Books

Spectrum Editions Services

For the prospective author planning to self publish or produce promotional copies, Spectrum Editions can provide all the key steps in the production process, from Book Design and Production to Book Publishing Support.

Book Design | Book Production | Book Publishing Support

Book Design

Full service option: If you would like to see your work “in print”, you may choose to work with our design staff to transform your vision into a beautiful book. If so, follow the steps outlined in Planning Your Book Project and send us an email that describes your concept. We will then be in touch to begin working with you to establish an account with us and begin the collaborative design process.

A la carte option: If you prefer to be hands on involved with any or all of the aspects the design & production process, we can support you on an a la carte basis with any of the following services:

Conceptual design
how the book should be organized in order to achieve the goals you have in mind; depending on how concrete your ideas are to begin with, this may be a small effort or a more extensive one.

Image file preparation
Even when your own digital images are properly exposed and color balanced, there may need to be final “tweaking” to optimize the final print quality. This step is always necessary when starting with physical images that we need to scan or “shoot”.

Text file conversion
Unless you are doing the complete page layout yourself, we can usually be most productive if you provide your text content to us in a conventional word processing format, such as Microsoft Word (.doc extension).

Page Layout
Your paginated book will initially exist as a “digital document” that can be viewed on a computer screen showing each page as it will appear in printed form (using Adobe InDesign). Putting this together is the culmination of the conceptual design, image file preparation and text file conversion steps discussed above. At this point, you see and approve a soft proof of the layout.

Wedding album design— Digitally printed wedding albums are a special category of photo books, and typically have their own design concepts. We work with several freelance wedding album designers if you prefer assistance.

Book Production

Pre-Press— Lumiere uses Mac operating systems, relying on some of the fastest processors that Apple offers to routinely handle huge image files. Our image editing and page layout software is built around the Adobe Creative Suite, with particular reliance on the latest editions of PhotoShop CS2 and InDesign. We can usually accommodate files generated from other software, if the file format is high quality .tiff’ or .jpeg, and text in a standard format such as Microsoft Word.

Image Capture— If you are creating a book from non-electronic originals such as paper, prints, or slides, we can digitally capture them with our high resolution Fuji flatbed scanner, or professional, hi-resolution digital cameras. Unless you have comparable equipment, you will probably be more satisfied with the end results if you have us do your captures for you.

Color Management— All of our equipment is fully calibrated and profiled to maintain the integrity of color images throughout the process, from capture to soft proof to final print. Any serious imagemaker should also use the same discipline in their studio to facilitate collaborating on bookmaking projects remotely.

Printing— Nearly all of our books are printed using 4-color laser xerographic technology. Our own Xerox 250 DocuColor digital press is fully color profiled for the paper stocks used.

Introduced to the market in late 2005, the Xerox 250 incorporates state of the art technology to render full color imagery that is truly photographic quality. With a sheet size of up to 12”x18” and a 50 page per minute print speed, the X250 is the solution to 90% of our book printing work.

To learn more, refer to review our Laser Print and Archival Topics.

Binding— In-house binding services are provided with ExactBind desktop rotary binding equipment, producing both hard cover and soft cover book formats. ExactBind enables us versatility for building customized hard cover cases, using a wide variety of covering materials.

Our in-house book binding equipment also includes lamination and foil stamping.

Book Publishing Support

Spectrum Editions is not a publishing house. However, we do support our authors with specific, extra-cost services designed to make them successful self-publishers, including:

ISBN Assignment— Book distributors generally will not carry a book that is not assigned an ISBN (International Standard Book Number). We can obtain the appropriate ISBN for you.

Marketing Services— In market segments in which we have the expertise and/or contact network to help promote your work, we offer marketing support services. This can include preparation of marketing collateral materials, as well as mail and other awareness building campaigns. If the subject matter and quality is appropriate, we may, at our option, offer to promote the work through our own Lumiere online bookstore.

Fulfillment Services— We can take orders for your work and ship it directly to a buyer. This can be a more efficient method of distribution to your customer base than shipping 50 or 100 book units to you then re-shipping them to the end consumer.