Alright, I'm entering the planning stages of a new _title_ (our first), working closely with both the author and the book designer on design considerations.

The designer asked me today: "Are we going to go with litho or digital?" Admittedly, I have little experience with either, and was wondering if anybody could shed some light on what's better, more expensive, less expensive, etc....

Great timing! I learned a great deal about digital printing over the past couple of weeks working on a project for Ahadada. Up until presently, we had used litho printing only, and I was unsure of a lot of the intricacies of digital printing.

Anyway -- a good question at the outset that has a direct bearing on choice is print run. What will your run be? Also, are you thinking of a four color cover? And are there any images that "bleed out" past the edge of the page in the guts of the book.

And last, what will be your page count?

Well, right now the print run would be determined by our rather limited budget. We'd hope to do a four-colour cover and the page count is roughly 106 pages. There are no images in the text.

Ok... It gives me a bit better of an idea. A good cut off, I presume -- and correct me (others) if I am wrong -- is about 500 copies. If you are planning to run more than 500 books, offset will probably be the best value.

If, however, you are planning to do a run of less than 500, or you'd like the ability to economically top up your print run (say in units of 100, weeks or months after the original print run) than digital would prove more cost effective, methinks.

Let it be known that I am a big fan of offset printing!

Well, we would be considering a print run of around 500 copies. I really coudn't see us doing any more than that.

So, why do you prefer offset printing?

I like offset printing at runs of 500 or more in order for the book to be cost-effective—short runs can be expensive done in this manner. Advantages of offset printing include better quality print and a cheaper cost per unit the larger your print run. Its not without disadvantages though. Plates are made which could contain four or more of your books pages depending on book size.

This means both new film — if the printer doesn't do CTP — and new plates would have to be made when making future alterations. Also, due to the larger quantity printed, if they don't sell, you could be stuck with a lot of books gathering dust.