One of our many digital solutions for our clients is providing print on demand and short run book production. There is no longer a need to have 5,000 of a book printed. The digital printing press has allowed us to affordability print just one book at a time.

For paperback books there are various sizes, but the most common that we see are:

One thing to note, for our letter sized books, we often print on letter sized paper. So, the finished trimmed book ends up being slightly smaller than 8.5" x 11". If the size is important, please let us know.

Paperback books offer several different options for binding.

Perfect binding is the most popular and most widely accept form of binding a book. If you are looking to get you book into the local book store or other retail outlet, they may require that it be perfect bound (or a hardcover). This method of binding takes the book pages, which are most often single, but in some variations of perfect binding can be four up pages like a in saddle Stitch, and then places a swipe of glue across the spine. The cover is then wrapped around the interior pages.

We are proud to announce the addition of our new perfect binder, a Standard Horizon BQ-270. This new binder will enable to us to produce even higher quality books than you have come to expect from Avalon and greatly increase our output, to over 400 books per hour. The BQ-270 produces sharp, square, and even spines, with superior pull and flex test results. A perfect bound book from Avalon will compare to any book from any book store.

The BQ-270 can bind books from 5.4" x 4.2" to 12.6" x 12.6". It can bind book thickness from 0.04" to 2", translating to approximately 16 page to 440 pages. If your book's page count is not divisible by two(2), then there will be a blank page at the end of the book.

A saddle stitched binding is most often used in comics and various other small page count booklets. This method of binding take a larger sheet (11" x 17" for example) with two (2) pages up on each side, then folds it in half and staples the page sets together. It's called a saddle stitch because with the older handle stapling methods, the pages fit over the bottom of the booklet stapler like a saddle. If your book's page count is not divisible by four (4), then there will be some blank pages at the end of the book.

Spiral Binding or PlastiCoil is made in various sizes and colors to accommodate your binding needs. A coil binding is a good choice for books that are used frequently; fold the book to the page desired and fold over. Coil bound books also have the option to have the front and back cover double laminated in a thicker laminate (either a 3 or 5 mm) than what's used on soft covers, which make for a more durable cover.

If your book's page count is not divisible by two(2), then there will be a blank page at the end of the book.

Our pricing includes the binding of the book, the printing and lamination of the cover.

We also give you several options for color printing in your books, that many other POD providers do not. We allow you to add color pages to you book and not charge you the color rate on all of your pages. The are some rules to follow that will effect how you are charge:

Option 1: The first option is that all of your color pages are together in one section within the book. It does not mater how many color pages there are, it just maters if they are all together. For this option, you pay the color rate for the color pages and the B&W rate listed above for the rest.

Option 2: The second option is if you have more than one section of color page within your book. For option you will incur a insertion fee for each color section beyond the first section. THe page are bill as in Option 1.

Option 3: The third option is if you have a high number of color page. For example, if you have 1 color page then 1 B&W page and so on. For this type of book, it just becomes too difficult to try separating the pages. In this case, we may have to charge you the color rate for all of the pages. The other issue that we commonly find is that the B&W pages are not truly B&W, at least the printer does not see it as B&W. For example, if you use a process black and a true black on the page, they both look black, but the RIP on the printer will see it as color because of the process. We do have pre-flight software that convert a page to a true black, but that would incur a pre-press fee.

Please feel free to use our book price calculator for an estimate of a basic book.

For our softcover books, there is no minimum run. This is true print on demand, if you need just one book, we can print you just one book. We do require that two books be printed as proofs before a book can go into a production run. We send you one book for your review and approval and we keep one as a sample. The cost of the proofs is the price of a normal book, plus shipping and handling.

We also charge no set-up fees for your project if you can provide us with a press ready file. We are adding more and more to our resource section of the web site, which will include more files on how to set-up you files for printing. If we do have to work with your files, you will incur a pre-press charge.

What sort of files do we accept?

We can accept almost any type of files for your book, but we greatly prefer PDF's. Any other type of file would most-likely incur a pre-press charge. This is due to the fact that when you deal with a native file (a file from a software program that does descktop publishing, Publisher, InDesign, Quark, etc) you must include all of the fonts and, often, artwork. Even if it's a common font, like Arial for example, if there's different verions or the same font from a different creator, the spacing could be slightly different. May not sound like a big deal, but that slight change is spacing could add an extra line, which could through entire page spreads off.

How do I calculate the thckness of the spine of my book?