Print and Ship Your Book the Best Way
Choose the Right Platform for
Your Self-Published Book
Whether you’re an author publishing your book independently or a business or organization that produces books for its clients or members, choosing the right platform for your self-published book matters. It affects everything from your financial success to the customer service you can provide.
- Quality of your book’s printing
- Ease of ordering and shipping speed
- Your profit margin
- Customer experience
- Ability to sell in multiple channels
Considering how much you have on the line, it’s wise to consider all the angles, especially if you’ve been thinking about print-on-demand. The on-demand book print model gets a lot of attention, but it’s not always the most advantageous when you carefully weigh the pros and cons.
What Is the Best Way to Print and Ship?
The best way to print and ship your book is the one that allows you to offer excellent book fulfillment and maximize your profit margin. It should also give you flexibility and options for how to print your book that goes beyond the ordinary.
When you have more choices, your book is more unique and profitable.
At Acutrack, it’s no secret that we’re industry leaders in printing books and shipping customer orders for self-publishers of all sizes and types. We have deep experience in the field and have learned what works best (and what doesn’t) for individual authors and companies publishing books independently.
The foundation of success is printing and shipping a book that’s well-written, professionally edited, has an attractive cover, and is printed to the highest quality standards. It’s inevitable that your readers or customers will compare your book to titles from large publishing houses. You need to be competitive!
Can You Reliably Estimate Your Book’s Sales?
The biggest justification for print-on-demand (printing and shipping books one at a time) is the inability to estimate sales and purchase inventory. Doing it that way reduces efficiency, slows down order fulfillment, and nearly always cuts into your profit margin substantially.
But in our experience, most self-publishers, whether individual authors or companies, do have a reasonable idea about their projected book sales and can comfortably print a quantity of books in advance and have them warehoused with us and waiting for shipment.
As a rule of thumb, go with digital printing for faster turnaround time and with quantities that you can comfortably forecast. In addition to lowering costs versus printing single copies on demand, it opens a world of possibilities for your book.
- Binding choices – hardcover, paperback, spiral
- Paper stock options for cover and inside
- Flexibility for trim size
- Excellent print quality for photographs
At Acutrack, we believe in rewarding growth. Our volume-based model ensures that as your order fulfillment increases, your book printing costs decrease. We regularly analyze each client’s fulfillment trends, and if you achieve three consecutive months of growth, you qualify for a lower printing cost across all your titles. This approach helps self-publishers scale efficiently, maximizing profitability while maintaining top-quality production. With Acutrack, your success drives your savings.
Book Fulfillment Drives Customer Experience
Few parts of your book project have the potential to affect customer experience as much as the book fulfillment service you choose. Getting orders out the door shortly after they are received, ideally within 1-2 business days, is essential. It’s also important to use the optimal shipping methods and offer customers a choice of expedited shipping if they prefer.
When you add things beyond a one-size-fits-all standard shipping approach, you improve satisfaction and the likelihood that people will return to purchase other books, products, or services from you, your company, or your organization. Building better customer relationships is a wise long-term business strategy.
Book Printing and Shipping for Self-Publishers
Taking time to learn more about the best ways to print and ship your book is always helpful for self-publishers. Your book is one-of-a-kind, and what’s right for you depends on your project goals and the content you’re publishing. What’s for sure is that there are excellent options to be more successful.
Chances are that you’ve already looked into print-on-demand after your own research or hearing word-of-mouth recommendations from others. Therefore, the next step is to learn more about other printing and shipping alternatives, like our “just in time” system at Acutrack. It has proven itself to be the best platform for many self-published books.
You’ll find much more information on our website, and always feel free to call or contact us online with your questions and information requests.
