Printing from abroad
You are abroad. Your readers are in India.
We print, bind and deliver your book here — so the copies start in India rather than being shipped into it.
Why this is awkward
A book printed abroad reaches an Indian reader as an import.
If your book was set up through one of the global self-publishing platforms, it is almost certainly being printed outside India — in the United States, Britain or Europe — and sent here a copy at a time.
So a reader in Delhi or Chennai who wants your book does not get a local copy. They get an import: slow, expensive, sometimes stopped at customs, and priced well above what the same book costs abroad. For a launch, a library, a university department or a box of copies for family, that is not a workable answer.
Printing here instead removes the border from the problem. The copies are made in Delhi and delivered to an Indian address. Nothing is imported, because nothing ever left.
Who this is for
Three situations where it is the obvious thing to do.
You live abroad, your readers do not
You wrote about India, or in an Indian language, or for a family and a community that are here. The book needs to exist here — for a launch, for a shelf, for people who will not order an import.
Academic and institutional copies
A monograph or thesis that has to reach Indian departments, libraries and examiners. Usually hardcover, usually a small number, usually needed by a date.
A publisher printing an India run
You hold the rights and want copies produced here rather than freighted in. We print short digital runs and full offset in the same building, so the run length decides the press rather than the other way round.
How it works at a distance
Nothing in this needs you to be in the room.
Price it, then send the files
Put the specification into the estimator — size, pages, binding, how many — and the price comes back by email. Interior and cover go to us as print-ready PDFs, and we check them before anything is printed.
Approve a proof
The proof is paperless and opens in a browser, so you sign it off from wherever you are. Nothing goes on press until you do. This is the step that usually makes printing at a distance painful, and it is the one we removed.
We print and deliver
Printed, bound and finished here, then delivered to your address in India. We hold the files press-ready afterwards, so a reprint does not repeat any of this.
What we print
The same book you would get standing in our office.
Four sizes — 5.5×8.5, 6×9, 7.25×9.5 and 8.5×11 inches. Paperback, sewn paperback, centre stitch, hardcover, and hardcover with a dust jacket. Text on 70 gsm hi-bulk natural, 80 gsm white offset, or 100 gsm coated art for colour pages.
From four copies in paperback, five in hardcover. There is no separate minimum for an order placed from outside India, and no surcharge for one.
Hardcover is worth a sentence of its own. Case binding needs equipment that most short-run printers in India do not have, so a small hardback run is genuinely hard to place here. We case-bind in the same building we print in, which is why roughly four in every ten books we make are hardbacks.
Paying from outside India
One invoice, in rupees, settled by bank transfer.
We invoice you directly and you pay by international bank transfer. The invoice is in Indian rupees, so the figure we quote is the figure on it — what that costs in your own currency is whatever rate your bank gives you on the day.
We do not take cards or payment apps. A transfer from your bank to ours is the only route, so it is worth checking what yours charges for an international payment before you plan around it — those fees are between you and your bank, and they sit on top of the invoice.
You do not need an Indian bank account, and you do not need somebody in India to pay on your behalf. Bank details and terms come with the invoice, not from a web page.
What we are not
We print books. We do not publish them.
Worth being blunt, because the global services bundle these together and we do not:
- No ISBN. In India they are issued free by the Raja Rammohun Roy National Agency for ISBN, directly to you. Apply yourself, and do not pay anyone for one — including us.
- No distribution and no listing. We do not put your book in shops or on online retailers. We print copies and deliver them; what happens next is yours.
- No editing, design or marketing. If your files are not ready we will tell you what is wrong with them, but we will not fix them for you.
We are in Delhi, so we answer during Indian hours — if you write from London or New York, expect the reply to land overnight. Prices are quoted in rupees.
Send us the specification.
Page count, size, binding and how many copies. You get a real price back, from wherever you are.