Lauren: Hey everyone, welcome back to Publish & Prosper. This is episode number 72 and to anyone listening to this episode, I am going to tell you right now this is gonna be a very visual. So if you have ever been interested in checking out our YouTube videos to watch the episode instead of listening to it, or if you didn't know, maybe, that we have full video on YouTube for all of these episodes. This might be the episode for you to go check it out. 

Matt: Yeah, this would probably be a good one. 

Lauren: Which is not to say that you can't listen to it, because we're going to do our best to be descriptive –

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: – with what we're talking about. 

Matt: We will. 

Lauren: But there's definitely going to be a lot of props…I guess? We could say? 

Matt: Not props. 

Lauren: What would you call them? 

Matt: Books. 

Lauren: Oh, books. 

Matt: They're books. 

Lauren: Oh, is that what this is? 

Matt: Yep. Yeah, they're not props. It's not stage –

Lauren: I – sure. 

Matt: – paraphernalia, costumes – 

Lauren: But – 

Matt: – or anything of this sort. It's just books.

Lauren: Imagine if I showed up here one day and said, Matt, I'm going to need you to start using props in this episode. 

Matt: I'm not sure how I would react. I'd probably stick around to see what you were talking about, at least. 

Lauren: But it would depend on the prop? 

Matt: Yeah. If I had to dress up in like, a cape or wear a sword or something, I'm out. I can't commit to that. 

Lauren: It would be very uncomfortable to sit in this chair with a sword strapped to your belt. 

Matt: Yeah, that's my point. 

Lauren: Right. Yeah yeah yeah. No, I would never ask you to do that. Don't you worry. 

Matt: I don’t know about that. 

Lauren: A sword? No. A cape? Maybe. But even then that would also mean you're sitting down. How would anyone know? 

Matt: Yeah, I don't know. 

Lauren: Yeah. But anyway, we're not doing that. What we are doing is showing off a lot of book samples in this episode. So today we will be talking about different types of products that you can make with print-on-demand books specifically. But also the actual formatting and design details that are involved in that process. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: Because that is something that we talk to people about a lot. And it's one of my favorite things about being at an in-person event and having like, conversations of people in person where we're able to actually physically show them, okay, this is the difference between a matte cover and a glossy cover. This is the difference between the different paper weights that we have. This is what standard color versus premium color looks like. And that's something that is hard to get a real feel for when you're just looking at content on our website or even photos on our social media or something like that. So. 

Matt: Yeah, it's also hard to even try and go and figure that out on your own – 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: – in just like a bookstore or something. 

Matt: If you don't know the terminology, if you don't know exactly what you're holding, you don't know what 60 pound paperweight looks and feels like, or if you don't understand some of those other things, it's hard for you to even know and connect those dots, let alone, you know, just see it on our website or somebody else's website. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Yeah. The hope is that maybe after this episode, you'll be a much more educated person when it comes to the fundamentals of print and print books and  print-on-demand. 

Lauren: I like that. 

Matt: Okay, cool. 

Lauren: I also kind of like that as a title. I might write that down. We'll see. 

Matt: Well, it's recorded. You don't have to write it down, but. 

Lauren: I'm glad you remember that this time. 

Matt: I did. 

Lauren: Especially since I had no means of writing that down. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So that's okay. I am actually going to shout out at the top of this episode some of the resources that I'm to have linked in the show notes, whether or not you are listening or watching. They will be probably good aids for you. We have a couple of other episodes linked, obviously, and some blog posts. But I want to shout out a video that we've shouted out before that is The Life of a Book. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That our amazing videographer Ashley created. It shows the production process of how a book is made. So you'll see some of the things that we're talking about in this episode. And it's also just a really cool video. So definitely check that out. And then we've got a bunch of resources linked. So we put together a few years ago, a glossary of publishing terms that lives on our website. We're going to try to explain everything as best we can here. But if there's something that both Matt and I skip over because we don't think about defining it because it's something we use all the time. We've got a whole glossary of terms that I have linked in the show notes so you can go check out. 

Matt: Sounds like a lot of lofty promises. We should probably get started. 

Lauren: I think we should. I think there's a lot of content in this episode and we should dive right in. 

[4:51]

Matt: Well, let's start from the top. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: From the basics. For those who don't know, print-on-demand is the actual process of printing items when they are ordered or on demand. So instead of printing 5,000 at a time and then storing them as inventory somewhere, products are printed as they're ordered. That is a better process, we think—and I think most of the world at this point thinks as well, for lots of reasons—but at the very least, it's much better for the environment, let alone your pocketbook, when it comes to the amount of overhead and inventory and other things you have to carry when you're doing a non-print-on-demand model. So print-on-demand is the process of printing things on demand as they're ordered, and this is applicable to a lot of products, not just books, but obviously we're just talking about books here. That is the technology that we use that Lulu has always used since it was started back in 2002 for the most part. But print-on-demand is applied to a lot of things. A lot of things you buy nowadays, whether you realize it or not, especially if you buy them directly online, have often probably been printed on-demand. T-shirts, coffee mugs, pens, bags, it doesn't matter. You can literally do just about any product as a print-on-demand product, so. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Print-on-demand itself is a really cool technology and what can be done these days with print-on-demand is amazing. 

Lauren: Yeah, we see it all the time. Which I also, one of the myths that I think drives both of us crazy is this idea that anything print-on-demand is going to be lower quality than some of the more like, traditional methods for printing and creating products, but specifically books. 

Matt: Yeah, yeah. 

Lauren: That's a question that we get all the time, or maybe even an accusation that we get all the time is like, oh, POD books are just inferior quality to the more traditionally printed books. And I am going to argue that extensively. I will argue that. And I'm saying that as somebody who used to be one of those people. 

