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PROOFREADING

Was initially impressed by the proof-reader's suggestions but when I went back through the book, I realised there were grammatical & spelling errors which hadn’t been spotted. Asked for a second proofread, they fit me in quickly but there were still issues.

LAYOUT PROCESS/AMENDS

I had a lot of issues with the agent who did the initial amends.

•Amends half actioned or not actioned

•Subheadings & boldness removed

•Formatting issues & random changes

•Words misspelt from the amends e.g. filmamaking

•Different words put in e.g. I asked for ‘bottle’ and ‘battle’ was put in

•Chapters starting on pages directly next to each other in the book not in line

•Different fonts mid sentence, not on the original document

•etc.

Admittedly I did have a lot of amends, I take that on board, but it left me having to go through the book with a fine tooth comb every time. It made the process so miserable. What was more frustrating was, it was taking a long time for me to send back detailed amends only to be ignored.

I emailed her again to say I was disappointed and photo examples of the things above. She apologised and assured me everything would be taken care of by someone new. Things shouldn’t only be done correctly because someone complains.

Ended up with the head of the design team, who was fantastic; fast turnaround, did everything correct and great communication.

COVER "DESIGN" & PRINTING

Sent examples of other books I liked, which were all similar looking. The designer sent back the most hideous cover with lots of different fonts on it and zero design elements. There was no attention to detail, as even the parallel lines on the front cover were different lengths and other silly things. We went back and forward and my friend ended up stepping in to design the illustration on the cover. I emailed, as, again, I was paying for the design service, when I could have got my friend to design it in the first place for free. To their credit, they did give me a 10% refund.

I then asked if they could do gold foiling on the cover and was told (copied from the email);

“this is not something that we offer commercially at the moment” but they could for extra money, so I paid it.

The first proof came, I again went through it with a fine tooth comb looking at amends, and after 4 days the matte laminate was peeling up at the sides and the gold foiling was coming off. It should not be like this after 3 or 4 days of being between my hands and on the coffee table. We went back and forward and they sent me a few different proofs. However, the gold foiling coming off was still an issue.

Eventually she spoke to the team and came back and said;

“The production manager has looked into the cover and has created a sample based on the soft touch print to which I have tested and this does not seem to have any foiling being able to be scratched off."

When the soft touch cover came, it solved all the gold foiling issues. Did 2 orders; 250 + 200 books. We quality check the books, due to all the previous issues, and there were quite a lot of books that subsequently needed to go back (50 odd each time). Due to alignment issues, dots missing off the ‘i’s’ in the title and some damaged. To their credit, they offered replacements and were fairly quick in sending new ones.

The manger then got involved and said they could no longer produce the soft cover book. Stating;

I know this solution was offered to you while we were trying to fix some issues we were having with our new foiling machine, these issues are now resolved.”

I don’t feel like it was stated as a temporary solution? However, I tried to be fair as I could see where they coming from, so I asked for an example of the 'new and improved matte laminate'. Rubbed my nail against it, foil comes straight off.

Emailed her back and was met with a passive aggressive email stating “we produce 1000's of books with foiling on matte laminate (even though, by their own admission, it’s not offered commercially), and we can not recreate the foiling coming off this end”, accompanied with a video of her lightly caressing the book with an acrylic nail and “Sorry you’re unhappy with the matte finish.” Making that seem the issue. It isn’t a case of being unhappy with the finish, I’m happy with the matte finish, but the text simply comes off with their foiling machines?

I sent back 2 videos of effortlessly being able to flick the gold off. Why would I make up that it comes off as I wanted to continue our relationship. Especially after SUCH a long & draining journey to get to this point?! It should never have been offered if you couldn’t maintain it, so I could have made an informed decision.

