The author of successful interior design book series wrote to me with a quandary: she’d like to re-release several of her most successful books through Amazon KDP (Print-on-Demand / POD) but her books were printed around 1997, before the digital age. She has no digital files for the photos or book layouts. The printer destroyed the film they used to create the print layouts before offering that she could purchase it. But some of the books are still selling well, and she’d like to reprint them. She wrote asking for an affordable, realistic solution for getting her books recreated and back onto the market.
What follows is what I recommended for her book, in case it helps any others who are trying to bridge the gap between an analog or pre-digital book and today’s digital printing / print-on-demand market.
(Also, note to all printers: don’t throw away an author’s film before asking him or her first!)
The analog book layouts need to be rebuilt digitally and once this format is achieved, they should be good to go for a long time. The same digital format should work whether you print them on Amazon or run a full offset printing of the books somewhere else. It’s really important to make sure the price you get for re-laying out your books includes you receiving a copy of the working/editable InDesign files (not just the print-ready PDFs) at the end of the project, so you can have those files for any future edits or reprints.
File Preparation
In order to set up the books for printing, I would need:
All the text (including cover, spine, copyright page - everything) in a flowing / editable text file format (Word). The formatting can be very simple (it would be helpful to have bold and italics already implemented, but headers, etc. don’t need to be formatted in any special way, since it is clear from the previous book what formatting is needed.
If you don’t have an original digital copy of the text, OCR scanning should be able to capture most of it (scanning with character recognition turned on, ie: scanning the book pages) but it would have to be checked very carefully before being submitted for layout for any errors.
All the images scanned from the originals in high resolution format. (For print, images need to be at least 300dpi at final size). If the images need color correction, retouching or to be cut to white, this should be done already before the book layout begins. I have a high quality photo editor that I can recommend if you need this.
Any logo images or other graphics other than photos and text, in high quality format.
A pdf or some kind of scan of every page of every book, that shows a clear page edge on at least two sides so that we can match everything, including margins.
The fonts in digital format. I can probably find the names of the fonts if needed, but purchasing them would not be included in the layout costs.
Layout Process
I would ask to have one copy of each book (from the last, pre-digital printing) sent to me before the layout begins so that I can more easily check layout visually.
I would show you a sample of the first ten pages of the book and then proceed with full layout.
Cover and pages would be laid out to match the previous book exactly, unless you need any errors corrected or updates made.
Solid ink colors (like the colors of the titles, or solid color backgrounds) would be matched as closely as possible to the printed book, but then could be checked through ordering a sample of the POD book through Amazon KDP. (Color matching with POD is not an exact process. Each book is printed at a different place or at a different time and the color can vary.)
Layout rate
I would charge for this project on a per page rate, with the minimum order size being one full book. In order to give an official estimate, I would need to see the full scan of every page of the book. My price includes cover set-up, two hours of changes to the book after full layout, and final print-ready and editable files .
If you have a similar situation, with an out-of-print or almost out-of-print book that you want to get back into circulation, send me a message. Whether or not you work with me on the final layout, I’m happy to answer any questions you have about getting your book back into circulation.