Matt: I do think there was a point in time where print-on-demand was catching up. And so it wouldn't necessarily have been quality, but there would have been a noticeable difference per se in certain aspects of a print-on-demand book versus a book that was printed offset the way traditional books are printed. These days, yeah, you're right. And like anything else though, there are print-on-demand books that come off a print machine from certain facilities and they might not be up to par, but the same could be said for offset printing. 

Lauren: Sure. 

Matt: You know, all the way back to Steve Gutenberg. Not Steve Gutenberg. Johan Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany, where his first press was, I guarantee you there were things that came off that press that looked like hot garbage. 

Lauren: Oh, sure. 

Matt: So yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, there has been a stigma attached to print-on-demand books. But I'd say over the last probably five to six years, that stigma has pretty much been not only disproven, but pretty much put to bed. And anybody who still believes that should come see us at a conference or an event or just email us and ask for a sample of what one of our books looks like printed. 

Lauren: Now I am going to add the caveat to this that a print-on-demand book that is done the right way – 

Matt: Right, yeah. 

Lauren: – will be indistinguishable – 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: – from a book that was offset printed. And by that, I mean we've all seen examples of POD books that the pages are falling out or the glue dried weird and the spine is wrinkled or the pages after a few years, not even a few years, a few months, get that warped edging to them. And that's because those weren't done right. They weren't done well. They were probably, spoiler alert, rush printed because somebody insisted that they wanted their books overnight. And that didn't give them enough time to actually do the process correctly and let the glue dry on the different stages and let the ink dry and stuff like that.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But you know, just if a book is done right, if it's printed right, if it's done right, it can be genuinely indistinguishable. 

Matt: So why would you use print-on-demand, besides just being able to maybe have a smaller carbon footprint, cut out overhead, inventory? Are there any other reasons why you might use print-on-demand in your business? 

Lauren: Well, definitely depending on the quantity of books that you're interested in. 

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: There's kind of a sliding scale of the cost efficiency of print-on-demand versus offset printing. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: There is a point where depending on the quantity of books that you need, offset printing is going to be more affordable option or more economical option for you. But we're talking about like in the thousands at that point. For the most part, if you're doing a print run of one, ten, a hundred books – 

Matt: You can – 

Lauren: – print-on-demand is the way to go.  

Matt: You can push that up to a couple thousand. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: For the most part. Yeah, it's the ability to, again, print and deliver one book at a time –

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: – if needed. Three books in an order, five books, ten books, a couple of hundred, instead of the minimum quantity that most offset printers would require, which is at least several thousand or more units, which would necessitate for the most part warehousing, inventory control, fulfillment methods, things like that. The other thing to note though too is speed. And so while some people are like, oh, I gotta wait three days for my book to be printed and bound because it's print-on-demand? What you don't realize is oftentimes when you're buying a book from a bookstore somewhere else that's been offset print, offset print takes weeks to months. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: So when a publisher puts in an order for a run of offset books for five thousand, ten thousand, whatever that might be, even if it's just a thousand, it's usually done outside of the US and even if it is inside of the US print time can be anywhere from several weeks to months before those books are printed and delivered. The technology that a machine can literally print a book and thousands of different single books off of one roll of paper, cut the book blocks and we'll get into all of this, bind them, do the cover, attach the cover, all that can be done in two to four days, depending on the type of book it is. That's actually really impressive. Anybody who doesn't believe what we're saying right now, you should go watch the video that Lauren's gonna link to that we did. It's pretty incredible. So again, we're going to go ahead and get into some of this stuff. But for lack of any other argument here, print-on-demand technology has jumped lightyears ahead of offset and some of the other methods to get books to market. 

[11:05]

Matt: Let's talk about some of the different terms and things that are applicable to not just print-on-demand, but books in general when you talk about the business of producing books? Lauren: Yeah, to be clear, some of the things that are most of the things that we're going to talk about in this episode like, this language is industry wide. We're talking about how anybody that works in the publishing industry, whether it's traditional publishing or self publishing or  print-on-demand or whatever, this is the language they use to talk about different types of books.

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: So. 

Matt: Yeah, we're going to turn you guys into print book experts. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Let's go. What's the first thing?

Lauren: Awesome. So the first thing I think that we should start with right off the top is the trim size 

Matt: Perfect. 

Lauren: Because that is something that I think confuses people a lot, just because you don't really think about the fact that there are so many different sizes that books come in. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And by sizes, I mean the actual like, physical dimensions of the books. All right. So I've just picked up four books that are all the same size. Go me. 

Matt: That's all right. 

Lauren: But these are, these are all different, just regular print books. Novel, social media guides, stuff like that, that are all different trim sizes. And these are just for like, the standard actual text books that you're seeing. You're not also thinking about things… photo books, cookbooks, children's books, magazines, comic books, all that stuff. Those are all different trim sizes. So that's what that's referring to when you see something…

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: About a trim size. 

Matt: So like a traditional business book, the traditional size is 6x9, right? So six inches by nine inches. 

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: That's a trim size. And then fiction books traditionally will range slightly smaller. What is more common these days, I think, is like a five by eight or five and a half by eight. And then as Lauren said, other types of books will often go up in size. A lot of textbooks are notoriously 8.5x11 for simplicity. Lots of art books and photo books will go 11x8, so they'll flip it and it's like, a landscape size. But again, trim size is just referring to the actual specs of the outer edges of the book, 6x9, 8.5x11, et cetera.

Lauren: Yeah, and we'll get into more details on that too, because we do have, as you can tell, some examples here. And I thought we would talk through different product types and kind of talk about what the common and most popular sizes and design choices are for those different product types. So we'll get into that once we finish defining what these things are. 

Matt: Sure. 

