Printing

Printing our cookbook was fascinating. It was incredible seeing what goes on behind the scenes to print a book, but I’m not gonna lie, it was a tough step in the journey. We couldn’t just press ‘print’ on our laptop, pick up the files and staple it all together! There’s a detailed process to go through and some jargon to understand, but when you understand all of this it’s not so bad. I wish I had someone to talk to that had gone through the printing process so I knew what to expect, so if you’re looking to self-publish a book, hopefully I can shed some light for you so you don’t go through any of the struggles I did. In saying this, it was amazing discovering the steps by myself, and struggling a little meant that I learnt so much. I’m sure there are many ways to approach printing and it all probably depends on your book requirements, but here’s how I went about it…

Scoping out printing companies

One of the first things I did was scope out some local printing companies in the main cities across New Zealand. Something that I always had at the back of my mind during the making of this cookbook was to support local New Zealand business. I found a few, so I got in touch with them. At this point, Mum and I had a rough idea of some of the book features we wanted, but to be honest we didn’t even know the different parts that make up a book. All we really knew was that we wanted a hard cover, gold gilding along the edge of the pages, and a certain type of binding called section sewn which keeps the book open and flat instead of folding back up. After talking to a range of printers in New Zealand, I came to the realisation that what we wanted couldn’t be achieved here. The printing companies I scoped out didn’t have the capability to meet our requirements, or they’d have to set up new machines which would cost ridiculous amounts of money which would probably bring the retail price per book to $200+ which I’m sure no customer would want to pay! Clearly this wasn’t feasible and realistic. I was pretty gutted because I wanted to support local businesses in everything relating to this project - we couldn’t for the printing, but we did with everything else. The realisation of needing to move away from New Zealand printing services forced me to explore other options offshore. We issued a bunch of cookbooks from the library, and after reading into some of them, we found a few amazing quality cookbooks that were printed by a company called Everbest Printing Investment Limited. This company has also printed some beautiful books for famous chefs in New Zealand like Al Brown, so we knew we’d be in good hands. They’ve been incredible to deal with too - they’re fantastic at communicating, it’s felt like they have the same level of care for our book that we do, and they’re award winning and overall just amazing.

Choosing paper types

Once I found our printing company, the next step was all about looking into the paper we wanted. Who knew how many options there were to choose from?! There were 3 paper types that we had to get right. One type for the cover, another for the front and back ends (the very first and very last pages), and another for the main inside pages. It was important to think about the paper weights and the thickness of each page - we didn’t want to go too thin that you could see the ink through the reverse side of the page, and also didn’t want to go too thick to add to the overall weight of the book and make flicking through hard. We had to also think about how shiny we wanted each page - not too shiny that light would reflect off each page, but not too matt that colours would look dull. Everbest sent us samples in the post from Hong Kong so we could physically see the pages to easily make decisions. 

‘Dummy’ books

When we had more and more book details confirmed such as roughly how many pages the book would be, how big we wanted the book, and how thick we wanted the cover, Everbest sent us ‘dummy books’ in the post. These books are essentially blank with no printed content. The purpose of them is for us to check that we’re happy with the materials and how the different parts of the book fit together. This was critical to get right, especially the size of the pages because this would impact other decisions in the book making process such as the size of photos and layout for design. It was so exciting receiving these dummy books in the post because even though they didn’t have any content printed on the pages, it was the first time we started seeing our book in a tangible format which started making our project feel so real! We had a few rounds of dummy books being sent to us as we went through multiple feedback loops, but we eventually landed on one that we loved. This is what they look like:

Locking everything in and starting the proofing stage

Once the design, photography and recipe writing was more complete and we had a confident idea of the number of pages, we could lock in more details with the printer such as the spine width of the book (as this is dependant on page numbers). More and more details were locked in such as the colour of our ribbon bookmark, and then it was onto the more exciting stuff. When our entire file of the book was 100% complete, we sent it off to the printer and they went through and checked everything. After making a couple of minor tweaks, they sent us our first round of proofs called ‘physical dyeline proofs’ and ‘digital proofs’. The purpose of the physical dyeline proofs is to see the entire book using low quality paper and ink to check that all of the pages are in the right order before they print it all. The purpose of the digital proofs is to see what a select number of the inside pages will look like that are around 80% of the quality of what the end product will be. Interesting fact - the colours can change between different parts of the world due to humidity and environmental conditions. Based on this, we had to send back our digital proofs to Everbest in Hong Kong so they could check them against the original files to make sure colours hadn’t changed. They didn’t change, but if they had, Everbest would have to make adjustments on their printing machines to cater for the difference and ensure colours are presented as they should. Luckily we were super stoked with all of the results at this stage! Here’s what these proofs looked like:

The final proofs before all the books are bound and complete

After approval of the digital and physical dyeline proofs, the proper production process began! This is essentially the creation of the book in final quality, however not bound and without the ribbon bookmarks. Everbest then sent us these proofs which was super exciting - it kept getting more and more real! The purpose of this stage is to check all of the pages, including the cover. If there are any mistakes at this point, changes can still be made because the books aren’t locked in and bound - however this would come with a cost and also drag out timelines. We’re lucky to have found no mistakes and we were sooo happy with the results! We had to check everything properly though because once we gave approval at this stage, there was no going back. These proofs felt so much more real as it came in the final paper and print quality. They also had the beautiful gold stamping on the cover and spine, and that brand new book smell which was so good!

The moment we’ve all been waiting for!

After giving the thumbs up, Everbest then bound them all which also meant adding in the gold ribbon bookmark. At this stage THEY WERE FINISHED!!!!! They sent us 5 final complete ‘advanced’ copies for us to check before they went ahead and shipped us the bulk order. Receiving these advanced copies was important so that I could do some product photoshoots and get the marketing material sorted while the rest of the books made their way here to New Zealand. But I can tell you, being able to physically hold 20 months of work in a printed cookbook that you’ve poured your love into with your mum is indescribable. Being able to feel each page, flick through the book while watching the gold edged pages shine, opening it up in the middle without it closing back on you, and placing the gold ribbon to a recipe you’re about to make is ahhhh! I could go on! We appreciate every single part of the book and we’re so stoked with the printing quality so a HUGE thank you to Everbest Printing. After more than a year working on the printing journey, we reached the magic moment of our final printed product:

Keryn Kalyan