Printing Your Book

A Print-ready Manuscript

Ready to Print? Your manuscript should be ready to go - professionally edited and laid out, using the interior specifications (font, size, margins, etc) that you planned for your book, and with an eye-catching cover, designed to industry specifications. The cover's height, width, spine thickness, color and image quality, bleed, the ISBN and barcode - All these things make the difference between a professional-looking book and one that looks like it came from your local copy shop.

By now you may have produced a few galley copies. Though a galley usually doesn't have a designed cover, and may not be trimmed to the size your book will be, it should be produced from files which were created in Adobe InDesign, Quark Xpress or another manuscript-layout program. Don't print directly from your MS Word manuscript.

The WingSpan editorial department will use the output from the design software to create .pdf files from which the printer will print. We'll add ISBN, printing, copyright and Library of Congress information as required. If you need layout help, consult our Services page.

We will send you a copy of the final galley via email for your inspection. This will be a pdf file from the printer that will look exactly like your book will look in print.

Once approved, your book will be set up in the Quik-Pub system and your author copies sent to you. If you've chosen the offset option, those should arrive about the same time.

Beyond that, orders are handled automatically. Wholesale orders route through our system and are shipped directly from the printer. The sales and accounting information flows back to our accounting system where it is credited to your account. If you've chosen to use WingSpan's fulfillment services, retail orders are handled in a similar fashion. Your job is now promotion.

Hint: Regardless of which options you've chosen, you should always have at least 10-20 copies of your book on hand for book signings, interviews, to include with review requests, etc.

IV. Begin
Promotion
VI. Distribution
& Fulfillment