Adding Text Color to your Trade Book

The most cost effective self published book uses only one color text in the book printing. Adding color to your text will kill the unit cost of your book unless you print thousands of copies. Printing cost is made of two items: setup and run.

The setup on an offset printing press is high (compared to a digital printing press), but the running rate is low. This "setup" is fixed and is amortized over the number of copies printed. A $5000 setup spread out over 1000 copies is significantly higher than if you spread it out over 10,000 copies or 50,000. Most books that you see in the store with two- or four- color text print significantly high quantities (which you are probably not going to do).