F5 said:
I'm hoping that someone with more of an insider's view of the publishing world can explain that. In my mind, once the books have been printed you need, maybe, a month to check the first-run proofs for errors, and start shipping to distributors. Why, if the books are going to the printers now, will it take 3 months for them to be available?
Not a gripe, not a rant...I'm just genuinely curious.
-F5
The very first step of sending a book to the printer is to get proofs back. There's a 2 day turn around for that and the full-run is printed.
Many full-color hardback books are printed over seas (re: China) it takes about 2 months for the books to reach the States, then you have to distribute them through to the books stores, which takes a few weeks or a month. That's how you end up with books on the shelf at some stores before their release, because more often than not, if the book's on time, it's sitting in the store room waiting for release day.
unobserved said:
I could be wrong, but based on the complexity of these books I doubt that they would be shipped from China. Not that China isn't capable of printing something high-quality, but with a amount of back-and-forth that will need to go on for all the colour correction and touch-up in the artwork that appears on every page, WotC will probably be going with as local a printer as they can find.
There's no printer in the States that can match the quality and price offered by off-shore printing. The cost of the book would nearly double if it were printed in the States.
As I said, it's almost a guaruntee that they'll have more than one person at the printers during the entire time that the books are coming off the press to make sure that each and every section prints correctly.
Not really. The printers are professionals who know how to do their jobs.
But not books like this. They'll be done local.
As per above, many/most of the high-quality color books are done in China or off-shore. Next time you hit a book store, find the gardening books, and coffee table books with all the photos. 90+% of those will have been printed in China. It's industry standard.
Moon-Lancer said:
ok, so it will take 10 weeks to print, but still why no digital pdf? I mean thats done, right?
Yes. The digital pdf and the InDesign files (along with all artwork and font files) was likely sent the day they made the "at the printers" announcement. It's this kind of printing lag that you can see in publishers like Green Ronin. They release the pdf a bit ahead to catch any big mistakes (and the gamers fill threads with found typos and other mistakes), then they send it to the printer. It's really smart, because the hardcore pdf crowd partially covers the cost of printing the physical book. But, WotC doesn't want the book out as pdf yet, so we wait.