Print Ninja sent me some pictures of my book
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I think they do offer proofs but it costs an extra $250.00 so, some choose not to do it. I've been looking at Print Ninja for my book.
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@mattramsey I have been looking at Print Ninja. Tried to do a calulation for my book but somehow it didn't work. Did you talk to them directly as you set up your project? It's really awesome that you have finished your project. Congratulations!
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Great feedback Matt. One thing I can add based on your comments is that you ALWAYS have to print out your book at home at 100% of size. Even if the print quality isn't great, you will get a sense of how the book will look. You can send a pdf to kinkos and they will print a color copy for you. Again, it's just to see the big stuff like type size, image size, basic color schemes, etc.
They can typically have it done in a day and it's a great way of proofing it yourself before sending it to the printer. The next thing is getting a hard copy proof from the printer. It's sort of expensive I know, but it's worth it to be able to fix little things you know are wrong.
That stuff aside, sounds like you have a great book Matt. I can't wait to see more of it! : )
SVS Faculty Instructor
www.leewhiteillustration.com -
@mattramsey First of all, congratulations on finishing a project of this scope!
I have some experience with print design and printing, both on large professional runs with offset machines as well as print-on-demand kind of suppliers, probably similar to PrintNinja.
One important thing for color consistency is to get information on the color profiles they print with. When you export the pdf for print (assuming you have done it yourself), you have to chose the same color profile used by the printers, so that your pdf looks approximately the same as in print (on a calibrated monitor). These are in the settings that you have to select when you export the pdf. They are called things like "Europe Coated V2" or "Coated GRACoL 2006".
For judging sizes and look of pages you do not need necessarily to pay for a digital proof. You can print on your home machine or in a print shop, at the same size as the final book and cut the extra paper, so that you see exactly what a page looks like. You can even take the time to glue the pages together to build a dummy book, so that you get a feel for the flow of pages. It takes some time, but very little money, and allows you to see a lot of the things that work or do not work, like size of pictures and text.
Of course a publisher would have print designers to look over the layout of a book - but you can do that too! You can hire a layout designer to look over your pdf and just give suggestions (no actual work). With 1-2 hours worth of his/her time you get a professional opinion and suggestions on how to improve the layout.
This is however a powerful experience, and gives you insight to make your next project even better! -
@mattramsey Congrats Matt! This is a great accomplishment and I wish you much success in sales of the books!
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@Dulcie Like @Marsha-Kay-Ottum-Owen mentioned, they DO offer hard proofs but we have a zero budget at this point. Hopefully we end up in the black and I can pour that money back into the next book and the Kwik program to turn this book into an app.
@Marsha-Kay-Ottum-Owen The calculation worked for me. It is an awesome feature that helped me figure out a lot of the details. I must have went back to that thing like 4-5 times just trying out different combos.
The only "hiccups" I had was figuring out how to send them the files they needed in the way they needed them but eventually it worked out.
I did have some good communication with one of their reps. Once I called in (due to a question I had on the file submission) and I ended up talking to someone other than who I had been emailing and that guy was very helpful too. So basically, everyone (both of them) I've worked with at PrintNinja has been great.@smceccarelli You are right on the color profile thing. They use Japan 2 or something and they walk you through the process of converting everything from RGB to their CMYK profile. Interestingly, I noticed almost ZERO difference between my colors in RGB and the CMYK coversion (on my screen). The actual colors in the book are very close as well.
The problem I had was the contrast on the cover. Really, the only way to have gotten that right was to have purchased a hardcopy proof. They state something like: due to the gloss printing process colors can come out darker. All of my interior pages were matte and I didn't have any problems.Of course, I was already frustrated with fighting weird contrast issues, I made a video about one of the pages here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBSLYXRW2C4 (still not 100% sure what the issue was but I wasn't really able to fix it perfectly).
You are right: a layout designer would have probably really helped, right after s/he got done snickering at the attempt I made.
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@Lee-White It's funny because your advice of simply printing off the pages on my own to get a feel of the book seems so obvious but it never occurred to me. Maybe Will/Jake mention it in that course they taught but I must have missed it.
If you'd like to see more of the book I'll post the dummy I made myself--I'd refer to this every so often and fill in the squares with completed pages as I went.
I DID learn a lot and overall, I'm happy with my first book attempt. As I've mentioned before, I don't think this would have been picked up by a major company--or if it would have, they would have had a lot of revisions. After the year mark of working on this I constantly wrestled with: should I go back and keep tweaking/fixing all the little mistakes I find or do I just power through and try to make it the best I can but JUST FINISH IT.
Ultimately, I decided to finish it and use it as a springboard into greater stuff. Obviously, any overall impressions/crits are more than welcome. Maybe I'll have already seen it but more than likely I'll learn something NOT to do for next time.
One of the main changes, stylistically, is that I'd like to get "less tight" and more painterly with my illustrations.
Here is the dummy (sometimes it doesn't show up for some reason):
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@mattramsey Thanks so much for sharing your experience. I think I'm in the same boat about just finishing! I also could add a link to an audio if I could figure out how to. I will need my son to help.
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@mattramsey Hi Matt - just wanted to follow up and see how things have been going with your book? Would love to hear what your experience has been since the books were printed and sales have begun etc.
Thanks! Rich
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@Rich-Green sales are kinda "meh". We are pretty much in the black but we didn't sell as many as we thought at the big event. I do not have them up on Amazon so maybe that would be an idea. I just sent in a copy to a publishing house that is tied in with my church organization and when their board meets they will review it and see if they want to carry it in their store.
In the meantime we are selling a copy here, a copy there to various contacts around the country (word of mouth type sales).
All that said, it was pretty much a vanity project from the beginning meaning that the idea was more: let's make a book that we can hold in our hands versus let's have a huge commercial success (of course, a huge commercial success would be great).
I learned a lot in the process and I'm definitely planing on making more books.
