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I want to publish one book with about 1,200 pages. We are talking about a book for daily use

My requirements are:

  • Print on demand (POD)
  • paper of "bible" type (to avoid a book with a too thick spine)
  • paper with good quality (for resist daily use)
  • hardcover binding (for resist daily use)
  • Online sales platform

I have already published a book on Blurb. The quality is good, and they have their own online sales platform. But Blurb limits the total page to 480 and does not offer the possibility of thin paper (bible type).

I have also looked at IngramSpark, they print books of about 1,200 pages, but they do not offer a good quality type of thin paper. They have Groundwood Paper available, but I don't think it is suitable for my purpose.

Do you know any options for my requirements?

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Your only option for printing with bible paper would be to find a true book printer who can use that paper. PODs and so-called self-publishing companies do not do things like that as the demand is too small.

There are thousands of genuine printers who print books. Not all of them do all types of books. Some of them can use bible paper. None of them have online sales platforms. Maybe one of the bible printers would be willing to do your book too.

So your problem is overconstrained and there is no way to do what you want. You will have to change your requirements to get your book done.

Your best approach would be to make the book smaller or print it in several volumes as a set, but then you pay a bunch more for binding more books.

Hardcover binding is not done by a printer. So you would have to find a bindery. Often the printer can direct you to one that would do the hard cover binding for you.

Note that specialty paper and hardcover binding will be much more expensive than places like blurb would charge you unless you print and bind a very large number of books. Get quotes from several printers as prices vary all the time depending on how busy they are. But expect to have to print and bind at least 2000 books to get an equivalent price from a POD or so called self publishing company.

Then you will have shipping. And the job of selling and fulfillment are up to you too. There are companies that will warehouse and do fulfillment, but you still have to generate the sales. And they charge fees for storage and shipping to your customers.

You might be able to e-publish it cheaper with someone like Bookbaby or Booklocker. But there may be limits to e-book size that I am not aware of as I do not use e-books. I do recall that Amazon seemed to have e-book maximum sizes which are far smaller than your 1200 pages.

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    "Be Nice" is an official Stack Exchange policy. You'd do well to start abiding by it, and stop being quite so confrontational towards question-askers.
    – F1Krazy
    Nov 4, 2020 at 19:09
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    Not confrontational at all. I give honest correct answers. There is no way that guy can do what he wants to do with all those constraints the way he thinks it could be done as per his examples.
    – user47526
    Nov 4, 2020 at 19:10
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I have published several long books with IngramSpark and the quality is good. ("Steam Submarine" by Robert Denethon) And yes the price is slightly higher than a traditional printer might charge per item, but the tradeoff is you can do print on demand so there is little up front cost for you.

If you really want Bible style pages and so run with a traditional printer you will have a large up front cost and need to have a print run of several thousand at least. This is quite costly.

Good luck!

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