Matt: Welcome back to Publish & Prosper. Today we are talking about one of our favorite things: print. We are actually going to be discussing the differences between offset printing, which a lot of people think of as the more traditional printing route. And then digital printing, which is most often considered print-on-demand. And hopefully by the end of this episode, we'll all be experts in book printing.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: We get asked about the different types of printing all the time. We talk about it a lot at shows and things. It is a, it is a question that comes up often. So I think this would be really helpful for people to understand the different types. And again, like you said, why and when you would use them. But also why, you know, publishers and retail outlets and things, you know, use one or the other or both.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Like you said, it's not always about one or the other. Oftentimes they're complementary to each other and they have a purpose. So we'll get into that.

Lauren: Yeah, exactly. They are not competing solutions. They are different solutions to different problems. So.

[1:25] – Offset Printing

Matt: Yeah. And so we'll jump in and we'll start with offset printing, because that's the one people know the least about. It is the one that is typically behind closed door. But it's also the one, ironically enough, when people think about book printing they're usually picturing what an offset machine would look like –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – or how that process works. Subconsciously, you don't even realize it. But, you know, that’s the ones that you would see on TV or in movies or, you know... Online if you look up printing presses oftentimes what they're showing you is an offset press. But it is the, the lineage of printers and presses that was started with Gutenberg. It's still somewhat the same principles of, of sort of how he did it. It's very much a manual process when you talk about setting a press up, right? You're not individually placing little, tiny little diecast letters –

Lauren: No, you’re not anymore.

Matt: – onto plates, like, like Gutenberg was, although that’s super cool, but. You are creating these, these plates, as it were. And it takes a lot of work. So even just setting up an offset printing job is costly and time consuming. If anybody's ever dealt with offset printing, you may have noticed that even just to get a proof copy of the book, like just to see what it looks like, a proof copy could run you upwards of $500. Sometimes more, depending on the kind of book it is. So it's very costly to set up an offset run. Now, the per unit price is way cheaper than digital. Because once you get that run set up and you start the machines and everything's going, it is a much different process. It is a little less expensive on a per unit basis. And the way that you're, you know, loading a roll of paper and how you're printing everything is, is definitely less costly.

Lauren: Yeah, and we'll get into, you know, the – not necessarily the minutia, but some of the big key distinctions between them and including things like the, the upfront cost and the cost per book or cost per unit. But I do think that that's really kind of an important part that people miss, or don't think about when they think about offset printing. Is part of the reason that it is something that 1. takes a long time and, and 2. involves a lot of like setup and production and upfront cost, is because there is actual setup involved in it. They do have to create physical templates or plates of your book. Every single page of your book has to be recreated before it can then be printed. Which it's not worth doing for a single copy of a book, or even a hundred copies of a book.

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. And –

Lauren: I was trying to think of a... of a good, like, real world comparison, and the only thing that I could think of was screenprinting. Which I think might actually be an even less accessible comparison than –

Matt: Well, you're not totally off there. Like, traditional screenprinting –

Lauren: Well, yes –

Matt: – that’s what I did as a job in high school. It is similar, especially the old traditional way where it's all manual and not automated.

Lauren: I knew that you did that, and I took a screenprinting class when I was in college. But I don't think the average person knows how screenprinting –

Matt: Oh, yeah.

Lauren: So I think that if I was trying to be like, if this doesn't make sense to you, it's like x, y, z process, screenprinting is probably not an accessible frame of reference here.

Matt: No.

Lauren: So I can't help you there.

Matt: Anyways, yeah. It's different in the sense that all jobs are set up differently. Everything is set up in a way that requires a lot more preparation in terms of, of how you create those plates and print those books. Everything has to be printed at once, so you're not going to want to do five copies and then the next day a thousand copies, like. The job is done at once, and then that's it, and then it's on to the next job. And that's also a big differentiator between that and digital. You did note that, you know, when it comes to even terms for like, payment... Again, different from digital, but the way offset works is you have a minimum order quantity you have to meet with your printer. Sometimes it's as low as 2,000 units. It's rare that it's any lower than that because, again, takes a lot of time and money to set up the machines. But if you place an order for 5,000 units, you're paying for 5,000 units, and that's what they're gonna deliver you, is 5,000 units. Again, you know, there's some upfront costs there, obviously, that you have to cover. And it's going to take a little bit longer. The backside of that as well can be costly depending on what you're doing with those 5,000 units. If those units are not going directly to a retail store, then they're probably going to a warehouse somewhere that you're paying for. So you're paying a pallet storage fee for those books to sit in the warehouse. That also means you're paying somebody to fulfill it. Every time an order comes through, somebody has to physically go pull a book or two out of that pile, you know, wherever it's located in the warehouse, and pack it up and ship it. So, there are other things, costs associated with offset if it's not a direct to retail order.

Lauren: Which it very rarely is.

Matt: I wouldn't say rarely, but it's not nearly as common as the fact that a bunch of books get printed then they sit in the warehouse. Typically - like a traditional publisher, for example, a front list title getting released to market. There's a huge initial print run, but at least half of that, if not more, is going directly to the retail stores. Right? So from, you know, let's say Lakeside is printing a couple hundred thousand copies, right? Half of those, they'll ship directly to Barnes & Noble stores, then the rest will go into the warehouse. And those will be sold and fulfilled through the other traditional online means, yeah.

