Electronic Files to Printing House

When you send your book to the printing house in an electronic format, you are taking advantage of the latest technology to produce a high-resolution book. The resulting book depends on the method used by the printing house. They may laser print your book at 1200 or 2400 dpi.

Don’t confuse the act of sending electronic files to the printer with sending electronic files by modem. Using the modem is just a shipping method. Although electronic submission can be a great time saver, there is no need to get into electronic data communications in this discussion. You can always send your electronic files by mail, UPS, or FedEx. All printers will accept files on disk or Zip cartridge, though some accept only Mac or only IBM media.

PostScript Files

Back in the mid 90's, when you sent your electronic files to the printing house, you sent PostScript files. PostScript files were a key requirement, and small publishers found it necessary to purchase and use an expensive PostScript-enabled printer. We were formatting our books for PostScript and proofing them on a PostScript laser printer. Happily, a Postscript printer is no longer necessary.

Adobe PDF Files

Now every printer I know accepts Adobe PDF files because that format translates well from computer to computer and from printing device to printing device. The digital printers who print extremely short runs use the PDF files directly to print out the books. The longer run printers use the PDF files to create the plates necessary for their presses.
Why is this a big deal? In earlier years, when we sent Word or PageMaker files directly to a book printer, we saw font and pagination problems. Our bluelines flew back and forth several times, and only FedEx benefited. Our printing schedules were slowed every time we ran into a new problem in the printout.
Thank goodness for Adobe Acrobat. Now, whether we use PageMaker, QuarkXPress or Word to prepare the book files initially, we can set Acrobat to embed the fonts and prepare the PDF files for a press printing. We can use any inkjet or laser printer to produce review copies of our books, because the Adobe PDF files we produce will ensure that th pagination of our books will print the same on any printer. After we print the PDF files to confirm the pagination on our office printer, we can send off those files knowing that they should print the same way at the printer. (Of course, we check the digital proofs or press bluelines anyway, just to be sure.)

The $249 cost of Adobe Acrobat sounds a bit high, given that we don't use it for hours at a time. The value of the service Acrobat provides, however, is very high. Adobe Acrobat allows us to prepare an electronic file readable by anyone with a PC or a Mac and printable on every printer. That's value!

Price Differences in Electronic Submission

Before the advent of Adobe Acrobat PDF file submission, there was a wide range of chargs for the various types of electronic submission. Now most printing houses do not charge for electronic submission, since it saves them time and money. Just be sure to ask your printing house for their PDF guidelines to be sure that you are preparing and submitting your files properly.

Choosing a Computer

Self-publishing