[13:24]

Lauren: The other thing you're going to see after term size is going to be the binding type. This is talking about the actual spine of the book as well as the book cover itself. If you watch The Life of a Book video, you'll see the process of how these different books are bound, which is really cool. But the most common that everybody knows is a paperback. Obviously kind of exactly what it sounds like. But specifically perfect bound paperback is the actual technical term for the type of paperback that we're all so used to seeing. And that is the one that is the interior pages of your book are bound together and then the cover is glued directly to them. And it is a soft cover. There's no cardboard or chipboard or anything in here. It's just a sturdier, heavier paper. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: With the cover art printed directly. 

Matt: That’s right. Most paperbacks are perfect bound. 

Lauren: Yes. An alternative to the perfect bound is saddle stitch. Saddle stitch binding is for smaller books like comic books. There is actually a minimum… On Lulu, the minimum page count for a perfect bound paperback is 32 pages. 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: I'm not sure how standard that is across the industry, but I imagine it's somewhere close because obviously there does have like the book does have to have a certain thickness in order to be able to apply…

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: The binding to it. So if you're trying to print something that's smaller than that, something like a comic book or a children's picture book that has like a limited number of pages, you'll see saddle stitch as an option. And that is kind of the option where there's just staples or thread. 

Matt: Some light stitching. 

Lauren: Some light stitching, just holding it together and there isn't really a sturdy spine. That's a saddle stitch option. 

Matt: Yeah, it's basically just a crease. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah, it's like, you know, pamphlet style kind of thing, but definitely works. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: It's just a different option. And then in that case, those covers are paperback. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And then the last one for paperback, you can also get a coil bound paperback. 

Matt: I forgot about coil bound. 

Lauren: You forgot about coil bound. 

Matt: You won't see those as often unless you're ordering those directly from people who are creating them for the most part. You might find coil bound in certain specialty bookstores or things like that, but you won't often find coil bound books at like a Barnes & Noble.

Lauren: Yeah, that's actually one of the things that is important to know is the design and format choices that you make for your books, when it comes to stuff like this, will impact your ability to put your book into global distribution and also sell your book in brick and mortar bookstores. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And that's one thing – we've talked about this. We did an episode on how to get your book into bookstores. So if want to go listen to that one, we get into much more depth on that. But most bookstores will not carry a book that doesn't have a spine unless it is a specific product type. So like if they have a section of notebooks or if they have a section of travel guides that are all coil bound, like they might make exceptions. But like, if you wrote a memoir and for some reason decided that you wanted your memoir to be coil bound, chances are a bookstore won't stock that. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Because they won't be able to put it on their shelves as a coil bound book.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: But that is an option that you'll see people make some really cool coil bound books. 

This is one of my favorites by a Lulu Author. 

Matt: It's very common for planners for workbooks – 

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – for journals things that are going to be used for a utilitarian purpose. 

Lauren: yep

Matt: – writing in, planning, things like that, so. Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah, some cookbooks. We've seen some really cool –

Matt: Yeah, that's a good one too, 

Lauren: Because that's a great way to get like, the full lay flat effect where you've got the book out open on the table. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. 

[16:50]

Lauren: Then there's hardcover. We have two different types of hardcovers.I don't really think there is an alternative at this point. There's the hardcover casewrap, which is what Matt's showing right now. This is a book where the cover art is printed and then fortified with cardboard or chipboard to make the front cover, back cover, and spine. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: And then that is attached to the interior book block. 

Matt: And that is actually what you'll see being made in that video. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: That we'll be posting. 

Lauren: Yes.The book in there is the same format as this one that we're showing, which is Katie Brinkley's The Social Shift in casewrap hardcover. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: And the distinction with casewrap is the cover art is directly on the book. If you've seen textbooks, cookbooks, things like that, where the cover art is printed directly on the book. 

Matt: Yep. Yeah. 

Lauren: The alternative to that is dust jacket. And so at Lulu, our dust jacket hard covers are linen wrap. The same way that the casewrap cover is made, where it's a sturdy cover that is being attached to the book block. In this case, it's a linen material that is being put on the cover. And then the actual cover art of the book is printed on a separate piece of paper that is folded and –

Matt: Yeah, it's like –

Lauren: – removable from the actual book.

Matt: – all those old school books that were in the library when you were growing up, or even now where maybe you go to Barnes & Noble, your favorite author's book is only available in hardcover with a dust jacket right now. You get mad, but you buy it anyways.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And then you go home and the first thing you do is take the dust jacket off so you can read the book without messing up the dust jacket. 

Lauren: Always. 

Matt: And then they’re still my favorite book or style of book because I just love a linen book cover in general. The dust jackets are whatever. I think that's great, but I love a linen wrapped book, it just reminds me of old school books. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I just love the way that they look and feel and even smell. So this is definitely my favorite and I always try to talk people into doing linen wrap with a dust jacket if they're considering hard cover versus casewrap, but whatever. 

Lauren: Yeah. We've done an episode on designing a go-to-market strategy for your book. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And a big part of that episode was talking about the decision-making process for what formats you're going to release your book in and how you're going to plan that release strategy.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So, you know, in that episode, we talked about the idea of not going to market with all of your book formats at once, which is something that is what they do in the traditional publishing industry as well. Like, most traditionally published books are not released in all formats at once. You'll see a hardcover release first and then a staggered release for the paperback, and then maybe additional formats on top of that as well. 

Matt: Yeah. 

[19:26]

Lauren: The next thing we're to talk about – oh, I feel like this is also kind of worth mentioning. The order that I have this laid out in is the order that our pricing calculator goes in on Lulu. So if you want to play around with these different options and these different formats and see what they look like, we have a tool on our website. It's lulu.com/pricing, I have it linked in the show notes, and you can go through the different combinations and different options for all of these details of your book format. So if you're following along at home, this is an interactive episode. Yay. This is the order that you would make those choices in. The next thing in that step is the color for your ink.

Matt: Your interior file, right? 

Lauren: Your interior file. Yes. 

Matt: So do you want the inside of just be black and white? 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Do you want color? Do you want full premium color, standard color, premium black and white or standard black and white? There's basically four color types. 

