Printing

Printing is one of those mysterious processes that are so essential to any publishing endeavour (like roleplaying games!) but one which is shrouded in mystery. This can often be partly due to the printers themselves. One print broker I know (who shall remain nameless) commented that he had been speaking to a group that mostly comprised designers and writers but also included a single printer. The print broker said something along the lines of "...and now I am going to talk to you about paper, because it is fundamental to all printing."

And the printer suddenly interrupted with "Why are you talking about paper? No one wants to know about that!"

To which the broker replied, "How do you know?"

And the printer's answer was "Because they never ask!"

Needless to say this circular logic caused no small amount of amusement amongst the crowd. But it did raise an interesting point. How are you going to know about the printing process if no one ever tells you?

Well, I am not the source of all knowledge on this subject, but perhaps I can shed a little light on a very important area of information.

Printing is a vast subject (and indeed you can go on long drawn out courses that will fill you in on all the details), but I don't have time for that in this article (and besides there are others out there who know way more about this than me). So instead what I will do is cover the absolute basics and the essentials so that you have some idea where to start. Hopefully, my advice will save you both time and money.

I must stress again that this article is way to short to cover the printing process in any real depth. Instead the aim is to give you some points to think about.

Short Overview of the Printing Process

There are several forms of printing. The two that most RPG companies will be concerned with is sheet fed lithographic printers and digital printing. I will come to digital printing later, but lithographic printing deserves a big mention because it is still one of the biggest (and best) printing methods available. Lithographic ('litho') prints using the chemical properties of oil and water from printing plates that are made from printing films! Litho prints are the way the majority of roleplaying books and supplements you have seen will have been printed, and they are very good at this. The problem with litho prints is the size of the minimum print run. Print runs of less than 5,000 are often impractical. Before you do anything else you should sit down and discuss the various options with your printer.

Paper

There are three important things to know about paper. The first is that there are two types of paper: coated and uncoated. Uncoated paper is rough and course (the paper that newspapers are printed on is uncoated), whilst coated paper is significantly smoother (and often much more glossy). It is important to know which you need to print on because the end effect your printing achieves will vary significantly depending on the paper type used. Anything printed by laser must be uncoated for the toner to apply properly. On the other hand, any nice colour pictures (along with normal print) must be printed on coated paper because the ink dries cleanly on coated paper (apart from blue- that never dries! Always get a varnish applied to your colour prints to set the colour and hold it in place).

Second many of you are probably concerned with being environmentally friendly. Well be aware, there are four types of recycled paper and only two of them are genuinely recycled (the other two types come from printer's scrap paper). Also the bleaching process used to restore recycled paper can often be more harmful than the original paper making process itself (hydrogen peroxide is used for this, and we all know what it does to hair).

The third thing you need to know about is 'GSM' (or grams per square metre) measured in the USA in lbs. Most paper suppliers will tell you that higher GSM = higher quality. This is not necessarily true. GSM is first and foremost a measure of weight, and not quality. In fact extremely high quality glossy paper tends to be of a much lower GSM because it is highly polished and compressed.

When it comes to paper you should talk to your printer and see what he or she recommends you use. At the end of the day they know how their printing machines work and will have a good idea of what is best for you.

Imposition

What is imposition I hear you ask?

Imposition is the placement of pages on the printed sheet, and good imposition can save you a fortune. When printing your book, the print run itself will be printed on a much larger size of paper first, and then later be cut and bound to make your document.

Supposing in your print run you have 8 full colour pages, well when it comes to printing you want to make sure that they are all on the same side of the printing paper because if they are- then you only have to make the colour prints once. You might have to rearrange things a bit, but colour printing is far more expensive than single colour printing, therefore stick them all together to get them done in one pass.

Ask your designer about Imposition!

Creep

Creep is the basic detail that when you staple-bind multiple pages together by stacking them on top of each other one at a time (i.e. the way newspapers are organised), then the inside pages stick out further than the outside pages. That is creep, and you can avoid it in your document by asking the printer to supply you with a sample stitched dummy brochure so that your designer can adequately compensate for this. This does not apply to perfect bound sections, which are glued together.

