Hi Stuart. I thought this was really interesting. I looked at printed versions from Bookvault, IS and Amazon before settling on using Bookvault. So I was really interested to read that you used all three. Mine was a picture book, but there were considerable differences in the look and quality between all of them. Is that something you also see with your books or is it less obvious when the content does not rely on pictures?
Honestly in my experience I’ve rarely seen any real difference at all. As you say, maybe in a picture book any differences would be more stark? It might be that you get a sample from all 3 and one is better than the rest but with POD, each print is variable in quality so IS quality may have been better initially but if you did the same test a month later, maybe a different result? I think when you go POD you have to accept quality variance (even offset high quality printing has a quality variant clause in the contract so they won’t all be identical and perfect either) - I’ve learned to live with the fact that it won’t be a perfect copy each time with POD and it’s one less worry in a diary of worries for an indie author!
Hi Stuart. I thought this was really interesting. I looked at printed versions from Bookvault, IS and Amazon before settling on using Bookvault. So I was really interested to read that you used all three. Mine was a picture book, but there were considerable differences in the look and quality between all of them. Is that something you also see with your books or is it less obvious when the content does not rely on pictures?
Honestly in my experience I’ve rarely seen any real difference at all. As you say, maybe in a picture book any differences would be more stark? It might be that you get a sample from all 3 and one is better than the rest but with POD, each print is variable in quality so IS quality may have been better initially but if you did the same test a month later, maybe a different result? I think when you go POD you have to accept quality variance (even offset high quality printing has a quality variant clause in the contract so they won’t all be identical and perfect either) - I’ve learned to live with the fact that it won’t be a perfect copy each time with POD and it’s one less worry in a diary of worries for an indie author!
Cheers, Stuart. That's really interesting, and food for thought!