Lauren: Yes. But I think even then, like... I think that a misconception that a lot of people have about offset printing is the fulfillment timeline and saying, oh, you know, if I do – if a book is printed through offset printing, then it's already in inventory. It's readily available. So somebody can place an order and get overnight delivery, and –

Matt: Yup.

Lauren: – get that book immediately.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And, and yes, the fulfillment piece of that is true. Offset, because it is on-hand in inventory somewhere, the fulfillment time it can be faster. But the production time is not faster. And that is a, I think, an element that people miss in a lot of this, because... Like this is one of the reasons that traditionally published books take so long to go to market. This is why there is such a, like, there can be a, sometimes like a full year ahead on the calendar, like they're planning next summer's books right now. And that's because they get sent to the printers like, several months in advance. And they, like they take the production – I'm not saying it takes all of that time to produce them, but they're not produced overnight. They do take time.

Matt: Correct.

Lauren: They are very often being outsourced to printers that are overseas. So they then have to go through transportation. They have to go through customs and all that. We've seen situations before where entire print runs of books have been lost at sea because the shipping containers fell overboard. I'm not kidding, there is at least one example I can think of where this happened.

Matt: There's multiple, yeah.

Lauren: Yeah. And like, and things just go wrong. And, you know, they try to avoid that as much as possible, so they do build in some buffer time to make that possible. But that means that maybe a book is coming out... There are probably books being printed right now that are coming out in October. And...

Matt: Sure.

Lauren: If it takes – even if it takes six weeks for the production and shipping and transportation and all that to get them here, most bookstores do not have the storage capacity –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – to hold those books for six weeks in their inventory. In their, like, back inventory. So they do have to be warehoused somewhere until it's time for them to go out on shelves.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And especially some of these, like really big, highly anticipated titles. They actually get pretty strict about making sure they're not released early. At least one book that came out when I worked at the bookstore that I worked at, we actually had to keep them locked in an office. Like we weren't even allowed to keep them in our usual, like just employees only, like –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – overstock area. They had to be behind a locked door until the official launch date. We weren't allowed to unbox them or anything. And like, you know, that's rare, but it does happen. So there is a lot of that going on.

Matt: I don't see that as a disadvantage though, to offset.

Lauren: No, no no, I don’t either. I think it’s –

Matt: The production time. People plan for that.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: But where it becomes a disadvantage is when you're talking about backlist or a title that goes viral.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: So that lead time, it is what it is. And the publisher's plan for that, you're right. If you plan for it, it's fine. Where it really hurts publishers or the industry is again, where, where you've run dry on copies and so backlist suffers when it goes out of print. Or maybe you've got 500 copies left in the warehouse, you're on the tail end of the lifespan of that book, and then some TikToker decides it's the best book on the planet. And now all of a sudden, you've got 10,000 orders for it and you've got no units. Offset is not going to be able to help, because it's going to take months.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: Even if it takes only, let's say three to four weeks cause you've got a really good relationship with your offset printer. That's three to four weeks that orders aren't getting fulfilled and people are going to ask for their money back. So.

Lauren: We talked about this with, with the episode we did on Heated Rivalry.

Matt: Yup.

Lauren: This is exactly what happened. They did not anticipate the show getting picked up by HBO. The book sales skyrocketed overnight. They had already done kind of a smaller print run a few years earlier, and it took them a full month to get those books back out onto shelves.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And you know, I don't think that's necessarily a problem. And I'm not saying that those things are a problem or a disadvantage, cause I agree it is intentionally designed to, to plan ahead for, for –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – that time and stuff like that. So I don't necessarily think it's a disadvantage of offset printing. But I do think it's something that people tend to overlook. And, and not understand that like, that's why it takes – that's why the speed to market is not as good or not as quick as it can be. That's why there are a lot of additional expenses that might be accrued, whether it's transportation and shipping expenses, customs expenses, warehousing expenses, stuff like – like there are other things that go into it. It's not just –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – we're, we're running off 10,000 copies of this book. You gotta pay upfront for the printing of those, but then you can sell them and make more of a profit on them because it's a lower cost per unit.

Matt: Yeah.

[12:29] – Digital Printing

Matt: Digital printing, on the other hand. So. What's more commonly referred to as print-on-demand, but it really is digital printing. Because digital printing can also do longer runs than just book of one or book of five or, you know. Digital printing is just a different type of machinery, a different type of printing. Now, it is not good for a long run like offset, but. Anyways, the distinctive differences are digital printing, they're different machines. You're not running plates. You don't have this archaic way of setting up a job. You can load up 500 jobs onto one machine, because it's all software, it's all just files. And large digital printing machines can handle that. And they can run, you know, an order that has three books in it. Right behind that will be an order that has one book, right behind that is an order that has five books in it, and it doesn't really matter. The types of machines that the, that you utilize – again, they'll set up either sheet-fed machines or big role-fed machines. But it all comes down to how you're slicing and dicing it after it comes off the line.

Lauren: Yeah. And as the name suggests, it's pulling that information directly from a digital file. It's not actually like transferring it from –

Matt: Correct.

Lauren: – a plate onto a sheet or a roll of paper. It is pulling that, that information directly from hopefully your print-ready PDF. But you know, that's, that’s a different –

Matt: Well, print-ready something. But yeah.

Lauren: Yes. Well, yes. Also, as always, gonna take this opportunity to plug our Life of a Book video. Because –

Matt: Yeah, it does give you a little glimpse into what it’s like.