Lauren: Yep. Yeah. And there's, there are arguments who made for all of these, the standard print book. Those are – 99% of the time it's just printed in standard black and white. It's the standard for a reason.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: That is a perfectly reasonable choice to make for just a regular book that doesn't have a lot of images. 

Matt: Yeah. Premium black and white is typically only used for art and photo books that are black and white in nature. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: And they just need a better quality black and white because they want to print on thick, glossy paper. You're right. Standard black and white is the default for most books, and that's okay. 

Lauren: I mean, it should be. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: One of the one of the books that we have here that I love actually. Black & White Minimalism Magazine, I think is their full name, is a photo journal that have been printing their issues with us for a long time. And all of the art in these books is all black and white. All the photos in here are black and white. And they actually use just standard black and white. This is not premium. 

Matt: Oh, wow.

Lauren: I checked. I looked it up in our admin tool. So it's very possible to have like, a beautifully printed art book –

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – just using standard black and white. If you want to step it up a little bit and have a little bit premium quality to it, you can as well. No one’s going to be able to see, we're going to be changing the focus, the auto-focus on here. 

Matt: The biggest difference, by the way, is just going to be that on a premium black and white, you're going to use a thicker coated paper. So the black is going to be a little more deep and dark, and fully black – 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: – and it's gonna be glossy and shiny. So again, I didn't realize that minimalism one was standard. That actually looks really good. 

Lauren: Yeah

Matt: Because it's a zine, they want to keep the price down for the end buyer, which is understandable. So it's still beautiful and I think it keeps them at a price point where their subscribers and end buyers aren't gonna feel like it's too expensive. 

Lauren: These are the design choices that you're making. They're not just about aesthetics. It's also about things like price point, things like functionality, things like making it accessible to your potential buyers. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That's why I always recommend the pricing calculator, because it's a fun way to kind of click through there and say, like, okay, you know, how is that going to change the print price on the book if I do standard color versus premium color? How is that going to change if I do casewrap versus paperback, whatever? You can see those different details that go in there when you do it that way.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So definitely play around. I was definitely in there last night while I was outlining this episode, messing around with different combinations and seeing what I could do and what I couldn't. But for sure, I think that's one of the ones that's the hardest to kind of describe to people and show people and like, really get them to understand that you can see a difference between standard color and premium color. 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: But you can get a really nice book. You can get some really nice looking books that are just standard color, white paper.

Matt: Yeah, it just depends on what you're trying to do. A book like this, it's all photos. Jeremy Janus, he does a lot of different photo books. He's a photographer. This one is obviously premium color. When you're doing stuff like this, that's what you really need. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: You know, when you're showing crazy rich, deep dark and bright colors, contrasting colors, you're showing off a body of work. You really should be using premium color and that's going to be on a thicker paper. And even the cover is a very premium look. So. In that situation, anytime you're doing something that is really dependent upon those colors because it's photographic or something like that, you really should opt for premium color on, you know, a heavier coated paper. But there are certainly tons of examples where standard color is appropriate and looks just as good. 

Lauren: Yeah, this is a web comic that somebody printed and this is just using standard color. And sure, they could have done a premium color edition. But I think also in this case with this specific color palette and their art style, the standard color works great. 

Matt: I think it actually works better 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Because with the standard color, they didn't have to use the thicker, glossier paper. And for that type of book, that's a bit of like, a comic or graphic novel. Having that more of a matte look and not shiny and not super thick paper –

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I think does the book more justice. So that was the right choice, I think. 

[24:26]

Lauren: Yeah, let's get into that a little bit too, because I think those kind of go hand in hand in this conversation, is the paperweight and talking about the different types of paper that you can have in your book interior and how that works with the ink –

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: – choices as well. Paperweight, and I learned this because I finally decided to look this up after literally years of wondering and talking about it and never actually bothering to look it up. The paperweight of a book is referring to what the weight of a ream of that type of paper is. So like a 60 pound paper. When we talk about 60 pound paper, the - a ream of that specific type of paper is going to weigh 60 pounds. 

Matt: A ream being what measurement? 

Lauren: Like a 500 page – a ream of paper is like when you buy the printer paper and you're buying like that stack of paper, that's a ream of paper. 

Matt: That's not 60 pounds. 

Lauren: It's like that. You know what I mean? It's like that. 

Matt: You might need to go back to your research. 

Lauren: No. 

Matt: I think what's more confusing about referring to paper by weight – which is something that is primarily only done in the US for the most part – by the way. Outside of the US it's often measured in GSM. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: In the US as well, to a degree, but the standard way to talk about in the US for a lot of people is by weight and it's often indicating more of the thickness of the paper, to a degree. Standard paper that you would see in a book, let's say you go to Barnes & Noble and you just pick up a fiction book, write a standard mass trade paperback fiction book, the paper, the weight of that paper you know is thin. Like everybody's probably held one before. It's very thin, it's usually a cream color. It's almost transparent or not almost. It's transparent. That's somewhere in the realm of 40 to 50 pound paper. It's pretty light and thin. You definitely wouldn't want to print anything on that other than standard black and white text. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Otherwise, you're going to get a lot of flooding on the pages. So that's to give you a baseline of like paperweight again. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And then as you move up, the lowest paperweight we use is 60 pound. 

Lauren: Yeah, our standard uncoated, this is the base paperweight for us is 60. Also for the record, a ream of paper is a quantity of sheets of the same size and quality. International standards define the ream as 500 identical sheets. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: So a block of paper that is 500 pieces of the same paper and whatever that weighs is what the weight is, what the paper weight is. 

Matt: So for it to be 60 pounds though, that ream of 500 sheets probably has to be big, big, big sheets. 

Lauren: Sure. 

Matt: Because a ream of 8.5 by 11 copy paper is not 60 pounds. 

Lauren: It's the like a whole box of them. 

