Very happy with superb printing quality of part autobio book colour cover page as well as b&w pics and text in inner contents by Pothi.com
I decided to put up this post as it may be helpful to those who want to self-publish Print-On-Demand (very low upfront printing costs of few test copies) reasonable price books with black-and-white pics in inner contents, and, of course, colour cover page, in India.
The background to this is that, from around May to July this year, I was able to work with Pothi.com to successfully improve the inner content black-and-white pics printing in my book, "Autobiography of an Indian Software Techie and Spiritual Aspirant – Part 1" from Pothi.com, https://pothi.com/pothi/book/ravi-s-iyer-autobiography-indian-software-techie-and-spiritual-aspirant-%E2%80%93-part-1. Most of the problems were caused by the quality of pics that I had in the inner contents PDF file submitted to Pothi.com, not being good enough. I worked hard on improving the pics quality and eventually the printed inner content text and black-and-white pics in Pothi.com deliveries were very satisfactory considering that the printing is on lower cost plain paper (70-80 GSM) (as against higher cost coated paper (90-120 GSM). [Ref: Paper type field on https://publish.pothi.com/tools/price-royalty-calculator/]
But the colour front cover page printing had a small but bothersome to me problem. That problem was that the three pics of me on the front cover page print in darker colours than the colours in the cover page pdf that I had provided to Pothi.com, and which I felt created an undesirable effect. The background pic of flamingo and blue waters printing in darker colours than in PDF was not a problem. I was OK with that.
As an example of the darker print issue, please see pic below which is of the paperback book copy delivered by Pothi.com in end June 2019.
[To open pic in larger resolution, right-click on pic followed by open link (NOT image) in new tab/window. In new tab/window you may have to click on pic to zoom in.]
Note that I modified the front cover page a few times from June to August but the issue was common across book deliveries during that period.
The three pics of me being printed in darker colours created an undesirable effect when looking at the cover page, in my view. The problem was more with the first two pics (Around 1985 and Around 1989) as most parts of those pics have black & white/grayscale content, resulting in my face there looking darker than it should with the background also being darker than it should be.
The next pic given below is a print I took in June 2019 from a local Puttaparthi shop which has a colour inkjet printer.
Note that in this print, the colours are NOT darker than in the original PDF/image. So this print comes out well.
I focused on exploring ways to fix this problem with Pothi.com from end July to slightly beyond mid Aug. 2019 but was not successful. Eventually I accepted that with Pothi.com paperback book deliveries of this book of mine, I would have to live with the darker shades cover print problem.
A few days back (on 7th Dec. 2019), I was very pleasantly surprised to see 3 paperback copies of this book which I had ordered from Pothi.com, with front colour cover page printed very well WITHOUT the darker shade printing issue that I faced in earlier copies. What had changed for this order was the printing facility was a different one (from Daruhera near Delhi)! Given below are two pics of the front cover page of two of these copies, one pic being taken on 7th Dec. under sunlight and one on 10th Dec. 2019 under indoor tubelights in the late evening (no sunlight). Note that both copies cover page colours look the same to eye. The colour difference in the pics below is I think due to different lighting conditions while taking the pics. [The pics itself are not of great quality as I use a low-cost smartphone (LYF) which needs bright sunlight for good quality pics. Nowadays in Puttaparthi, we don't get bright sunlight due to winter and sometimes rain.]
The inner content print quality of both text and pics (on lower cost plain paper (70-80 GSM)) is also very good.
Here's the front page part of cover page pdf (full cover page pdf converted to jpg and cropped) which would have been used by Pothi.com production team for printing the above book cover page:
As a citizen and resident of India, I am very happy to see that such a good printing quality self-published book with black & white pics printed on lower cost plain paper (70-80 GSM) as against coated/photo paper, can be produced in India at reasonable cost using Print-On-Demand digital publishing where one can have a print run of even 1 single copy thereby reducing upfront printing costs to author to cost of few test copies, thanks to Pothi.com and its partner/support companies like printer companies. Note that this Pothi.com produced book is of A5 size with 297 pages of inner content, priced at Rs.265 (minimum price with 0 royalty to author) plus shipping. I congratulate Pothi.com and its partner/support companies for this superb service they are providing in India.
