After making a rough prototype of the book using my kid’s art supplies, I was ready to find a printing company that could print and assemble 500 to 1000 copies of the first edition, which was not an easy task.
Alibaba is an excellent resource for finding printing companies in China, which are cheap compared to mass printing books in the U.S.
There aren’t any books like Pip Heartwood at this time; it includes cutout pieces, stickers, reading flaps, popup pages, and moving mechanical parts. I had to be creative to find companies that could potentially print and assemble our book. So I searched for “Children’s Board Book” and “Children’s Popup Books” and went through the results looking for already printed books that have elements of our interactive board book. From the results, I viewed the companies that produced the books that seemed to be well made.
I then narrowed it down to 4 companies with MOQs (minimum order quantity) of 500 to 1000 to get some price quotes. The following was my first message to get the conversation going.
“Hello,
We are looking for a book printer to print 1000 copies of our children’s book. I am from the U.S. and currently living in China. We recently wrote and designed a children’s book with popups and moving pieces. The book can be seen here: https://saplings.pipheartwood.com. We have made a working prototype and are currently looking to print some copies of the book for a Kickstarter campaign.
We have a few questions:
1) Can you print using recycled paper?
2) Can you print and assemble books that have cutouts, popups, and moving parts?
3) Can you also print stickers?
Thank you, I would love to hear back from you.”
All the companies I contacted replied, some are more fluent in english than others. I liked 2 of them, but unfortunately, the quotes I got back weren’t as ideal as I had hoped; they would bring us into the red after shipping, taxes, fees, and tariffs.
Fortunately, fate intervened and I had a great lead while listening to a podcast about getting into the Toy Industry. To be continued in the next blog post.
Link to Alibaba:
https://alibaba.com
Link to two printing companies I thought were great:
Foshan Eletree Technology Co.