Colour

Colour is a fairly important area. Colour printing involves understanding CMYK and Pantone colours. CMYK is the industry term for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black, and it is from these colours that the majority of colour prints are made. In order for this to happen your designer needs to arrange the colour separations, splitting the prints into the separate colours. This is fine for most prints, but to be honest CMYK prints can be a bit dull, so you might decide to add a Pantone colour or two. Pantone colours come from the Pantone range, and many of these ARE very vibrant. The only problem is that they cost extra!

Colour Bleed

Colour bleed is where the colours of any print are taken outside the basic limits of the page. Why would you do this? Well, during the printing process the paper moves around on the print press and you need to allow for that movement. You should leave a few millimetres (a tenth of an inch or so) of bleed at least to make sure you don't end up with any ugly white lines on your print.

Printing Times

Printing times can vary enormously but expect anything between 1 day (for small digital print runs) to up to 8 weeks for full-scale litho prints!

Proofing

Always check the proofs that your printer supplies (such as Cromalins, Matchprint, Machine Proofs or Digital Proofs) but be aware that there are several limitations. The vast majority of proofs are not quite the prints you will get either because of the different colours, paper types of just the overall production method. Ask your printer how the proofs will compare to the actual printing run. Also mark anything that looks odd or strange. It is important that errors get picked up at this stage as once the printing process has begun there will be no going back.

Considerations When Choosing a Printer

You need to think about some of the following issues when choosing a printer: Will the supplier be able to produce your work in-house and are they in control of their supplier?

• Is the company recognised by any trade organisations or federations?
• Have you used them before, or have you heard of their reputation?
• Are their printing presses the most economical for your needs?
• Is the communication between you and the printer good?
• Have you seen previous work from the printer?
• Does the printer have more than one printer in case of a breakdown?

Your Relationship With Your Printer

I cannot stress this enough. It is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL that you establish a good working relationship with your printer. If you talk to him or her, your printer can save you a lot of time and effort. Talk to them about all the stages of the process. Ask their opinions, and LISTEN to what they say. Let them know what it is you are trying to achieve and then if any problems crop up they will know how to resolve them.

Also (and this is highly improbable)- try and bring them into the process as early as possible (and make sure your designer is talking to them too). Try and allow enough time for the process to be completed. It gives you more flexibility. If your printer says to you (as they often to) "Something has come up. What is the absolute minimum amount of prints I can get to you by XX day?" Try and be reasonable. Printers have long memories and if you help them out, they help you out.

Who Owns What

There are more than a few surprises hidden here!

Of course you own all the artwork and text, but if you check closely you will find that anything the printer supplies the printer owns. This means that it might be your text on a print film, but the film itself belongs to the printer. If this is a problem for you then I would suggest you supply as many of the materials yourself as you can.

Remember to read the small print.

Digital Printing

One possible solution for the small-scale prints that RPGs do is that of digital printing. It requires no film; prints straight from PDF format, and can do any number of prints (no minimum).

If you get books digitally printed (on something like an Indigo e-print or a Xeicon) it will probably be far more cost effective for you (they work out much cheaper than lithographs for prints less than 5,000 copies).

They print in standard CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black- don't ask me why it is 'K'- I have no idea!), but they can also print in Indichrome (CMYK + Purple + Orange), which looks fantastic, plus you can use all your normal Pantone colours.

Digital printers seem to be perfect for RPG printing.

Oh, I forgot to mention, on top of all that digital printers are very quick- for small orders the total turn around time can be as little as 1 day! The one major disadvantage is that they are not as economical as standard Lithographic printing for numbers in excess of 4,000 - 5,000 (but that is not too much of a problem for this industry, currently), and that the current sheet size maximum is A2 for Indigo and A1 for Xeicon.

If this is a field you want to know more about I cannot recommend highly enough the benefits of going on a short course that covers the basics. I can recommend one in the UK who is outstanding, but in other areas have a look around. They are worth the money in the long run.

That's it for now! If you have any comments or questions then let me know! Feel free to email me.