Matt: Oh, okay. So that's that's a case.

Lauren: It's still a ream. 

Matt: That's definitely 60 pounds or more for sure. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Gotcha. 

Lauren: Okay. And if this helps at all if you're like, I can't I can't really picture a book paper right now, whatever – although if you're listening to this podcast you should be able to. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Another reference point that I looked up to check on this was that the standard weight for invitation or greeting card paper, that cardstock –

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – that's a little bit thicker cardstock is a hundred pound. 

Matt: That's what our calendars are as well. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So that's kind of the range that we're talking about here is that thin mass market paperback type of paper where it's a little thin, it's going to be like 40 to 50 pound. 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: To the hundred pound is like that thicker, heavier cardstock that will stand up on its own. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Kind of thing. 

Matt: So 60 pound is where we start. 

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: And that's going to be extremely similar to, if not identical to basically 8.5x11 copy paper. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: So when you pick 60 pound uncoated white or 60 pound cream on Lulu anyways, basically the thickness that we're talking about there is like copy paper. Your other choice is 80 pound coated. That's gonna be a little bit thicker and it's gonna be a gloss-coated paper so that when you do premium black and white or premium color, that stuff really pops and stands out and looks very glossy and very bright and all those colors shine through. 

Matt: I've said coated and uncoated several times now –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – as has Lauren just as a quick aside. Uncoated when you feel the paper just feels basically like raw paper. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: And coated means it's got that slick, almost glossy feel to it. So – 

Lauren: Yeah, I think this is – 

Matt: – that's as simple as it gets. And it's pretty easy to just basically look or feel a piece of paper and know whether it's coated or…

Lauren: You'll be able to tell like, you'll know what that means if you think about it at all. I mean, you can see on camera right now – for once the lighting is actually working to my advantage, how nice – the fact that you can see the gloss on the page right now, you can see that shine on the page, you can tell this is coated paper. So something like a magazine or a photo book where it's got that paper that's got a little bit of a shine to it, that is coated paper. 

Matt: And then again, white versus cream. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: So those are the only two that we carry. Those are basically the main two in the industry. Certainly there are other shades or types of paper, but for the most part, you want to deal with white versus cream. Most traditionally published books you find in the bookstore of a fiction nature are cream. Most nonfiction books usually use white paper. Obviously there are some variations. People can kind of choose what they want, but that's kind of what the industry standards are for those. 

Lauren: Yeah. When you're publishing with Lulu, we so strongly recommend that you only use white paper for color that we actually do not allow you to choose the option of 60 pound cream paper

Matt: That’s right. 

Lauren: If you choose premium or standard color, then you have to get white paper. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: We also don't offer 80 pound uncoded paper. Did we say that already? 

Matt: Nope We didn't say it, but we don't offer it, right. 

Lauren: Right. Which only really matters depending on the product types. We'll talk about that when we get to the product type. 

Matt: Yeah, most of the time 60 pound is fine – 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: – for whatever you're doing. If you're doing something photo-heavy or a children's book or something like that, it needs to be a little thicker and sturdier than 80 pound. But for the most part, stick with the 60 pound where you can. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And then you have cover finishes, which are very similar to paper coatings, in a way. You have covers like this one. This is a matte finish. It's not very shiny at all and it has a very dull feel to it. Most books oftentimes have somewhat of a matte or a raw looking finish. 

Lauren: Right. Versus the – 

Matt: Even though they might have like, a foil or a shininess to them. 

Lauren: I don't want to say dull in the sense…

Matt: – I’m not referring to the color. 

Lauren: Right, that's what I mean – 

Matt: I’m just referring to the – 

Lauren: – like, it is. 

Matt: – the sheen and the feel. 

Lauren: I'm very pro matte, as opposed to –

Matt: I wish everybody was pro Matt. 

Lauren: I know. I was gonna say, I'm gonna clip that. As opposed to a glossy cover like this one.

And that is a choice that you can make regardless of your cover type, whether you're doing or your binding type. So that's you want to paperback a hardcover, casewrap, anything like that. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: You can choose your cover finish. 

[30:54]

Lauren: The last thing that I wanted to touch on in here before we get into like different product types and stuff like that, just very briefly, was the kind of custom extra details that you can add to books. We did a whole episode on this, so I don't really want to dive too deep into that. If this is something that you're interested in learning more about, go listen to episode number 43. But we are seeing more and more in the industry, this is a trend that has not died yet, the details like sprayed edges and custom end paper and foiling and embossing on the covers, ribbon bookmarks, box sets, things like that. So if you have questions about that, we did a whole episode on it. Again, go listen to that one, or reach out to us because that is also something that is kind of a case-by-case basis when it comes to…

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: Print-on-demand. 

Matt: Yeah, and you want to make sure it's the right thing for your project. You know, a lot of people will be like, oh, I'm doing this thing and I wanted to have all these bells and whistles, but that might not actually suit your project well. And all it may end up doing in the end is driving what you have to charge for a retail price up, up, up to the point where you might suffer from a sales perspective. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Understanding those things, what value they might add to your end user, you know, and your project, versus just satisfying your need to see something super crazy and frilly and whatever, that's really important before choosing what you ultimately go to market with. 

Lauren: Yeah, I think that's something that's really important to keep in mind for all of these different design choices that we're talking about. Keep the functionality in mind and to make sure that you're understanding… I understand the value of having a book that looks really cool in your eyes. But if it makes it less user friendly for your readers, then that kind of defeats the purpose of it. Or if it prices them out of buying it because you were so excited about being able to get sprayed edges on your book that you didn't realize what it was going to cost for the print cost per book.  

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And now you've had to raise the price of your book so much that no one's buying it. Doesn't matter how cool it looks if no one's buying it. 

[32:51]

Matt: All right. What kind of books can you create? 

Lauren: What a great question. Starting from the top, the most obvious, most common, the catch-all term of print books. 

