepress publishing we can work on your behalf to get to the root of any problem. Give us a call on +44 (0)1580 766001 for a friendly ear and some expert advice.
