Good to Know When Printing Journals or Books Overseas

In about 2017, a client of mine asked me to help him figure out how to print a catalog in China because printing in the USA was cost-prohibitive. A few years later, another client asked me to help her figure out how to print a faux leather journal in China. Since that time, more and more of my clients have printed journals or books in China, with me helping them to bridge some knowledge gaps and connect them with known printers. Here are a few “good to know”s about printing in China or overseas that could potentially save you thousands of dollars. Contact me with any more questions, or to work together on designing a book that you want to have printed overseas. And don’t miss previous posts about journal design and printing:

• Designing and Producing a Journal

• Planning Content and Preparing Files for a Journal

• Producing a Journal in a Small Quantity

• Marketing Ideas for Journal Creators

• Case Study - Journal Design for Podcaster and Content Creator

Researching multiple printers can be worthwhile, in particular if you expect to print your journal or book many times.

That said, researching various printers and getting pricing, timelines, shipping costs, etc. from each one takes a lot of time. This is why a lot of my clients appreciate simply being connected with one of the printers that I have worked with before. (While I cannot guarantee that they are the cheapest or fastest, I do know they have proven to be reliable.) One of my clients connected with the printer I recommended but also researched and contacted other printers. She estimated that this additional work took her at least 20 hours—budget that into your project time/costs!

You can ask for a discount to the pricing the printer presents to you.

This does not mean that you will get your discount. But you can ask!

Think about packaging ahead of time.

Do you want your journals to be shipped in sealed plastic bags? Inside a custom cardboard box? Or inside a paper envelope? Do you want the the overseas printer to provide the packaging or will you buy it more locally? Think about this when asking for pricing and design. The printer can often also provide images of boxes or bags they often produce. Here are some example images that one printer sent to me.

Always ask for printed proofs.

In my opinion, it’s too risky to order a journal or book from China after only approving a PDF proof (via email). It may cost about +$200 to get one printed copy of your journal airmailed to you, but it so worth it. I did have one client who found out some pages from his book were missing or out of order, and finding that problem in the printed proof saved him tons of money.

Rounded corners seem to help keep the books from getting as dented. Bags help to keep them from getting scuffed.

One of my clients ordered hardcover journals with square corners and PU (faux leather journals) with rounded corners and noticed that the rounded corner journals had fewer dings and dents. It’s also good to have each individual journal packaged in some kind of bag or wrapper to prevent scuffing during transport.

Ask for a picture of your products before your pay the final fee.

Often the printer will ask for 50% payment before printing begins and 50% after the books have been printed and are being shipped. You can ask for pictures or videos your final books on the pressroom floor or in the shipping area before they ship, just to be sure the final product has really been completed. This is just a small safety measure for you.

Prepare for printing, production and delivery to take longer than you expect.

Printing in China is not for people who are in a hurry. Maybe after the first or second edition of your book, when all the kinks have been worked out, you could place an order in the timeline the printer gives to you. But until then, there will always be some surprises or delays.

Order more books than you think you need.

If you absolutely must have a certain number of journals, order a few extras, or plan on about 10-20% fewer “perfect” copies than what you ordered. 

Learning about shipping options might save you a lot of money.

The printers I have worked with will usually offer an option to ship right to to your door, where they cover the duty and get the books through customs for you. However, if you want to take a more hands-on approach, you can find a shipping service yourself and may save money.

Turn your “problems” into creative marking opportunities.

Printing (whether overseas or locally) presents challenges. One of my clients had a problematic order. While the printer I recommended to her did reimburse her for the damaged books, she was still stuck with a pile of journals with sloppy glue, scuffed covers, etc. She turned this into a marketing opportunity, offering the damaged journals for free or cheap to her online following: a creative way to get her journal out there, make some new connections (who doesn’t want a free journal?) and save wastage.

Plan a lot of lead time for marketing.

While you could ask a digital artist / renderer to mock up images of journals before you receive them, I suggest waiting until the final products arrive to really begin marketing them with actual product photos. You can have all your marketing set up and ready to roll once you can get the photos, ie: book your photographer or have your marketing campaign planned.

Make a plan for distribution ahead of time.

I am often asked about distribution options for journals, for people who don’t want to stock them and ship them themselves. I have heard of Flowspace and Shippo in the USA—maybe this gives you a bit of a head start. Some people send their product to an Amazon warehouse and have it distributed from there.

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MORE TO COME…I hope to update this post periodically with more tips and tricks for printing a journal or book overseas.

I am a book and journal designer with 15+ years of experience in book printing and design, including five years working hands-on in the pre-press department at a book printer and experience designing journals for printing overseas. If you are wanting to get a journal designed or printed, I’d love to talk. Book a live consultation or fill out this journal questionnaire or book questionnaire to get started.