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: Ow. I'm going to hit my head so many times. 

Matt: I’d prefer that you didn’t. 

Lauren: I already have. Oh. Well, maybe it’ll help –

Matt: Is this a bad time to tell you that this studio’s not insured? Just kidding. 

Lauren: Great. 

Matt: Sort of. 

Lauren: Great. It’s fine. 

Matt: Yeah. So when we say print books, we just mean regular what is also known as trade. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Or trade paperbacks or trade books. So just your everyday normal paperbacks and trade size books that you're going to find in a bookstore. Normal sizing for the most part. That's what we mean when we say print books. 

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. You can use that as a catch-all term pretty much. I wanted to talk a little bit – we kind of touched on this already – about just like, the different common specs for these types of books. Obviously, like we already said, paperback and hardcover, those details will vary by genre. For those books, we see a lot of commercial fiction books tend to be a straight to paperback release. They also tend to be those smaller sizes, like a mass market, novella, digest, A5 size. Drives me crazy when I look at my bookshelves and they're all slightly different sizes, but that's a me problem, not an industry problem. 

Matt: It's definitely a you problem. 

Lauren: I know it’s –

Matt: For sure. 

Lauren: It's okay. The more serious lit fic, or nonfiction, or the bigger books that come out are also literally bigger. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: They're going to be something like a US trade, royal, and tend to be hardcover first, paperback second. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And then also, you know, like we said, industry standard kind of across the board: standard black and white ink on the lower paperweight uncoated cream paper, more often than not. 

Matt: That's a, that's a costing thing. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: For mass trade paperbacks. It's to keep their costs down for the most part. It's nothing to do with, you know, presenting a quality book or anything like that. It's just when you're printing 20,000, 50,000, 600,000 units, you got to cut that cost down somehow or another, so. 

Lauren: Right. I also just want to… because I realized that I said the phrase mass market and then Matt said mass trade paperbacks and I realized that I did not explain what mass market was. These are four different trim size paperback books that are all standard sizes. I'm going to use the Lulu terms to try to explain these. This one is a US trade paperback – that is actually just an industry standard name to call this a US trade paperback – which is a six by nine. That tends to be the biggest size, they don't really get much bigger for paperbacks. You don't see a lot that are bigger than that. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: And then you see something like this, this book here. I think this is the digest size, which is 5.5 by 8.5, which is much more common size for things like commercial fiction, scifi, fantasy, romance. Stuff like that. 

Matt: It's being used a lot more these days too, for nonfiction and business books

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: I think, I think honestly the trend right now from a costing and production standpoint is to scale down slightly where you can get away with it. So you are seeing more and more business books and smaller books, in terms of content, being also cut down in trim size. You will start to see more and more of these nonfiction books showing up in smaller than six by nine size. 

Lauren: Right. And that is, again, a function thing more than anything else. If your whole point of your book is I want this to be a reference guide for people that are doing social media or doing marketing or doing whatever it is, like you want this to be something that they can easily just toss in their bag and have with them as a reference guide. And then the last size, because that is what just reminded me of…this book is – on Lulu's website we refer to this as a pocket book. This is four and a quarter by six and a quarter or something. 

Matt: Something like that, yeah. 

Lauren: Something like that. It's more or less a four by six. Most places in the industry, you'll see this size referred to as a mass market. And it's the size that, if you go into like, any bookstore and you're looking for those old school dime store sci-fi novels or romance –

Matt: By the way, if you can find those, you should buy them because at this point they're coming dangerously close to being collector's items. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. But that's the size and this is like quite literally a size that you can toss in your beach bag or your pocket – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – or whatever. 

[37:01]

Lauren: The next kind of product type that I wanted to talk about is photo books. Photo books, we've shown you plenty examples of those already. These are going to be books that are more graphic and image-heavy. Sometimes they don't even have any text in them at all. Sometimes they just have a little bit of text or captions or something like that. And the biggest design choices that you see people making with their photo books and coffee table books and things like that are actually the orientation of the book. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: These are…these are the kind of books that are most common – I mean, you're never going to see a novel that's printed in landscape. It's like, oh, this is it. This is a US trade landscape, not a US trade portrait. But for photo books and books like that, you will actually see a lot of people that make the design choice to do a US letter landscape or… US letter and US trade and A4 and A5 are just the – A4 and A5 are the common sizes in the UK, and US trade and US letter are, spoiler alert, US common sizes.

Matt: Yeah, in A4 you can get in either orientation. 

Lauren: Yes, and the same – 

Matt: So you can get A4 landscape. 

Lauren: – with US letter. So those you're going to see. But then also, as we've shown, a lot of square. You see a lot of square books as well. This is a children's picture book, not a photo book, but still the same concept. You'll see a lot of different design choices made there. And then we talked about design choices in so far as your premium color and black and white versus standard color and black and white. Are you going to print it on coated paper or are you going to print it on the lighter weight uncoated paper? 

Matt: Yeah, most of those books really should probably be on 80 pound coated. Again, unless you're not doing anything very color heavy, photos are okay if they're not, if they don't need to be in like, rich vibrant colors or like, things like that. You can get away with 60 pound or standard. But, you know, a lot of the photo books, coffee table books that are meant to be much nicer. They're meant to be admired. They typically carry a higher retail markup price, so it's okay to go and splurge on premium. That's what you should be doing. 

Lauren: I would actually very highly recommend that if you're not sure one way or another when it comes time to actually print and design your book, this is a great reason to order a proof copy. I can give you at least ten reasons why you should absolutely order a proof copy of your book. But when it comes to the decisions like the paperweight and the ink type, those won't actually affect the design of your book. You can choose whether you want it to be premium color or standard color without changing the file type at all. Right? You know what I mean? 

Matt: You can change the interior color without changing the file specs. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: For the most – unless you go up in paperweight. Because remember, if you go from a 60 pound to an 80 pound, there's a slight increase in the thickness of each page, which means your spine – 

Lauren: Will be, yes. 