Lauren: It does. If we're talking about all this and you're having a hard time picturing it, I would definitely go check that, check that video out. I’ll have it linked in the show notes. It kind of gives you like a really, like, actual visual understanding of what this all looks like.

Matt: Within digital printing, there's basically two kinds, it's toner and inkjet. And it refers to the way that the print is actually achieved. And so toner, think about the way old school copy machines would work with a dry powdered toner – or, you know, ink, but it was dried and powdered – and it utilized heat and electromagnetic static and things to, to make the, the images and the letters stick to the page. Inkjet is exactly what it sounds like, and it's very much similar to the way your home printer might work.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: You have liquid inks that are put into the paper, the fibers of the paper. Both are great ways to do it, but it's important to understand the two different types and what they're best for and, you know. If you're working directly with a printer, which is probably rare these days, but understanding the difference between the two and, and where the advantages may lie within one or the other might help you decide which printer you end up using. Or at least better understand why, you know, you might order copies of your books from one company that is most closely aligned with the rainforest, and you might order copies of your book from us, and maybe copies from Ingram, and it's highly plausible and possible that they'll all three have slight differences in color or interior printing and things like that. And sometimes that's why the difference between whether they were using a toner machine for that particular order or an inkjet machine.

Lauren: We talked about this – if this sounds familiar, we talked about this in episode 117 that we did on The Anatomy of a Print Book. And we showed that Matt had like four or five different copies of his book that were all the exact same files, printed at different places –

Matt: That’s right.

Lauren: – and they were all different colors. And that's literally what it was. Exact same file. Exact same – no difference between them, just printed on different types of printers at different –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – printers.

[16:10] – Differences in Upfront Cost

Matt: So digital printing is different from offset in other ways too. Most notably terms and, and payment models, and the way that you would, you know, do an order for a digitally printed book. Unlike offset, you're not paying for a large run, you're only paying for what was ordered. So if somebody orders three copies of the book, that's what you're paying for to be produced, is three copies of the book. If you're doing it right, there's no inventory or warehousing, so no fees associated with those. Now the cost per book is going to be higher, right? Because these print machines and these printers and these facilities and – they're set up to do one book at a time, but that takes, you know, a more sophisticated level of machinery at times and other things that are factored into that cost. But if you need that speed, cause you need to get to market fast. Or you just want to utilize this model because it's more cost effective for you, that's the trade off, right? And we've talked about this before. When you factor in all the costs associated with, you know, doing a print run of 5,000 offset and then all of the warehousing and overhead and fees. Versus the per unit cost of a POD or digitally printed book... Oftentimes the digital actually still comes out on top. The POD model. It just depends, so.

Lauren: Yeah. Especially when you think too about the things like – not, not just all the additional costs that go in there, but with an offset printed print run... if you order 10,000 copies of that book and you only sell 6,000 of them. It doesn't matter if the cost per book was lower.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Out of that 10,000, you only sold 6,000 of the 10,000.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So you're eating the cost of those other 4,000 books. And that's... you don’t – that's, that's a gamble you take in advance. You don't, you don't know until you're already there and you're already kind of sunk in on that one.

Matt: I mean, even the best sales teams at publishing houses and estimators... They get very close, but they don't often get it 100% right. So yeah, more times than not, you're either on one side of the fence, where you don't have enough copies, cause the book actually did better than you expected. Or like you said, it actually undershot performance-wise, and you're stuck with a couple thousand copies or more. And now, you know, you have to pay for warehousing, you have to pay for fulfillment when they do sell. And then there's an obsolescence rate that's on top of that, that people don't think about. For every month that those books sits on a shelf, they are depreciating in value. And so, you know, often times that has to be written off as well. So.

Lauren: Yeah, especially in, traditional publishing, if it's something – if you did a 10,000 copy print run of a hardcover, and the hardcover print run doesn't sell through. And then you do eventually put out the paperback... once the paperback print run comes out, those hardcovers are double extra obsolete.

Matt: For sure.

Lauren: At this point. You know? So it's, it absolutely can be something that really, really is a gamble. I do also want to just emphasize a little bit that, as we've talked about – and I know we've made this point before – but as we're talking about one of the differences between these is that digital printing, you don't have inventory on-hand. I want to clarify that we mean you don't need to have inventory –

Matt: Right.

Lauren: – on hand. You are welcome to if you want to. If you say, I want to order 200 copies of this book so that I can quickly fulfill orders just in case I ever need them.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: That is entirely your prerogative.

Matt: Especially around the holidays, we see that.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: We would probably encourage you to do that, situationally. Sometimes it is good to have, like, a few on hand, just in case you need them last minute for an event or something.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But the need isn't there. As opposed to offset, you are going to need to figure out how to store and, and manage...

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – those books.

Matt: Because again, the alternative is that you risk not having enough books –

Lauren: Right.

Matt: – to fulfill. So, yeah. So when we talk about, again, upfront costs, some of the other associated expenses that come along with that, cost per unit or cost per book. Offset, higher upfront costs, because you're paying for the whole run upfront. There's usually minimum order quantity. And then again, if you did it right, you're going to have some units that need to be warehoused. And there's, there's fees that are associated with that. So when you factor all that in and then you divide it by the number of books that you ordered, you get a per unit price. Again, you can compare that per unit price to digital. Which, digital, the per unit price is going to be higher than the per unit price in, in many cases, not always. But you don't have all those upfront fees. And like you said, unless you choose to, you don't have to put yourself in a situation where you need to have inventory on hand so that you can fulfill orders that you may have underestimated or overestimated.

