Answers to frequently asked questions
How long has The Choir Press been in business?
The company was started in 1982 and adopted The Choir Press as a trading style in 1994.
Do I relinquish any rights if I publish my book with The Choir Press?
No. Our contract with you will state the process and procedure we will apply to publish your book but the intellectual property rights remain firmly with you.
You say you offer Print On Demand and short and long run printing. What does this mean?
Print On Demand is our service to print small quantities of books as they are needed. When a consumer orders a single copy from a bookshop or online bookseller like Amazon a book is printed to fufil that order. It avoids the need for stockholding and the cost of distributing the stock to booksellers. Shortun printing is similar but does not include fulfillment of consumer orders and there may be a minimum quantity of 20-50 books that we can print of a particular specification. Long run printing usually implies quantities of 500 books or more and enables us to give you the lowest production cost per book and we can offer more manufacturing specifications than Print On Demand or short un printing.
How will I get paid if I chose Print On Demand?
You receive the profit after deducting the costs of production and the discount we have to give to distributors. The discount to distributors will usually be 30%.
What is the minimum quantity? For Print On Demand it's 1. For short run printing usually between 20-50 and for long run printing it's 500 or more depending on the specification of the book.
Do you supply hardback (case bound) books and paperback (limp bound) books?
Yes, we supply hardback books with or without dust jackets as well as with a printed paper case. A printed paper case (PPC) is a hardback where the coloured cover is an integral part of the hard case and not a separate dust jacket wrapped around.
Can I have a colour cover?
Yes. All our books are produced with a colour cover and there is no cost saving if you don't have a colour cover unless you are having a hardback book without a dust jacket.
Can you produce books in colour or with some colour pages?
Yes. If your project is a commercial venture we recommend you do some research to find out the typical selling price of books like yours. This is because books containing pages in colour need to be produced in bigger quantities than black and white books in order to make the cost per book competitive for you.
Do you charge extra for sample pages?
The cost of preparing sample pages is included in our contract price. If you ask us to prepare sample pages before submitting an order we will charge a design fee to prepare a sample spread. This must be prepaid but if you proceed to place an order with us you can use this as the first payment for your order.
Will you advise me with things like the ISBN and barcodes?
Yes. We'll show you how to get your own ISBN.
Do I have to have an ISBN?
Yes if want your book to be available for the general public to order from the internet or a bookshop. If the book is a private publication that you will be distributing among family, friends and personal contacts you do not need an ISBN. You may publish privately and then subsequently apply for an ISBN and incorporate it in a revised printing.
I'd like to find out more and talk to someone without obligation.
You can email or phone (and talk to a real person straight away!) or you can arrange to visit us. Our service is personal and we are always pleased to meet our customers.
Do I have to make a payment with order?
We require £150 with order and the balance immediately prior to printing.
Do you charge VAT?
Subject to a few exceptions VAT is not charged on books i.e. they are zero rated for VAT purposes. The exceptions include, among others, address books, diaries and notebooks. Please ask us if you are concerned your book may be liable to standard rate VAT.
Who owns the books and the copyright?
You own the books and you retain your copyright and publishing rights.
Why is editing important?
Unedited books are quickly identified by bookshops, reviewers and readers as books which have not been published by professionals.
Why aren't there lots of books on Amazon showng The Choir Press as the publisher?
We recommend self publishing authors should obtain their own ISBN. This means that books will be published using an independent publishing name the author chooses. Books published using independent publishing names are genuinely self-published and not tainted by association with some known vanity publishing names.
What is a print-ready file?
It is important to distinguish between a Microsoft Word file that is "ready for the printer" and a "print ready file".
A print-ready file is an Acrobat PDF file with all the printer fonts embedded and ready to be printed without any manual intervention. Images and text will be in place exactly as they are to be printed as no manipulation of the content of the file can take place. The inside pages of the book must be contained in a single file.
The cover will also need to be a single file to qualify as a print-ready file and will therefore include the back cover and spine. If you are preparing your own cover file we will tell you what the spine thickness should be. This varies depending on the printing method and paper you have selected
If you would prefer us to assemble the cover from your components or if you have several files which make up the main text we can sometimes join them together but please talk with us about this as there are proofing issues which arise
We can sometimes resize PDF files, so if for example you have A4 PDF files but you want your book to be printed 246x171mm give us a call.