Here at Bookmobile, it’s not only the season for printing bound galleys and ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies) for BookExpo, but it’s also the season for printing yearbooks, student literary journals, and theses as well.
Yes, we’re printing yearbooks!
For instance, we just printed Pawprints for the Town School for Boys in San Francisco. Their yearbook was a 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 paperback, fifty pages, with a 4-color interior on 60-lb. white uncoated stock, and they needed 500 copies. We turned this print run around in two weeks.
We also print many end-of-the-year literary compilations for students as well.
A few of the journals we see are produced by Wendy Holdman, a local design and production manager (who formerly worked at Bookmobile). Wendy works with locals schools like Minnetonka High School to produce the annual Minnetonka Lit Mag, which includes writing and art by the students. Bookmobile can economically add color inserts to a black-and-white interior, so we’re a great fit for journals that include artwork.
Also, every Spring I look forward to seeing a new title from 826LA, a non-profit writing and tutoring program in Los Angeles. We are currently producing We Are Alive When We Speak for Justice—this title is the 2015 Young Authors’ Book Project, a program where students in a Los Angeles-area school partner with 826LA to become published authors. This year’s book is by the students of Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez High School.
We Are Alive When We Speak for Justice is designed by Diana Molleda, and she always produces beautiful books (see last year’s title, Beyond the Gates and Fences, in our Gallery). We Are Alive When We Speak for Justice is a run of 500 copies, with 234 black-and-white pages plus three separate color inserts. The duplexed cover is embossed on the front.
Diana got print files to us on May 8th, and books must arrive in California by May 26th for an event. We sent her an eProof of the embossing die for her okay on May 11th, then ordered the die after her ASAP approval—manufacturing the die is its own cost, so we often like to get an okay on an eProof of the die before we commit to getting the die created. We’re now working on sending Diana hard-copy proofs to receive and approve on May 15th. If all goes according to plan, we can ship books by May 19th, so they will arrive in California by UPS Ground on May 26th. We always attempt to build enough time into the schedule so we can can ship by the most economical method; but if we do run into any issues, as a last resort we can expedite part of the run to make the event deadline (while sending the remainder economically by Ground).
Theses
As for theses, a great example is the Fiber Department Thesis Catalog for the Maryland Institute College of Art. The color interior featured all the students and their work, and the cover is brilliant—they used a large-area blind deboss to simulate a woven texture.
All of the above are fun for Bookmobile to produce—handling a tight deadline is nothing new for us, so that’s usually not where our main focus lies with these jobs. What we really enjoy is seeing the creativity of the students, their writing, artwork, and choices for design, and the print production.
However, schedules are still important, so here are some important tips for deadlines:
- With clean files and and a quick okay to print proofs, our turn is about ten business days (shipping is additional time, of course, and the time in transit depends on where we are shipping to).
- Reprints with no changes take five business days.
- Given the above, count backwards to see when you need to get us files.
- Going to have a tight deadline? Let us know the approximate specs in advances, when we can expect files, and we’ll preschedule your job for a quick turn.
Any other questions? Let me know!