When is the best time to print a cookbook for the holidays?
If you're planning to give away, sell, or launch a cookbook during the holidays, the best time to print your cookbook is not the 20th of December.
Yes, professional book printing is surprisingly fast, but a holiday cookbook has a few extra deadlines you'll want to know about. You'll need time for pre-press, proofing, possible corrections, then the actual production and shipping itself. If you're selling the cookbook rather than giving copies as gifts, you may need the books several weeks in advance so that customers have time to actually buy them.
That's why at OnPress, we recommend working backwards from the date you need your finished books in hand.
Start planning your holiday cookbook in September or October
For most holiday cookbooks, planning it out in September or October gives you a reasonable timeline to finalize it and prepare it for printing before the holiday season. That's not to say that printing itself takes two months — far from it. In fact, OnPress can print cookbooks in as little as two business days depending on the binding, quantity and options you choose.
A small paperback order can go through production quickly while larger quantities or hardcover books require additional time. Starting earlier gives you plenty of space for everything that happens before and after those production days. For instance, you can check the photos, fix the recipe where someone accidentally wrote two tablespoons of salt instead of two teaspoons, or make sure Aunt Carol's name is spelled correctly.
Most importantly, you can see a proof before you commit to the full order.
Build proofing time into your schedule
The last thing you want to do before you print a cookbook for the holidays is make your first physical look at your cookbook the moment that 500 copies arrive at your doorstep. A proof of your book gives you a chance to see how the cookbook looks and feels in print.
That's important especially for cookbooks because they tend to rely so heavily on photos, color, and page layout. Something that looks perfectly fine on your monitor may look completely different when you're looking at the finished page.
That's why you'll be glad to know that OnPress includes a complimentary digital prepress review with every order. We offer both PDF and hard-copy proofs. See our guide to the prepress process to learn more. We highly recommend getting a physical proof of your cookbook before launching into the full production.
When you do get the physical copy, look for more than just typos. Is it easy to scan the ingredients? Can you tell where one step ends and another begins? Do the photos look as delectable as you expect? Is any important text or measurements getting uncomfortably close to the edge of the page?
Better yet, try cooking a recipe from your proof. You'll learn a lot more about the whole cookbook experience with flour on your hands than you ever will by staring at the same page in Adobe Acrobat for the hundredth time.
Give yourself time to make corrections
Proofing only works if you've given yourself plenty of time to fix the issues you've found. We recommend planning ahead for a fixed book launch date, and building in extra time into your schedule for making revisions and doing quality checks.
This is also why having an October or Early November print schedule is much less stressful than discovering an issue in mid-December. If everything looks good on the first proof, congratulations, you're ahead of schedule. On the other hand, if you realize that page 82 says to roast the turkey at 250 degrees instead of 350, you have time to correct it before the holiday feast ends up giving holiday food poisoning.
Your print quantity affects your timeline
“How long does it take to print a cookbook for the holidays?” doesn't have a single, neat answer. The number of cookbooks you want to publish matters, too. Our current cookbook printing turnaround times note that a run of 1–24 paperback cookbooks takes around two business days, while 25–500 copies can take around three. Larger runs understandably take progressively longer.
It's also worth noting that hardcover books require an additional business day at those same quantities. These timelines are production estimates, rather than guaranteed dates where a box of printed cookbooks will arrive at your door. Turnaround begins after your files have been approved and additional production time may be needed if you've selected certain printing options.
Don't forget about shipping time
Shipping is the often-forgotten point where perfectly reasonable printing schedules go off track. Remember, the production date is not the delivery date. At OnPress, we ship our books from a facility outside Philadelphia, and we recommend accounting for shipping time separately from production time. U.S. shipping is typically around 3-5 business days. Transit estimates can vary based on the service you select and the destination. The good news is that you can choose from among the different shipping options when placing your order.
Also consider what else is happening in November and December. You're not the only person shipping things. Carriers are dealing with a tremendous amount of holiday shipping volume. Add inclement weather and weekends to the mix as well. When getting a free quote with our online book printing quote tool, you'll see that weekends and major holidays are excluded from the business-day turnaround time.
So when's the best time to print a cookbook for the holidays?
The closer you get to the holidays, the less breathing room you have for evaluating a proof, submitting corrections, and dealing with shipping delays. Start early enough that you can enjoy seeing the finished cookbook in print as well as the delight on the recipient's face. The last thing you want to be doing is staring at the tracking page on December 23rd, wondering whether everyone's getting a cookbook for Christmas, or an IOU. Get started with a free quote at OnPress today!