Lauren: Yup.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: I mean, even, even if you do in that situation, like, I could easily store 200 books in my apartment. I could not store –

Matt: Well technically –

Lauren: – a 10,000 copy print run in my apartment.

Matt: Technically, you do have 200 plus books in your apartment.

Lauren: I have 700.

Matt: Yeah. So.

Lauren: So what's a few hundred more?

Matt: Right. So if anybody needs a fulfill or just hit Lauren up. I can't promise it'll be cheap.

Lauren: I can – no I’ll, I'll rent out, I'll rent out my guest room.

Matt: And I can't promise that each book won't be delivered with cat hair.

Lauren: I do not allow Rose in the guest room, so that I can keep – because I have some –

Matt: How rude.

Lauren: Well, she does hate it. That is fair. But some of my, like, recurring visitors, including both my best friend and my dad, are allergic to cats. So I try to keep that space as cat-free as possible.

Matt: Very nice of you.

Lauren: I am nothing if not a considerate host. So yeah, if anyone needs to rent out my cat-free guest room for your book fulfillment, we can negotiate a deal.

[22:02] – Differences in Fulfillment Speed

Matt: It’s a good point you make, though. Again, you know, not to harp on inventory too long, but it is an important one. I mean, you know, in my opinion, it's probably the only drawback to print-on-demand and digital, is that you will be in situations where you want speed, you know? Delivery speed. And while a really good digitally-produced book, print-on-demand, can be created in two days... Then there's still shipping time. So, you know, minimum you're talking four to five days if you do regular shipping. And that's if you've ordered from a facility that's relatively close to you, so. It is the one drawback. And yes, it is where offset has some advantage. If you've planned appropriately, right? You've ordered the proper amount. They are in a warehouse. They can be fulfilled overnight, like you said. So, you know. The holidays we see a lot of this. People will try to stock up inventory, whether they're POD or offset. You want to be able to fulfill those things in time. So I think the, the main area where print-on-demand still has a little work to do is, is speed. But I think for what can be produced these days on a digital printing machine, you know – whether it's toner or inkjet, doesn't matter – is pretty amazing. If that takes two days to do it I'm, I'm okay with that, for the most part. It's, you know, when you factor in transit time. So.

Lauren: I do think there's also... while yes, there are plenty of examples of being able to get overnight delivery and fulfillment from books that you're ordering online if they're not –

Matt: Oh, yeah yeah.

Lauren: – digitally printed. There are also plenty of examples where it does still take just as – I just ordered, and I'm not throwing shade at Bookshop.org. I'm a huge fan of Bookshop.org and their business model and what they do, and their, the anti-Amazon of it all. But I pre-ordered a book from Bookshop.org like two months ago. The book came out last Tuesday. It was delivered to me the following Monday. That took a full week. I ordered it two months ago. There's no reason that it could not have been delivered to me on the day that it came out.

Matt: Or the day after.

Lauren: Or even like the day after, the day after that. So pre-ordering something, ordering it from a bookstore that has inventory on hand, or –

Matt: A retailer, yeah.

Lauren: – a retailer that has inventory on hand, does not necessarily guarantee you're going to get it any faster. So I agree that yes, absolutely the production and fulfillment could be faster in digital printing.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But offset printing does not guarantee any –

Matt: Well.

Lauren: – any faster delivery time either.

Matt: Then we get into, you know, differences in carriers –

Lauren: Sure.

Matt: – and the way people fulfill things. Like, you know, that could have just been the fact the Bookshop was inundated with orders and, and then there's carrier delays. But yeah, in general, it's not a bad point to make. You know, my favorite company, Amazon. I don't know about you guys, but I don't use them much anymore. But even when I do, like – and right before I stopped using them – I really wasn't getting things in two days or less, you know? Stuff that was marked Prime, like oh, you'll get this tomorrow, was actually showing up two and three days later. Cause there was some issue, or it just, it didn't show up two days from that point. So. You know, I think there's only so much you could control when it comes to, the delivery system, you know, carriers. Even Amazon who owns basically their own logistics now, it's just gotten so out of hand, and there's just so many things that can affect delivery. So yeah, I agree, I think... I still think speed is, is probably the biggest drawback to, to POD.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: But I agree with you in the grand scheme of things, if you look at, you know, timeline from when you order a book or just in general, like... Yeah, like, that's such a stupid problem to have. I gotta wait a couple more days for my book, boohoo.

Lauren: I know.

Matt: I think it's, it’s when you're in a situation where you need, you know, 100 books to make it to this event by this date or something like that. Where again, you have to plan really well if it's going to be digital or POD. Because oftentimes you can only have things delivered to an event in a certain window of time, or – So I think that's where it can get a little more complicated. But yeah.

Lauren: Yeah, I, I completely agree. There's definitely, it can be... and especially something like print books because you're right. Like, when we talk about you're using them for an event, or you're using them for, for something that is time-stamped in some way or another... There are a lot of additional logistics that you have to navigate. And I understand that can be very complicated when you can't guarantee a specific, like production and, and fulfillment window.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But I do also want to say in defense of digital printing, I don't want to see us – or anybody for that matter – rush the production process –

Matt: Right.

Lauren: – to the point where it deteriorates the quality.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And I think that that is something that is really important to understand. We've talked about this before, for sure. You can always tell when a, when a digitally printed book was rushed through production because it looks like it was rushed through. There's – the, the paper's wavy because the ink didn't dry all the way. The binding might be weaker because the glue didn't dry all the way.

