Bookmobile welcomed a new Xerox Iridesse printer a few months ago and after many rounds of testing, we’re happy to offer even more premium and unique custom printing options for short run book printing. Our new Xerox Iridesse has additional color ports that enable the use of white ink/toner and clear ink/spot varnish. Additionally, the press has been designed to achieve consistent levels of registration when applying multiple passes of ink/toner.
With the addition of white ink and clear ink, we are now able to provide spot varnish. And with the consistent registration the Xerox Iredesse has for multiple passes, we’re able to provide sharp registration when applying digital foil to a cover.
Digital embellishments are a great solution for short runs—they add unique value to the book without the added costs of dies or added production time of stamping.
Spot Varnish
Looking for visual contrast on your cover? Want to highlight design elements? Consider spot varnish!
Spot varnish adds a glossy shine to an area on the cover that you designate. Add spot varnish to the book title or a specific piece of your cover art for visual and tactile contrast that will make your book stand out.
Digital Foil
With digital foil, Bookmobile is essentially printing the foil on the cover. We still offer metal die foil stamps, but digital foil is better for larger areas, intricate designs, and it’s more economical. We offer digital foil in gloss gold, gloss silver, then also CMYK printed foil—we do a pass of gloss silver, then print CMYK over that and the end result is about any color: rose gold, moss green, lavender, etc.
Wick and Arrow by Mary Shaffer, shown below, is a terrific example—the gloss gold foil contrasts perfectly with the teal matte cover, the fine details of the foil are clear, and adding foil to the French flaps didn’t exorbitantly increase her production costs. Buy directly from the author.
White Ink
Bookmobile has always printed black ink or four-color / CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black)—which meant we couldn’t print white. Now we can! Besides just printing white we also get a better result when printing CMYK on a colored cardstock.
We could print 4-color on cardstock in the past, but with a dark color cardstock, 4-color artwork could look muddy. We can now print a pass of white, then another pass of 4-color on top of the white. End result: the artwork is bright and vivid.
Best of Three by Sean Knickerbocker, shown below, is a great example—white ink on buttercup yellow cardstock with another pass of CMYK over the white—the 4-color artwork really pops as a result. Buy direct from the artist.
Uncoated Cover Stocks
Bookmobile offers uncoated covers—white, red, blue, all the colors pictured including the background, which is ginger. We don’t recommend printing CMYK on the black, but white ink, foil, deboss, or emboss look fantastic. These cover options work without any coating or lamination, but our laminations are an option (gloss, matte, soft-touch matte).
More Premium and Unique Custom Printing Options
- Add b&w or color fold-out inserts in a b&w or color interior.
- Emboss or deboss a paperback cover or dust jacket, printed or not printed, laminated or uncoated.
- Add a tip-in to your hardcover case.
- Add Rainbow Antique fly sheets to a paperback.
- Add French flaps. Our standard width is 3” for a trim size of 6 x 9 or smaller, but larger flaps and French flaps on larger trim sizes are available.
- Wrap a paperback with a full or partial dust jacket.
- Wrap a hardcover or paperback with a translucent vellum dust jacket.
- Add translucent vellum interior pages to overlay a guide on a map, printing black ink only or color.
- Print on the inside of the front and back cover, black ink only or color.
- Provide letterpress or screen-printed covers to be bound onto printed interiors.