Practical stuff about preparing your book or calendar etc

It is really very simple; your book or calendar will only be as good as the material you supply! If you send a low resolution image - we can't improve it (well we can a little but not much).

So for cookbooks we suggest that where possible you get contributors to submit their recipes in word processed format. Get them to type it in a plain font with no formatting (bold or underlining for example) in this format

Title
Ingredients
Method

Remember, to get the contributors to check their own work (it saves you time). And try to get them to standardise on abbreviations like tsp. and tbsp. etc. It makes the whole book more professional.

Once you have all the recipes either burn them to a disc and send them to us or email them to us in batches.

Pictures should be scanned to at least 300dpi and saved as Tiffs, Jpegs or Photoshop files. We can scan your artwork (at no extra cost for reasonable amounts!) if you prefer. Remember that artwork will probably need cleaning up, sharpening and having the levels adjusted. So if you're not comfortable doing that we will do it for you. Artwork should be drawn on nice clean white paper - preferably A4. Bear in mind the orientation of a book - we have had landscape pictures sent with the request that we put it all on a portrait book cover!

Let us have your instructions as to the recipe order and where you want the pictures. You can enclose your instructions or email them - as long as it is clear. e.g. Put Alice's cake picture on page 3

Colour
The cookbook pricing is based on a colour cover and mono text inside. This is the most economical format we have found (well making money is the idea). So we can include mono drawings and photos inside. However, colour is also possible throughout. Because it is more expensive to print the whole book in colour we usually would print these separately and then insert them at the binding stage. So it is more cost effective if you limit colour to a specific part of the book. It is impossible to quote for colour without knowing the exact number of pages. I suggest that you add about 8 - 12 pence per page/per book to the prices in our price if you want to add a few ad hoc colour pages. We will give you a fixed price once we know the total number of pages (which is always different to what you anticipate!). We never require payment until you have a finished proof and know exactly what it is going to cost.

Some people ask if we can print the book throughout in (say) blue instead of black print. Yes, we can but the press needs to be run in full colour and the cost will go up. We would need to quote separately for this.

Don't for get if you want colour to cover the whole page to the edge it is necessary for us to create a 'bleed'. This is an extra 3mm all round that is then guillotined off. So don't let children put important stuff to near the edge of the paper!

Information about fundraising and how to improve your success.

You can make good profits by printing a book, calendar or Christmas cards and selling them. However, the key to making a lot more money is:

Be organised and plan ahead. We (you and us) can't produce a Christmas book in 10 days before Christmas!

Delegate tasks, like sending letters, collecting recipes and getting sponsors. It is a big job.

Try to get either page sponsors or advertisers (or both). If you can get say 40 parents or businesses to sponsor a recipe page (with a credit) at say £10 a page that is £400 that will most likely pay for your book! All the sales are profit. Some schools have sold advertising to local businesses (inside the back cover or even a full colour back cover in some cases).

Do not over order! It may seem strange advice to be coming from a business that makes money selling books - but there is no point you being left with 50 books and not making any money. That said a small reprint, although possible, is comparatively expensive. So try to gauge sales accurately. Start a list of who is going to want the book for Christmas (for example). Get the money up front! Put posters up! Then when you have the proof copy use that as another tool to chase up the one's who have not committed to buying.

More info soon, in the meantime just ask!

John Burton