The background to this is that, from around May to July this year, I was able to work with Pothi.com to successfully improve the inner content black-and-white pics printing in my book, "Autobiography of an Indian Software Techie and Spiritual Aspirant – Part 1" from Pothi.com, https://pothi.com/pothi/book/ravi-s-iyer-autobiography-indian-software-techie-and-spiritual-aspirant-%E2%80%93-part-1. Most of the problems were caused by the quality of pics that I had in the inner contents PDF file submitted to Pothi.com, not being good enough. I worked hard on improving the pics quality and eventually the printed inner content text and black-and-white pics in Pothi.com deliveries were very satisfactory considering that the printing is on lower cost plain paper (70-80 GSM) (as against higher cost coated paper (90-120 GSM). [Ref: Paper type field on https://publish.pothi.com/tools/price-royalty-calculator/]
But the colour front cover page printing had a small but bothersome to me problem. That problem was that the three pics of me on the front cover page print in darker colours than the colours in the cover page pdf that I had provided to Pothi.com, and which I felt created an undesirable effect. The background pic of flamingo and blue waters printing in darker colours than in PDF was not a problem. I was OK with that.
As an example of the darker print issue, please see pic below which is of the paperback book copy delivered by Pothi.com in end June 2019.
[To open pic in larger resolution, right-click on pic followed by open link (NOT image) in new tab/window. In new tab/window you may have to click on pic to zoom in.]
Note that I modified the front cover page a few times from June to August but the issue was common across book deliveries during that period.
The three pics of me being printed in darker colours created an undesirable effect when looking at the cover page, in my view. The problem was more with the first two pics (Around 1985 and Around 1989) as most parts of those pics have black & white/grayscale content, resulting in my face there looking darker than it should with the background also being darker than it should be.
The next pic given below is a print I took in June 2019 from a local Puttaparthi shop which has a colour inkjet printer.
Note that in this print, the colours are NOT darker than in the original PDF/image. So this print comes out well.
I focused on exploring ways to fix this problem with Pothi.com from end July to slightly beyond mid Aug. 2019 but was not successful. Eventually I accepted that with Pothi.com paperback book deliveries of this book of mine, I would have to live with the darker shades cover print problem.
A few days back (on 7th Dec. 2019), I was very pleasantly surprised to see 3 paperback copies of this book which I had ordered from Pothi.com, with front colour cover page printed very well WITHOUT the darker shade printing issue that I faced in earlier copies. What had changed for this order was the printing facility was a different one (from Daruhera near Delhi)! Given below are two pics of the front cover page of two of these copies, one pic being taken on 7th Dec. under sunlight and one on 10th Dec. 2019 under indoor tubelights in the late evening (no sunlight). Note that both copies cover page colours look the same to eye. The colour difference in the pics below is I think due to different lighting conditions while taking the pics. [The pics itself are not of great quality as I use a low-cost smartphone (LYF) which needs bright sunlight for good quality pics. Nowadays in Puttaparthi, we don't get bright sunlight due to winter and sometimes rain.]
The inner content print quality of both text and pics (on lower cost plain paper (70-80 GSM)) is also very good.
Here's the front page part of cover page pdf (full cover page pdf converted to jpg and cropped) which would have been used by Pothi.com production team for printing the above book cover page:
As a citizen and resident of India, I am very happy to see that such a good printing quality self-published book with black & white pics printed on lower cost plain paper (70-80 GSM) as against coated/photo paper, can be produced in India at reasonable cost using Print-On-Demand digital publishing where one can have a print run of even 1 single copy thereby reducing upfront printing costs to author to cost of few test copies, thanks to Pothi.com and its partner/support companies like printer companies. Note that this Pothi.com produced book is of A5 size with 297 pages of inner content, priced at Rs.265 (minimum price with 0 royalty to author) plus shipping. I congratulate Pothi.com and its partner/support companies for this superb service they are providing in India.
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