Can I print and sell my own book?

You absolutely can.

When you print your book with 48 Hour Books, you’re in complete control. Your beautifully printed paperback books will be ready to pick up in just two days – or even as little as a few hours! (Shipping and some upgrades will add time to the order). Sell them online, sell in person, or give them away to friends or prospective customers. With an ISBN, you can distribute your custom printed book to booksellers, bookstores, and libraries, too.

Printing your own book is a great way to tell your story to the world. You can build your authority as an entrepreneur or business owner — or maybe you have a cookbook’s worth of recipes to share. Tell your family’s history in a memoir or genealogical book. Your only limit is your imagination.

And with 48 Hour Books, printing your book is as easy as 1-2-3. Write your book, upload to our easy online ordering system, and wait — as little as one day — for it to ship to your door.

Here’s how it works.

The book printing process:

1

When you’re ready to print a book, start your order. You’ll choose your custom printing options, including cover style and binding selection. Add on some jazzy upgrades to help your book stand out in a crowd.

2

We’ll prepare your document file for the pre-press process, and if you like, send you a printed proof.

3

When everything looks good, your book heads to the press! We use a digital printing press for high-quality images and crisp text, so your book looks sharp and professional.

4

Hot off the presses, we give your book a final once-over. Then we ship it to you from one of our centrally located facilities, so you receive your books fast! You can even upgrade to Rush or Super Rush production or choose expedited shipping if you need it even faster.

If you like, you can order a retail-ready single book proof. Test how good our printing is and see the final product before we complete the full “run,” or entire print order. It’s a simple additional charge to use this service. We offer multiple options for proofing, including printed proofs, so you know exactly what your book will look like before the full run is completed.

With our 100% friendly and responsive customer service, you’ll receive the best book printing services on the market from one of the best book printing companies.

How to prepare your book for printing

You can make the process of book printing and binding go even more smoothly by taking time up front to prepare your book for printing.

You can use our free book templates to make sure your files are set up properly for printing and formatting. Taking extra care to edit and proof your book before you submit your final files will save you reprint costs if you find a mistake.

When your book is ready to be submitted to our online ordering system, be sure to export it to PDF format. We can help you through this process, or you can use your word-processing program’s “Save to PDF” function. (We also recommend the free software called DoPDF, available for download on our website.)

File specifications

Make sure resolution is set to 600 dpi
Embed fonts
Choose “Press Quality” preset (if available)
Select Image Quality: Maximum (if available)

A high-quality PDF is the first step in printing a high-quality book!

How much does it cost to print your own book?

Printing your own book can be surprisingly affordable — less than $5 a book. Your costs will vary depending on your customizations, so you control how much you spend.

Binding, paper, page count

When you set up your 48 Hour Books printing order, you’ll specify your binding choice, paper type, and number of pages. Different styles of binding have different costs and increasing the number of pages can increase the price, too.

We also offer discounts on your book printing order. When you buy 100 printed books, you get 25 free — a 25% savings! Of course, if you order more than 100 books, we’ll still give you the 25 free. (Example: order 200 books and get 25 free for a total of 225 books).

If you order 100 copies of a 6”x9” perfect-bound book (180 black-and-white pages each), your effective per-book price is just $4.74 when you take the 25 additional free books into account. That includes a FREE, full-color paperback cover, too.

Book Printing Services & Custom Book Printing

You can print your own book using our custom book printing services

Can I print and sell my own book?

The book printing process:

1

When you’re ready to print a book, start your order. You’ll choose your custom printing options, including cover style and binding selection. Add on some jazzy upgrades to help your book stand out in a crowd.

2

We’ll prepare your document file for the pre-press process, and if you like, send you a printed proof.

3

When everything looks good, your book heads to the press! We use a digital printing press for high-quality images and crisp text, so your book looks sharp and professional.