What Is the Best Way to Save Money When Ordering Printing?

While getting printing quotes and ordering printing for a client in the USA this month, I have been thinking about the best way to save money when ordering printing. Even if the money being spent on printing is not coming from my pocket, I hate to see clients paying double or triple as much for a print project simply because they don’t have this one thing. Can you guess what it is?

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

[Photo added to build suspense.]

Saving money when ordering printing is easy if you have time. The top reason that I see printing become expensive for clients is because they haven’t planned enough time for the most affordable printing options. In other words, print projects need to be planned well enough in advance by someone who knows what a reasonable printing timeline is.

Let’s say you’re ordering 5,000 postcards. Printing at the printer down the street might cost twice as much as printing at an online printer. But if you have to pay rush fees and express shipping for your print job at the online printer in order to get the project to you on time, you might as well support the local economy and send your project to the printer down the street, because you’ll end up paying almost the same thing. Planning print jobs with enough time to print them affordably can easily save hundreds of dollars even on a small project like postcards.

The savings become even greater if you are able to plan printing overseas into your timeline for larger projects or larger print runs. For example, that full colour cookbook that might cost $15,000 to print in North America might cost $6,000 to print in India or China…but you need to plan on at least an extra four to six weeks for printing and delivery. And even with printing overseas, shipping can become expensive if you suddenly have to have a quarter of your order sent by air instead of by sea because the timeline is too tight.

If you have time, you have choice. A bit of planning also gives you the time to:

1. Gather quotes from more printers, finding the best price or quality for the price.

2. Research other options that might also save money, like different papers or different formats.

3. Negotiate with the printer that you hope to work with. (This is a benefit of working with a local printer, is that you may be able to negotiate with them and keep your printing local.)

4. Wait for sea or ground delivery instead of air or overnight.

5. Work with your designer in a low-stress way and avoid rush fees from the designer as well.

For a big corporation, saving $100 when ordering postcards or $2,000 when ordering books might not seem like much. But these kinds of savings are especially important for lean start-ups or organizations like non-profits for whom every penny counts!

So, what’s the best way to save money when ordering printing? Good planning — that is, knowing how much time you need to keep the print project from becoming a rush order!

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Thank you for taking the time to read this post! I am happy to help clients source the best printing prices in their neighborhood, online or overseas. If you want to talk about how to save money on your next print project, please write to me through my contact page.

How I Found a Reliable Overseas Printer

Some time ago, a client asked me to assist in sourcing the printing of a large book project overseas, rather than in North America, where it had previously been printed. We had a great experience with the printer we used in North America, but as a start-up, the company’s biggest challenge was their budget for the project. The client wanted to see how printing overseas would compare to printing in the USA again.

Photo by Alex

Here's how I found a reliable overseas printer.

1. Submitted quote requests 

At the recommendation of a former colleague who has also printed overseas, I checked out a website called Print Industry, where you can describe what you need printed, and different printers can bid on your job. You can get a wide range of quotes without having to find and approach each printer yourself. My former colleague had used the site successfully in the past to find an offshore printer for a large project. 

Filling out all the details at Print Industry took some time, but after submitting them, we quickly got quotes from a few printers in the USA and from other countries (China and India). The prices provided by the overseas printers were about ½ or ⅓ of the price of the North American printers. We also requested quotes from a printer in Canada and from the printer in the USA whom we had used previously, for comparison. 

2. Sifted through the quotes

Between the quotes from Print Industry and the other quotes I requested, I received 8 to 10 quotes. I looked through them, primarily checking:

• if the printer understood our project

• how the printer’s price compared to the others’ prices.

I tried not to take into account the less-professional face of the Asian companies (their logos, websites, URLs and graphic design don't usually convey the Western idea of quality), but if their English was difficult to understand, I took that as a red flag.

If there was a printer that I felt didn't understand what we were asking for, but I wanted to give another chance for them to provide a quote, I wrote back with a request for adjustments to the quote.

3. Narrowed it down to the best prospect, a printer in China

In communication with my client, I eventually picked a printer who seemed to have understood our request and whose price was competitive, and started to communicate with them by e-mail about the project. 

4. Communicated regularly by e-mail with the printer in China

It was important to me that this company on the other side of the world be able to communicate clearly in English. Some overseas suppliers I’ve worked with can’t really understand and reply to specific questions and are not able to describe a problem or what they need. But we realized that we had found a professional guy with good English, who responded within a day or so to emails, and answered questions specifically. Green light!

