Lightning-Fast Book Printing: How to & Essential Tips

Historically, printing books took time. Offset printers have long lead times and require the purchase of massive quantities of books at once.

That’s not a feasible option for the majority of content creators.

That’s why print-on-demand has become a crucial tool for authors, creators, and small businesses who rely on book sales, but don’t want or need the logistical challenges of storing and fulfilling orders. 

Does that sound like you? Wouldn’t you rather be creating a book than packing up books you’ve already written?

Quickly upload your files on Lulu, create your book, order it, and return to doing what you love. With free express book creation online, international shipping, and a global network of printers to print and bind your custom book, Lulu is simple and fast. No hidden fees, more than 3,000 format options, binding types, and book layouts make Lulu the best custom book printing service. Books are printed on-demand and ship within 3-5 business days.

What You’ll Learn About Fast Book Printing:

• How fast can books be printed?
• How to plan your book for printing
• How to prepare your book’s files for printing
• How to have your custom book printed (Spoiler: Just order! No minimums; you can have 1 or 1,000+ copies printed and shipped.)

Defining Fast Book Printing

What does fast or express book printing even mean? Is ‘fast printing’ next day or next week? 

There’s no single formula. Print-on-demand means using a variety of printing facilities and shipping providers. 

The only real way to know how long an order takes to print and ship is to use our free pricing calculator to get a custom estimate based on your book specifications, the quantity you’ll need, and where you’ll be shipping.

Quick book printing takes between 3 and 5 days for a paperback and closer to 5 days for a hardcover. That time is necessary because every single book is printed on-demand. And that takes time. Factors like page counts, paper types, and binding options can also impact printing times.

If you really want to understand the process, this short video about the life of a book is one of the best the Lulu Creative team has ever made. 

Pretty cool, right?

Before we move on, there’s another factor that isn’t actually printing but is closely related to what we mean when searching for fast printing services: shipping times. Your book could get printed the moment the order hits the printers and be ready to go later that day. From there, numerous factors, including the distance between you and the printer and weather delays, can impact transit time.

While delivery times are not under our or your control, you must consider them when looking for a fast bookmaker.

Why Fast Print-On-Demand Services Matter for Your Book

Because you’re on a schedule. Creating and selling books is a lot of work. You’re busy writing, editing, designing, building your brand, and somewhere in there, living your life too. 

Do you have time to wait months for an offset run of books to arrive? Can you afford that many books at once? Do you even need that many books at one time? Not to mention storing and transporting them.

With print-on-demand, you can easily get the books you need for an event, book launch, or signing quickly and at an affordable price and—most importantly—quickly.

To recap, the main reasons print-on-demand is the answer for fast book printing are:

1. Versatility - Order exactly as many books as you need in the formats and sizes you want.
2. Speed - Faster printing and shipping times mean your books arrive in weeks rather than months.
3. Cost - Only printing the books you need means no extra inventory or storage for a large print run.

Print-On-Demand Services: the Fastest Book-Making Option

Digital print-on-demand prints each page individually, allowing you to produce a single copy easily. The process is more expensive per book but allows you to sell books without storing thousands of copies. 

And without print-on-demand, short-run orders of a few hundred books would be prohibitively expensive for an offset printer.

Another major benefit of print-on-demand books is the fast turnaround time. You can upload your book files today and have a book in your hands within a week. If you’re the kind of creator who needs to publish and promote quickly, fast turnarounds make it easier to be nimble and meet your fans’ needs.

Modern POD services offer complete, white-labeled printing that handles all fulfillment processes. You can be a published author and sell books without storing and mailing a single copy.

Uploading & Making Your Book on Lulu

For the fastest book printing possible, use a complete PDF file for your book's interior and another PDF for the cover. Be sure you’ve edited and designed your book file entirely before you even think about printing. The final product will reflect the files you provide. That means we will print exactly what you upload.

However, print-on-demand makes it ridiculously easy to print a single copy as a proof. If you see a typo or something that needs to be edited, you can quickly make changes and order another copy!

The best way to guarantee speedy book delivery is to have everything ready to go in advance. Here's a rundown of what you'll need to do before you can use Lulu's print-on-demand service:

• Finish the book - That means you’ve written all the content, including the front and back matter. 
• Lay out the content - This includes adding images, checking margins, and styling your content. This guide breaks down the page layout for your book into manageable pieces. 
• Create your PDF - Once the content is final and the pages are designed, you must export a PDF at the correct trim size for your printer. 
• Design your cover - Your cover must be a separate PDF designed to match the size of your book. 

Lulu's free cover creator allows you to design your cover while publishing your book rather than designing it ahead of time (or paying someone else to design it for you). 

Uploading and Printing Your Book

Why Lulu’s Print-On-Demand Service Is Right for Your Books

If you’re here and you’re thinking about Lulu, this is what you need to know:

• Lulu’s global print network provides fast international book printing and shipping to more than 150 countries.
• Creating your book just to print (and not for retail sale) can be done in minutes with a streamlined upload process. 
• No other print-on-demand provider includes as many features and options as Lulu, giving you access to retail sales, ecommerce plugins, and bulk pricing.
• Lulu’s services are completely free to use. You only pay for the printing and shipping. 

Please Order a Printed Proof Copy

I know I just spent 1,300ish words convincing you of the reasons to use print-on-demand for fast book printing. 

And now, I’m going to slow you down by recommending you take the time to order a printed proof copy before you order 100 books for a convention or 50 books for your course. There’s always something that could be tweaked—from the color tones on your cover to the position of your page numbers. Or maybe you spot just one more typo you can clean up.

Just order a proof. The final product will be better for that last review, and (like I’ve been saying) we do print and ship books pretty darn fast.