Matt: – will be different and you'll have to adjust the spine on your cover. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Right? Your spine measurements. So.

Lauren: Well, it depends on how – 

Matt: Technically, yeah. 

Lauren: – big your book is. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: In terms of page count. But that might be an opportunity for you to order comparable versions of both and say, you know, which ones look better. You can do that with print-on-demand because you only have to order one copy of a book. You don't have to order a thousand copy print run. 

Matt: That's right. Yeah.

Lauren: Yeah. Briefly, just subsets of photo books that I wanted to touch on the style types for them. Cookbooks, very similar, obviously, but you're going to want to consider the functionality of those. We've seen – traditionally photobooks are casewrap hardcover that are either an 8.5 x 11 letter book or a square, but more and more people lately are trying different styles for that.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So we're seeing people do some really cool coil bound books, like we've said. Or maybe if you're somebody who's designing a cookbook that has recipes, but then also has space for your buyers to make their own notes or make lists or write in the book directly, then you might want to go with an uncoated paper versus the more traditional coated glossy paper for a cookbook. Those are different things to keep in mind with your cookbook design. And then picture books, I'm going to call that the midway point between a photo book and a print book. For children's picture books, which is something that we see a lot of people do print-on-demand and do very well. That is something that the design choices in there tend to vary a lot between standard color and premium color, and then the paper weights, because that's something that you are trying very hard to keep the price point down on. You don't want to make a children's book too expensive, because people aren't gonna buy it, because they are books that kind of have a time limit on them. Kids age out of reading them. And also tend to get a little banged up sometimes. So we've seen some really, really beautiful examples of people just using standard color, 60 pound, uncoated paper and making some really nice books out of that. It's also something that you see a lot of people actually do in both paperback and casewrap. You know.

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: You might see somebody who does two versions of the same, whether it's a staggered release or a at-the-same-time release. That's a great opportunity for…if somebody's buying a book as a gift and they want to get a little nicer version, they might get the hardcover casewrap version of it. But if someone's just buying a cool book for their own kid and they're not really caring about the presentation of it, they might get the paperback. That's going to be a more economical option for them. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: So again, it all comes down to functionality and keeping in mind how you want your readers and buyers to use these things. 

Matt: No notes. 

Lauren: Great.

[42:29]

Lauren: I don't know. Do you feel like it's worth getting into like the magazines and stuff like that? 

I think we've already touched on them, what their sizes and characteristics are, but just know that it's an option for you. I don't think a lot of people know that they can do that stuff with print-on-demand. So know that that's there and it's an option. It's also a good way to test the waters with your content if it's suitable for premium-style magazine or a comic book or something like that. 

Lauren: We do actually offer the ability for interior cover printing – 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: – on those product types. So that, if that is something that you're interested in doing, where like a magazine you want to or a comic book you want to have, but if you want to have that printing on the inside front cover, you can do that with Lulu. So if you're not aware of that…

Matt: Yeah, it's called duplex printing. 

Lauren: Oh, there you go. 

Matt: But yeah, it won't say that on the site. You'll just, when you're choosing to do a magazine project or comic book project, it'll prompt you if you wanna upload an extra file, which will be the interior, inside cover printing. So like on the inside of this comic book style book that's here, it's a saddle stitch, so it's stapled. There's inside printing on the covers. So yeah, that's a good point. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Something that people should be aware of.

Lauren: Yeah, for sure.

[43:34]

Matt: And then again, there's something called no or low content books. These are basically notebooks, journals, planners, things where either the inside is blank, it's just lined paper or blank paper for sketching, or it's low content in the sense that there's some prompts and guides in there to get you to write in it. We're very well suited for that type of content on Lulu. Nine times out of ten, these things are often done as coil bound projects, so they can be very utilitarian. They can be opened up and laid flat or folded so that you can write during conference or an event or something like that. So, also a great option. 

Lauren: Yeah, there's really no like, standard trim size or anything like that when it comes to that stuff. I do just want to point out, you're never going to want to use coated paper. If you're creating a no or low content project that the intention of it is for people to be able to write or draw or color or whatever inside of it. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I know from experience of creating my own that the coated paper is just really hard to write on. Like, none of the pens that I tried to use really were effective on that. So I had to switch it back down. 

Matt: I can almost just imagine your face trying to do that. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: How frustrated and angry you were. 

Lauren: I was. It was annoying. I'm not going to lie. I was annoyed about it. Because I have a large collection of different pens and markers and it was, it was actually a little wild – 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – to be testing all of them and realizing none of them were… It was also during COVID time and I was, I was quarantined. So this was my quarantine project and it was not – I was not having a good time with it. But that's fine. 

[45:00]

Lauren: A couple of just last minute things that I want to touch on because I think they're important to know before we end this one out. Like I said earlier, these are design elements that are also going to impact some of the other parts of your publishing process. 

Matt: Potentially. 

Lauren: Yes, potentially. So just something to keep in mind, your sales and distribution options can be affected by what choices that you make for things like your binding type, like we talked about, some trim sizes are limited. So like not all trim sizes are available for global distribution. Not all binding types are available for global distribution. If you're just selling your book direct from your website, then it doesn't matter. You can – any format that's available on Lulu, you can do that from your own website. 

Matt: Yeah. And the reason for that, by the way, is if you are going to put your book into distribution through global distribution, you want it to run through our system for Ingram or Amazon or some of the others. The reason why you're limited in what trim sizes and combinations of paper and interior print you can do it's because those entities are limited. It's not because Lulu is limited. It's because certain other channels, in an effort to streamline and not have to offer as many options, they've cut down significantly the amount of trim sizes and interior options they'll accept. You just need to be aware of that. Like Lauren said, if your goal is to really be on those channels as well – and our calculator will tell you as you go along which one's qualifying, which ones don't. 