Matt: Or the opposite. I've seen books where the spine was really, like, lumpy and odd and thick because there was too much glue applied in there. And, yeah, there's a lot of reasons why you don't want to have the production of your book rushed.

Lauren: Right. Right.

Matt: I will say this, though, there are some people who just don't care. And that's okay. They just want their books as inexpensive as possible. And, and, you know, I think for certain books or certain creators or their audiences, maybe they're not overly concerned with the quality as well. Like it's, it's considered just this cheap sort of way to get some content into somebody’s hand. Like, I understand that. But at the end of the day, you know, whether you realize it or not, that book that you're putting in somebody's hand, that's your reputation. So.

Lauren: Oh, absolutely.

Matt: Yeah. And I've also, recently, maybe a week ago, I picked up a book in Barnes & Noble from an author that I like. It felt so cheap. Like, I was actually dumbfounded at how cheap this paperback felt. And it was, it was a Penguin Random House, you know –

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: – title. And it was just like, man, I know the industry's trying to cut corners in some ways, but the paper itself was as thin as, like, Bible paper. And 100% the – even the cover, though, like, it didn't feel like traditional paperback cover stock. It felt like half of that. Like, I was –

Lauren: I have noticed that.

Matt: – and the price on the book, by the way, was still 19.99. And I guarantee you, I promise you, not only was that book offset print, but it probably cost them a dollar or less, based on the quality of that book.

Lauren: Yes, I have, I have noticed this too. Target's been doing a line of, repackaged romance novels that are like, a slightly – a Target exclusive cover or sprayed edges or something like that. And they did one of my favorites, and I picked – one that I already have a couple of different copies of – and I picked it up the other day to be like, ooh, I’m gonna add this – and I picked it up and immediately put it back down. Because the second I touched it, I was like, eugh. Eugh. Like, that is – that feels so cheap that I don't actually want it.

Matt: Yeah. If you're going to cut some costs, like, fine, I get it.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: But you need to, you need to adjust your retail price accordingly.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Like you can't be either charging people 20 bucks for a book that there's no way it costs more than a dollar to produce that pile of garbage. Anyways.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Okay, let's move on.

Lauren: Okay.

[30:05] – Differences in Production Flexibility

Lauren: Yeah. I think one of the other big differences that is really valuable for people, despite the production timeline and production fulfillment delays and everything, one of the big differences that can be really valuable for people between offset and digital is the flexibility in the end result of the book. If you're getting a book offset printed... whatever the book looks like when those plates are created is what every single copy in that print run is gonna look like. So if your book has already gone to production –

Matt: That's best case scenario.

Lauren: Well, yes. Cause there are absolutely also like, there will be issues where like, a plate will get, like, shifted, or –

Matt: Or the paper, yeah.

Lauren: – misaligned, or – yeah, something gets misaligned and the thing gets printed crooked, and maybe 100 copies get printed that way before anybody notices and fixes the –

Matt: Well –

Lauren: – print run. If you’re lucky.

Matt: Yeah. Sometimes it doesn't get noticed. And those 100 copies are in the boxes –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – as you’re unpacking them.

Lauren: Yes they are. But you'll see this with the interior files too. Where, you know, maybe somebody'll do a last pass through, or maybe the books have gone to production around the same time that the ARCs have gone out to reviewers. Because ARCs are produced differently. That's –

Matt: Correct.

Lauren: – they are a little cheaper, and they are – that's why, and that's why they're not the finished product, usually. And let's say you get ten reviewers back saying oh hey, I noticed like a pretty massive typo on page XYZ. If the offset print run has already gone into production, all those books are going to be printed with that typo in it, and there's nothing you can do about it. And there have also been examples in the past of an entire print run having to get trashed and reprinted, because there was a major print error there. I've seen books where like, the first two chapters were switched when the book was being printed and so all 10,000 copies – or however many copies of it – had that print error in it. And that's a big enough issue that it's worth reprinting.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And, and they're not reprinting it for free. So that is something that can be a factor, for sure. As opposed to digital printing. It's pulling from whatever the most recent file for that book is. So if you notice an issue, or if you notice an error, or you want to make an adjustment or an amendment to your book’s content, you just immediately upload that new file and the next copy of that book that's gonna be printed is going to have those, those updates in it.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So –

Matt: So.

Lauren: I think that flexibility is a big deal.

[32:48] – Differences in Waste and Sustainability

Matt: All of the things that we just spoke about, there's a, there's an underlying, you know, benefit to, to POD and digital that we haven't touched on yet. And it is inherently the opposite of some of the things you just talked about, which is: when you're forced to print so many copies at once. 5,000, 10,000, whatever it is. Inherently there's more waste, right? So we talked about those books that sit in the warehouse, or books that get, you know, printed incorrectly, or – there's, there's a, there's a large amount of waste, you know, that happens. Where books, for whatever reason, that they didn't sell or there was something wrong, they get pulped or recycled. Recycled if we're lucky. There's a lot of ways that happens when you're forced to print something in scale, at mass. When you print on demand, clearly there's not. So there's an environmental impact, I think, that is not talked about enough. It is a little more in Europe than it is in the States. But when you talk about print-on-demand, there is a big, big, big, significant sort of value there when it comes to, you know, being sustainable and being eco-friendly.

Lauren: We actually did an episode a couple of years ago on sustainability in –

Matt: Oh, good.