Next, we wanted some proof that the company was real and that they were capable of doing the kind of work we needed. They offered to print a sample for us of the full-colour book file, and to send it to us with some other samples of their work and paper samples. The printing company requested $100 to send us two full-colour samples of our book, other book samples, and paper samples to two addresses (one in the USA, and one to me in Germany). The packages arrived quickly on our doorsteps and the quality of the printed samples was excellent. The cover paper samples they sent us matched the texture of our cover from the last printing.

We always had good communication with the printer. Over the months that we worked together, we had to change some deadlines and request new quotes, but our rep was always good to deal with. If at any point he had become difficult to deal with or hard to get an answer from, we would have taken that as a definite red light and looked for a new printer, but there were no such warning signs.

5. Committed to the printer in China

When the project was finally ready, we pulled the trigger. The client paid the first lump sum to the printer in China. I think the printer asked for an $800 downpayment to order the paper for the project, and then 50% of the balance before the printing began, and 50% before the books were shipped. 

The project experienced various delays on the client’s end, and when the files were finally print-ready, it was Chinese New Year and the factory was shutting down for two weeks for the country’s biggest celebration. This was a significant delay at the end of the project, but it was not the printer's problem, because we had expected to have the book done months before. This was the first time my client spoke on the phone with the rep in China (previous communication had always been by e-mail), and he spoke great English, was apologetic about the delay, and did his best to push the book through as quickly as he could once the factory was running again.

6. Received the printed books from China

We had 500 books sent by air to the USA (about a week for delivery) and the final 4,500 books sent by sea to a port in the USA (about five weeks for delivery). The client had to handle getting the books from the port to the company warehouse, but there may have also been a way to have the books delivered to the client’s doorstep. All in all, we were extremely satisfied with the final product and with the price, which was about ⅓ of what the project would have cost at the printer we used the year before. 

I hope this play-by-play is helpful to you if you're looking for a reliable overseas printer. If you use a bit of caution and common sense, you may find that an overseas printer that fits exactly what you're needing for a particular project.

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Thank you for taking the time to read this post! If you'd like to know more about my experience printing in China, or would like me to be your liaison for a large overseas print project, please write to me through my contact page. If you’re already in communication with an overseas printer, read this post: How to Communicate Clearly With Your Overseas Printer. If you'd like to talk to me about a book project, please take a look at my Book Design services page.

How to Communicate Clearly With Your Overseas Printer

In my last post, I wrote about how to find an overseas printer for large print projects. As I worked long distance again with a printer in Asia this winter, I was reminded of a few things that ensure successful communication with a print representative who is far away, and who is probably not a native English speaker.

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

1. Keep your written messages clear and jargon-free.

   In North American culture, we often start or end e-mails with a bit of small talk. But when you’re working with someone for whom English is not their first language, the more they have to read, the more chance there is of miscommunication or misunderstanding. Keep your e-mails or texts kind but clear and to the point. Don’t use idioms. Re-read messages before sending them to double check for clarity.

2. Make sure all your questions are answered.

   Of course, you need to have a clear contract with your printer — you know that. But if anything is not clear to you about the project, be sure to ask questions until you’re sure you’re both on the same page. It’s legit to ask for paper samples, samples of previous print projects they’ve completed for other clients, or a printed sample to be sent to you. Your overseas print representative should be able to supply almost anything your local printer could supply, just that it will take longer and cost more to ship.

3. Ask for multiple ways to contact your print representative.

   In the world of long-distance printing in Asia, phone numbers, e-mails and websites change more often than with established North American or European printers. If you’re working with a printer that you like, make sure you have at least two different ways to contact your print representative, such as e-mail and phone, or e-mail and WhatsApp.

4. Ask ahead about local holidays or festivals if your timeline is tight.

   Another aspect of working with a long-distance printer is that they celebrate totally different holidays or festivals than you do. When you’re ready to submit your proof changes, they may be taking the train home to ring in the Year of the Pig. When you’re eating turkey dinner, they may be binding your latest catalog. Double check for any holiday dates that might affect your timeline.

5. Don’t hesitate to phone if needed. (But please, check your printer’s time zone.)

   While most long-distance communication these days is done by e-mail or text message, sometimes the clearest way to sort out a misunderstanding or ask a question is by phone. Picking up the phone can smooth out differences; people are more likely to be gracious when they hear a kind voice on the phone.

As you can see, in order to receive the print project on time and done right, it’s essential to communicate clearly with your overseas printer. I hope these tips help you to have a confusion-free experience printing offshore.

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Thank you for taking the time to read this post! If you'd like to know the contact information of the overseas printer I have used, or would like me to be your liaison for a large overseas print project, please write to me through my contact page.