Book Printing UK’s quote calculator makes it easy for you to get a clear and precise cost before sending your book to print. However, we don't expect all our customers to know exactly what they want upfront. If you need some help choosing the best options for your print job, try following the guide below which explains what each option means.

To start off, you want to choose the binding type for your book printing project. As you can see above, you have the choice of four options:
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• Paperback book printing
• Hardback book printing
• Booklet printing
• Coil bound book printing

If you are unsure about what binding type your project should have, you can read more about the binding types here.

From here it’s all about the size of your print project unless you choose coil bound book printing; that will ask you to pick the coil colour, position and covers before the size. Depending on what binding type you chose, you will have between 6 and 8 options to choose from. 

This option should be fairly straight forward for you but can depend heavily on your print project. You can learn more about book sizes here or the common practices for your project type.

Once you have picked a book size, it's time to pick an orientation – landscape or portrait.

Choosing a cover thickness is the next step and this one is entirely up to you. While it may say ‘Deluxe’ for 300gsm cover thickness, we would recommend this as the best choice for most books. 

Once you’ve decided on a thickness you need to pick a finish. This is how the cover will look and feel and you have two options: Matt or Gloss. If you need more information about the cover finish you can click on the ‘More Information’ button to see examples of the finishes.

Now it’s time for you to decide the specifications for your inside pages. 

You have the options of completely black and white insides, colour insides, or black and white insides with colour inserts.

Colour inserts can be more cost effective than printing your entire book in colour if you only have images on a few pages. The inserts can be placed anywhere in the book (they don't necessarily have to be all together in a block). However, if more than 50% of your pages are inserts, then this will be the same price as the full colour option.

Next, you'll choose your paper stock. Paper stock or paper thickness affects the spine width and the feel of the pages. If you are uncertain about which paper stock is right for you, you can find more information online.

You'll then need to enter your page count. If you are unsure about the final page count or the number of pages that are in colour, you can make an estimate. However, please be aware that the final price will differ slightly from the quoted price if you change your page count at a later stage, so try to be as accurate as possible.

Once your inside pages are sorted, you can pick the quantity of books you want to print. Keep in mind that larger quantities will result in a lower cost per book.

The final stages of your quote journey are organising the proofs and choosing you will be supplying your files. 

Pick your proof type and then select how you will be supplying your files to us. We recommend that you send the files over to us in PDF form but we are happy to accept other formats.

Next we ask what stage your book printing project is at. This helps us to provide you with relevant information, guides and assistance to help move your printing forward and get you closer to sharing your story.

The final question is regarding your cover and whether you would like to have our expert designers create one based on your given design specifications. 

That’s it; you have finished the quote journey and will now have a quoted price to print your book. Once you have entered your details, we will send you an email with your quote details attached.

If you have any questions about getting a quote, or about a quote you have received, you can contact us on 01733 898102 and our account managers will happily talk you through it.