Lauren: – publishing. It's – I will have it linked in the show notes. It was, I want to say it was episode like, 60-something. So it was a few years ago. And we actually – Lulu is a certified B Corp. And we talked about that a little bit in that episode, I think. And we have been re-certified since then. So that is not something that has changed.

Matt: Right.

Lauren: But everything – I don't, I just don't like people to think they're being misled. And they go listen to that episode and they're like well this is three years ago, like, who knows what they're doing now?

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But yes, there is a, there is a big, big difference in the, the sustainability practices.

Matt: Now, to be clear, there are a lot of offset printers –

Lauren: Sure.

Matt: – that use sustainable practices when they print. They use environmentally friendly inks.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Oftentimes their paper is just as FSC-certified as any other papers, things like that. It's what's created as a result of those large minimum orders and things. That's where a lot of the waste actually comes in. So I'm not saying that offset print facilities have not come up to speed with, you know, some of their practices being sustainable. Certainly some of them have, and a lot of them still haven't. They're very large, old facilities. But nonetheless, it's way more environmentally friendly and sustainable to use print-on-demand if you can, right?

[35:28] – Comparing Print Book Quality

Matt: So again, up to this point, we've talked a lot about the differences between the two. Obviously we skew very heavy digital print-on-demand. But we've said this already, and I just want to remind people again, we're not saying either or. We're not saying offset is bad. We're just trying to give you the differences. Of course we're going to be skewed towards digital, print-on-demand, but there absolutely is time – is a time and a place for offset, where you can't use POD. It's just, it wouldn't make any sense. And we're going to get into some of that now, right?

Lauren: Yes. And I want to start with... I didn't want to put this in the section about the differences between them. But I think that a preconceived notion that a lot of people have about the differences between offset and digital printing is quality-based. And –

Matt: Right.

Lauren: And that digital printing is an inferior quality to offset printing. And that may have been true 10, 15, 20 years ago. But that margin of quality –

Matt: 5 to 10 years ago –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – that was probably still true.

Lauren: Sure. But that margin of quality has really narrowed –

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: – significantly. And I think that I'm, I'm going to laugh at the joke that I wrote myself, my completely lukewarm take – not hot take, because it's not a hot take. My very, very lukewarm take here is that the average consumer, the average person picking up a book in a bookstore and reading it, could not possibly tell the difference between a book that was offset printed and a book that was digitally printed.

Matt: I'll give you a hot take.

Lauren: Kay.

Matt: A non lukewarm one.

Lauren: Love to hear it.

Matt: I've literally put copies of offset and digital in front of publishing people. Yes. Like, industry people. Some of them supply chain people. And they've not been able to tell the difference.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: So yeah, I don't think that's a lukewarm take. Well it could be.

Lauren: I just think it's – it's not a hot take because it's not news.

Matt: Sure.

Lauren: This isn't, this is not news to anybody. I think that's, like. I mean it's something we've said before for sure. But I think any indicator that your book is digitally printed or self-published is nothing to do with the print quality or how it was printed. It is everything to do with the design choices that you made or didn't make when putting that book together. That makes it look amateur. But if you had a, somebody who knew what they were doing, design a book. Like, everything professionally industry standards, exactly to a tee. And you had it printed as a large offset print run and you had it digitally printed. I guarantee you the average person would not be able to tell which one was which.

[38:13] – Choosing Offset vs Digital

Matt: Now the outliers here are things like if you're doing a special edition coffee table book that's got, you know, all the bells and whistles. So sprayed edges, foil on the cover, or maybe it's actually a linen cover with lots of embossing. And, you know, there are just things that digital printing can't do. Right?

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: So, we're not talking about, you know, that 15% of books that are outside of the, the normal everyday books that you're going to find in a local bookstore or online. Those cannot be done digitally. And so that's different. But everything else, yes, 100%.

Lauren: Which I think is actually really important. And I think mentioning that here is really important. Because I think a lot of people, if they didn't know that those kind of special edition with special featured books.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: If they didn't know already that offset printing is the way that you do that, you might assume oh, this is a special edition, this has more bells and whistles. It's got to be a smaller order that has been digitally printed and has more, like, hands-on... And that's not, that's not true at all. That's where a lot of those books come is offset. And it's very hard to do that, to reproduce that –

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: – with digitally printed books.

Matt: Now there are some things you can do –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – with digital. Like special things. Like, you can do foil covers, and you can do sprayed edges. You can even do a linen wrapped, you know, hardcover book with a dust jacket, we do those. Where you're limited with digital is, you know, let's say you're doing something that's a linen wrapped cover. You can't do a bunch of beautiful embossing or debossing and other things. Like that's, that's a craft. That's something that has to be done, most of the time, at an offset printer. There are other things that digital printing just can't do. But yeah, I mean, that just falls into the column of things that offset is good for.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Versus what digital is. So.

Lauren: Yes. Absolutely. And I think that, you know, there are absolutely times where offset, it does make more sense to do that. A lot of these big titles, I mean, there are some really, really massive book releases that are very highly anticipated in the next year. Probably zero of them that you're interested in, but.

Matt:I’m sure.

Lauren: They've recently announced the next ACOTAR book, the Sarah J Maas, Court of Thorns and Roses series. I can't wait to see what the numbers on that print run look like. That's going to be tens of thousands, if not hundreds.

Matt: Yeah, it’ll be –

Lauren: For sure.

Matt: I mean, the last one was insane.