Lauren: Yes it will.

Matt: But if you're not using ours and you're just kind of going about it yourself, again, just make sure you're aware of whatever the requirements are in terms of trim size and other options for whatever platform you're trying to list on. 

Lauren: Right. And then the other thing to keep in mind is that the trim size of your book is going to determine your interior file templates and your cover design. So that is something that you need to choose before you start doing your interior book formatting, because you don't want to start doing your page formatting and you're formatting your book to a 5x8 size and then decide a little further down the line that you actually want to go with the 5.5x8.5, because then you're going to have to redo all of your formatting. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: All of it. So that's going to be a bummer. So definitely choose that first. And also you don't have to like, entirely finish your interior formatting, but you need to have enough of your interior formatting done to know what your approximate page count is going to be – 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: – before you can do your cover design, because your page count is going to impact the width of your spine, which is going to impact your cover design. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: So these are things that you kind of have to decide in a certain order. 

Matt: Yeah, and if you're using tools, by the way, like Atticus or some of those others to do your interior file, you've already picked your trim size to begin with if you're doing print or you're able to do it along the way and they kind of, their tools will help you kind of keep everything in line. So that's something to keep in mind too. 

Lauren: Yeah, and – this is the last time I'm going to plug the calculator, I promise – we have free downloadable templates for all these different things that are built into that calculator. So if you go through it and you say, my book's going to be the novella trim size, a hundred pages paperback. You can then click a download button and download the templates that are pre-formatted to the size for interior and for your cover. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: So you have that all set up and then you can just go ahead and plug your content into there. 

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: Try to make it as easy as possible. 

Matt: That's pretty easy. 

Lauren: I think so. 

[48:25]

Matt: What would you say is your favorite book out of all of these that we have in front of us right now?

Lauren: Oh, that's such a hard question. I love Rainy the Little Raincloud. I think it's a really, really beautiful, really, really, really well done, beautiful book. But also the real answer to that question is one that we haven't shown yet. And it's the one that is a web comic that someone printed that's called Oh Boy, I Am Sad.

Matt: Who knew that the elder emo would choose a book called Oh Boy, I Am Sad.

Lauren: I – I think that if you had been able to see the cover, I think we hadn't had another book on top of it, you would have known the answer to that question before you asked. 

Matt: That's fair. I didn't – 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: I didn't necessarily realize that was down there. 

Lauren: But yeah, this is one of my favorite books that I've ever found on Lulu. 

Matt: All right. 

Lauren: So, shout to that creator. What about you? 

Matt: I guess, of what we have up here, my favorite would be the Black & White Minimalism Magazine. They do a really good job. There's always really cool black and white photos in there – 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: – especially of different architecture and things, which I'm a fan of, so of these I would say that's probably my favorite. 

Lauren: That’s fair. I'm also gonna give a shout out to Tilt Publishing, because this color, this specific color combination of orange to pink to purple is one of my favorites. 

Matt: It's a great cover. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And it's such a simple great cover and I just love these colors, so I always – I always, I'm very fond of this book as well. 

Matt: Yep. All right. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Lastly, what do your bracelets say?

Lauren: What do my bracelets say? 

And I'm going to be very disappointed if they don't deal with print books. 

Lauren: Well, one of them says I Wish I Was Reading. 

Matt: Mmm. Mmhmm. 

Lauren: Okay, unfortunate. One of them says Sourwolf and one of them says This Version of You. 

Matt: You missed a really good opportunity to do some cool bracelets. 

Lauren: I know, I didn't have time. 

Matt: All right. 

Lauren: I thought about it. 

Matt: Maybe next time.

Lauren: I thought about making, starting to make episode-related bracelets, but that's going to be a…very much a time dependent thing. For sure. We'll see. Look, I gotta get started on my CEX bracelets. So... 

Matt: There's some other things you need to get started on. 

Lauren: Yeah, I know. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I know. Don't worry. I have a long list. 

Matt: Should I tell them? 

Lauren: You want to? 

Matt: That's up to you. I don't know. 

Lauren: It’s up to you.

Matt: Is that gonna help motivate you? 

Lauren: Sure. I mean, yeah. We talk about doing it in public all the time. 

Matt: Well, yeah. So I've asked Lauren to write a book with me. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Called Publish and Prosper. 

Lauren: Wow.

Matt: That is our journey through this podcast so far, but that will educate and teach people how to, how to publish and how to prosper from their publishing. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And I'll have a lot of cool stuff in there. 

Lauren: I think it's going to be great. I'm really excited about it. 

Matt: So get started on it. 

Lauren: Okay. All right. Just give me like two more weeks. 

Matt: We're going to start doing like, a chapter tally or something. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Every episode. 

Lauren: We could do a check-in. Oh, maybe that's one of the things that we could put on this wall somewhere. Is like a progress tracker. 

Matt: You were touching that wall in a very odd way.

Lauren: Sorry. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: It was further - the problem was that it was further back than I thought it was. 

Matt: That's right. We pulled the chairs out. 

Lauren: I expected to – It's fine. This room is a work in progress. So if you're... 

Matt: We're a work in progress. 

Lauren: Always. 

Matt: Yeah. All right. 

Lauren: Yep. Okay. Well, if you have any questions about any of this, please let us know. This is something that I think that we could talk about for a very long time because I think both of us find it interesting. 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: And also something that I recognize is hard to wrap your head around without having the books right in front of you, or without having like, a lot of personal in-depth knowledge of the publishing industry. So please reach out to us, ask us if you have questions, if there's anything that we could explain better. Maybe it's not something that we can explain on the podcast, but I can create some like, Instagram content or something that we can share with you. You know, we'll figure it out. But. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: If you have any questions about anything we talked about here, please let us know. We're here to help. Podcast@lulu.com. That’s all I got. 

Matt: Later. 

Lauren: Bye.