Thankfully, I’d been looking at other companies after the second shipment arrived, as I had a feeling I might be left high and dry by them. Had advice & been sent other samples with 0 issues

I cannot thank BPUK enough for seeing my project through from beginning to end, especially Jozane who has the patience of a saint and all the knowledge and experience that has made this process a success. Thanks to BPUK I am now the proud author of The Bumper Book of Double Learning. This wasn't a straightforward publication as the hardback spiral bound book also comes with a smaller paperback which fits inside the front cover of the main book. This required scaling down and lots of other technicalities which only BPUK could achieve. I had previously discussed ideas with other companies and not only did they clearly not have the required expertise, they were also not nearly as cost effective, so Im happy to say that from first submission to publication, I'm a very happy author with a top quality book that is selling well! Thank you for making this available on Amazon and thank you JOZANE FOR LITERALLY EVERYTHING over the last few months!!!

Always good quality, quick delivery and reasonable price. Can't ask for better. Thank you.

chinaprinting4u.com is a professional manufacturer of various types of packaging and printing products, including book printing, catalogs printing,magazine printing,color paper boxes printing etc.

Thank you.

Posting this mainly as a warning for anyone out there that might be interested in printing their books

It started as a small order of 10 A4 print-on-demand books. I was given the first measurements needed for the covers, which I passed on to my designer. Later on while submitting the manuscript in pdf format, I was given another set of measurements for the covers and told that the ones before those were wrong. At that point the covers were already made and I had to get my designer to re-adjust them.

A week later, I received the digital proofs of both the inner book and the covers. The cover proof was completely butchered, cropped, cut and re-aligned like nothing that made any sense. I contacted them and was told that it was because the spine was not of the correct size. I argued that the measurements were the ones they asked for but agreed to adjust it on my side. I was given yet another set of measurements and had my designer adjust it again. Eventually the second version of the proof came out, where the book image cover was shown as well as the corners and the bleed areas. Happy with the result, I accepted the proofs.

Two weeks later I receive the books. I had the nastiest surprise when I saw that the actual covers have been cropped and the margins weren’t at all like in the digital proof. It was so bad, the right side of the title was cut, and part of the spine bleed into the back cover. As a note, there is 11mm between the title's end and the edge of the image I provided (not including bleeding area which I left 5mm of)

I contacted them again and explained the situation. They asked me to take photos of a book and send them. I did that and they later on contacted me and said that I will need to send a book back for them to ‘investigate’. A whole week later after I sent the book, I got a call telling me that the cover measurements were actually wrong again. They offered to fix the cover by resizing the spine (their spine calculator was broken apparently). Another week later, they call me to let me know they can’t actually print and gloss the cover on those size and that they’ve spend an entire week trying out different methods. They said they would have to print the cover on a smaller paper than A3 (a couple of cm shorter) but they will resize the image accordingly and send me a bound proof first.

I don’t hear from them for a while. At that stage I was almost 2 months into the order, with not even a proper proof. I e-mail them about it and they tell me that they will be sending the entire order shortly. When I ask them why they won’t provide the proof we agreed on, I was told that it’s because they want to finish the order as soon as possible as to not keep me waiting.

Eventually I get the parcel with the new batch. The right end of the front cover no longer cuts the title, but the margins are still not like in the original proof. The title isn't centered properly and the area on the left side of the front cover near the spine that bends to allow page turning bites into the title. At this point I was already late with my project deadline (the entire thing was an assignment for university), so I just gave up.

TLDR: Stay away from these non-professionals. They don’t do any quality assurance and post whatever comes out the printer without checking, their designers are incompetents that can’t even give proper measurements for the cover image (4 sets of measurements later they still didn’t get it right), and even worse, on their first try they sent me the books printed in a lower quality paper instead of the one I ordered (I can tell because the spine area is 6-7mm thicker on the second print, where I assume they used the 100gsm paper I requested).

Always take your time and browse around for print on demand services that can actually do their job. And another important lesson I learned: ALWAYS, no exceptions, request a bound proof, even if the digital proof makes the order cheaper!