Lauren: Right. And, you know, obviously no one is saying you guys should digitally print those. That would be absurd. That is absolutely a situation where the, the offset printing makes a lot of sense. I don't think they're going to be in danger of not selling through that print run, you know? There are other examples where offset can be a really great solution too. So I do think that, you know... I don't want to come off as a hater in any of this.

Matt: I'm not a hater. I’m –

Lauren: I’m not at all. I think there's absolutely a time and place for it.

Matt: Yeah. And again, real quickly we'll just run through, like. Offset printing is best for when you need to do large quantities of books. So you need to get that cost per unit down, especially if the bulk of them are not going to be warehoused, so it does, it does keep your cost per unit really low. If you do need to have on hand inventory for some reason or another, again, obviously you're going to keep a a lower cost per unit upfront. So, you know, it's good for that. Where you need to do like really, you know, complex types of products, like we just talked about, offset is really good for that. You know, it has its place. It's not, it's not completely out of place in, in the lexicon of printing. I think we're more and more getting to a place, you know, especially consumer-wise and with direct reader and all of this stuff, where offset will play less of a role. It will probably only play a role really with, you know, again, highly anticipated front list titles. Because we're getting to a place where it is more cost effective to do short runs, you know, 500 to a couple of thousand, on digital instead of, of offset. But, you know, conversely. Digital is really good for, you know, when you don't need a massive amount upfront. When you want to be able to sell, you know, and fulfill one book at a time because you're selling direct. Or if you've got a backlist that you don't want to, you know, warehouse a ton of backlist copies, because they're going to sit there for years and just, you know, ship a few copies per month. That's what digital's really good for. You switch your backlist over to digital and then you're only, you know, printing them and shipping them as they get ordered. You've talked about there are minimal risks associated with digital printing in terms of if a mistake is made or... You know, even a title where you know you're going to have to do, you know, maybe it's nonfiction and you're gonna have to do a revision each year.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: You know what I mean? Like, it's just so much easier to update those files and every copy ordered after that is now the updated and revised edition. I think that's important for certain industries.

Lauren: Also a minimal, minimal risk in terms of upfront cost. There too, I think that's a really big one. If you are somebody – whether you're taking a gamble on a debut author or you're taking a gamble on, I have historically only ever published my content in ebook format, and I'm trying the print book thing and seeing if –

Matt: Or even geographically or anything else for that matter. Experimentation –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – is so much more cost effective and easier to do when you're doing it digital.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Again.

Lauren: Absolutely.

Matt: Format, genre, geographical, you know, limitations. Any of that stuff. Yeah, you’re right.

Lauren: Right. Right. Even things like we – the episode that Paul and I did together recently, when we talked about how you could maybe experiment with producing a large print edition of your book. If you want to just test that out, if you have the time to reformat your book just enough to make it a large print edition... just because it exists doesn't mean it's going to cost you anything. Other than the time that it took you to do that formatting.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So if it winds up being something that it turns out, yes, librarians are excited to hear that you have a large print edition of it. And and you can print those out and get them shipped out to a library immediately. Great, fantastic. And if six months from now, nobody has ever ordered a single copy of your large print edition, you didn't waste any money on it.

Matt: Yeah. No that's a good point, too. And I don't think it's just libraries anymore that are interested in large print.

Lauren: No no no no.

Matt: I think that was the case.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: But anyways. Yeah. Yup.

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, something like that it's just, it's nice to be able to experiment in whatever way you're choosing to experiment with print books and, and not have to worry about is this a gamble that's going to cost me $10,000? I don't know why I keep reverting back to the number 10,000.

Matt: I don't know either.

Lauren: I don't know where this is coming from.

Matt: I don't know.

Lauren: It's fine.

Matt: It’s interesting.

Lauren: It's fine. Whatever.

[45:29] – Understanding Offset and Digital

Matt: I think, I think what's important here is to understand that, you know, again. A., both have their place.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: You know, offset and and digital. But B., understanding that more and more digital is becoming more cost effective, more efficient, and quite frankly, more widely accepted. And so you're even starting to see traditional publishing companies utilizing print-on-demand for a lot more things like backlist fulfillment and selling direct. So that you have, you know, a small handful of larger publishing companies that are also experimenting with selling direct from their website. And they're using – most cases – POD to, to support that, print-on-demand. Unless it's a front list title. If it's a front list title, it's rare that they're selling it direct. But in the off chance they are, then it's, you know, being pulled from warehoused copies and shipped, but. So it is becoming more and more, I think, embedded into the publishing world at the traditional levels. Which means you're just going to see it more and more trickling down into the smaller publishing, imprints and houses. As well as, you know, obviously continued through indie publishing and indie creators and stuff.

Lauren: Yeah, I think that's kind of the... Not the, not the end point of all of this, but this is the continuation of this conversation beyond just why would, would I as an author care about the difference between these two things? Kind of framing and understanding that not only are these two print methods not in competition with each other, but we are actually seeing more and more instances where they are being used to complement each other.

Matt: Right.

Lauren: And as this, like, supplemental – This was the whole thesis of the Heated Rivalry episode. They would not have had this one month gap in the market where the book wasn't available if they had made the books available through POD or digital printing.

Matt: While waiting for another run of, yeah.

Lauren: While waiting for that, that print run to be done. And if that is a great way for people to keep, or publishers or authors or whoever, to keep backlist or out of print titles in the market without having to deal with all the inventory management and upfront costs and production timelines and stuff like that.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: That, I think – I think that's a really great solution for using these two together. And I think we're seeing more and more publishers do that.

Matt: Yeah. That's fair.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: I just realized that we haven't touched on the big differences between toner and inkjet in terms of, you know, why would you even have both –

Lauren: Okay.

Matt: – if one’s better than the other? And so, I think real briefly, we should just touch on the fact that we did talk about the difference in toner and inkjet and how they're actually applied, like the ink itself and what that means. Toner being a dry ink, and inkjet being a wet ink, and the way that they're applied. Where that matters, and like the example you gave or we talked about, like, even with my book, how from a variety of different printing outlets, I got a variety of different colored covers and even some of the interior files. Toner, because it's a dry ink that sits on top of the paper, you're often going to get a brighter, more crisp color. For the most part. And toner, you know, while it produces a really crisp and clean black & white too, especially like for interior text, it can cost slightly more. So if you're working with a printer that that really does charge differently based on whatever machine is running your job, toner can cost slightly more than inkjet job. One of the benefits of inkjet – while it might produce a slightly duller color, depending on what type of machine they're running it on. And these machines, by the way, are again, produced by some of the same ones that make the one in your home. We're talking about HP and Canon and some of these others, Ricoh and – But inkjet actually is a little faster and a little cheaper to use. And will produce really crisp and clear and clean colors and black & whites as well. But because the ink sits into the page, the page absorbs it. It inadvertently, at times, will also mute the colors down just a teeny bit. So, you know, if you get copies of your book from different outlets like I did, and the colors are off slightly, in many cases it's because one was using toner and the other was using inkjet. Now obviously sometimes it could be as simple as the machine was run out of ink and they didn't, you know. But nonetheless, understanding that, you know, if you're dealing directly with a printer – which, again, is rare, but if you are, there are slight differences in the, in toner versus inkjet. Mainly, again, colors and cost.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Yeah, this is not something that you will often have the ability to control.

Matt: Correct.

Lauren: You don't get to choose, in most cases, whether your digitally printed book is being printed on inkjet or toner. But it is something that if you are trying to get to the source of... maybe why does the color look different in my proof copy than it does on the screen that I'm looking at? And you're trying to figure out –

Matt: Yup.

Lauren: – why that is. Maybe you do some research and you realize, oh, the printer that I ordered this from, turns out they use XYZ type of printer, so I could change my colors a little bit to account for that. Or that just explains, I don't have to change anything, but that explains it's not an error –

Matt: Yup.

Lauren: – it's not anybody's error.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: It's just an explanation for why that might be the case. So.

Matt: Yeah.

[51:22] – Episode Wrap Up

Matt: Now I think we got it all covered.

Lauren: No.

Matt: No?

Lauren: We still have to cover the most important thing in this whole episode.

Matt: Okay?

Lauren: And that is: men who yearn have been brought back. For anybody who's not watching this episode, I did successfully manage to acquire my very own Bring Back Men Who Yearn shirt.

Matt: Oh, I thought you made that.

Lauren: No no.

Matt: It looks like a shirt you made.

Lauren: I did not make this.

Matt: Oh.

Lauren: I did not steal any valor from the original creator.

Matt: Valor is probably a strong word, but go ahead.

Lauren: But yes, this is, this is the shirt that I wanted so badly after... Not even, I’m not even gonna say after US Book Show, because I wanted it long before –

Matt: No it was prior to that. Yeah.

Lauren: But.

Matt: I think you saw it again at US – somebody wearing it?

Lauren: Well it was written up in a Cosmo article after US Book Show. But it is in reference to a book that my best friend was the editor for. So I've been desperately trying to get one of these for like a year now. And the book came out recently, and she texted me and was like, hey, I have an extra shirt, do you want it?

Matt: I kind of take issue with it, I feel like it's unfair. I think, I think men still yearn. We just yearn for different things now.

Lauren: Sure.

Matt: So.

Lauren: Well, I'm in the middle of watching Love Island right now, and I'm watching a lot of yearners that are not it, so.

Matt: No no, I mean, like, I yearn for French fries or equipment that works or, you know, things like that. Not, not the Love Island kind of yearning.

Lauren: Yeah no.

Matt: Or the kind of yearning that you're referring to with that shirt. Which I would argue probably closely aligns with the Love Island yearning.

Lauren: Oh, I hope not. That would be such an insult to all of the actual romance heroes out there.

Matt: If those exist.

Lauren: No, no, no, the fictional ones.

Matt: Oh, the fictional. Okay. Those definitely exist. And are very fictional, yes.

Lauren: It’s alright. It's, It's okay. As long as they exist somewhere.

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: Then it's fine. But, yes. Very excited to report that I have finally claimed the shirt. And also that the book that it is referencing is Tropesick by Lauren Okie. And it was fantastic. So, doubling down on that recommendation. If you like men who yearn for romantic heroines in contemporary romance novels, go check it out.

Matt: On that note, while you're checking that out... Like, subscribe, give us a review.

Lauren: Please do.

Matt: Do all those things.

Lauren: Yup.

Matt: And then please, despite what Lauren just talked about, or if you've already listened to the Taylor Swift episode, please still come back and listen next week for another one.

Lauren: Yeah, this one comes out after the Taylor Swift episode.

Matt: I know, that's why I said that.

Lauren: So, yeah. Anyone who's still listening after that episode, welcome back. We really appreciate it.

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: And, and we hope you come back next week for another new episode.

Matt: Absolutely.

Lauren: Yep. And until then, thanks for listening.

Matt: Later.