Luxury Print On Demand
Stock the cover once. We print and bind every interior to order.
A hardcover has always meant a print run. Commit to a quantity, receive that many finished books, and sell exactly what you ordered in the one configuration you ordered it in. If a version does not sell, you own it. If a version sells out, you wait for a reprint.
There is another way to produce it. We separate the two halves of the book: your covers are produced once and held in your inventory, and the interior is printed and bound fresh for every order. The buyer gets a hardcover. You never own a finished book you have not sold.
This works for planners, journals, workbooks, and books. Any product where the cover stays the same and the interior varies from order to order can be produced this way.
How It Works
1. You produce a run of covers
Minimum 25 covers per design, per trim size. This is a cover order, not a book order, so nothing about the interior is decided yet.
2. We hold them in your inventory
Your covers show on your inventory report alongside anything else you store with us. You set your own reorder point and watch the stock draw down as orders ship.
3. Each order prints and binds to order
An order arrives, we print that buyer's interior, bind it, and marry it to a cover from your stock. Orders ship in our standard 3 to 5 business day window.
Twenty-five covers is not twenty-five books. A traditional run of 25 hardcovers gets you 25 identical copies. Twenty-five stocked covers can ship as 25 different products: different page counts, different interiors, different add-ons. One cover commitment carries your whole line.
Why the cover is made first
Everything premium about this cover happened in the cover run: the all-over deboss die, the gold foil, the metal corners, the faux leather itself. None of it can be done one book at a time, which is exactly why the cover is produced ahead and the interior is not.
Covers You Can Stock
Printed turned-edge hardcover
Your artwork printed and wrapped around board, with gloss, matte, or soft-touch lamination. All three finishes cost the same, so the choice is purely how you want it to feel in the hand. More on hardcover books.
Best for a cover where the artwork itself is the design.
Faux leather and faux linen
The material is the finish, so these covers carry no printed sheet. Every faux leather or faux linen cover takes a foil stamp or a deboss to place your title and branding. Available in the full color range for each material. See materials and colors.
Best for a keepsake product people are meant to hold onto.
Board covers
Printed board in 24 pt, 36 pt, or 48 pt. Thick, substantial, and lighter and less expensive than a hardcover case. 36 pt is the most popular weight. More on board covers.
Best for hardcover rigidity at a lower price per unit.
10 mil laminated
Rigid, durable, and wipeable. A long-standing favorite for academic planners and for anything that lives in a bag all year.
Best for a planner that has to survive a full year of daily use.
Foil Stamping and Debossing
Stocked covers can be foil stamped, debossed, or both. Because the covers are produced as a single run, these are the finishes that make a planner read as a premium object rather than a printed book.
Each treatment requires a one-time die. The die is priced by its size and charged once, not per book, so it is spread across every cover you produce from that design and every reorder afterward. Foil and debossing are two separate processes requiring two separate dies, so a cover carrying both is quoted as two positions and two dies. We will need vector artwork for each.
Binding, Trim, and Add-Ons
Stocked covers are bound metal spiral or Wire-O. Tell us which one when you order your covers, along with your trim size, so the covers are produced correctly. Trim size can be anything up to 8.5 x 11 inches.
Elastic strap, ribbon marker, metal corners, and pen loop are available on stocked hardcovers. Pocket folders and tabs are added on demand with no minimum, so those can stay optional for the buyer rather than being decided when you order covers.
Your Commitment and How Inventory Works
- Minimum of 25 covers per design, per trim size, on every order including reorders
- Your covers appear on your inventory report and you set your own reorder point
- Covers are stored with us and storage is billed like any other stored inventory
- No pick fee when we pull a cover to build an order
- No minimum on the buyer orders themselves, ever
The 25-cover minimum is the only quantity commitment in the program. Everything downstream of it, every interior, every page count, every add-on your buyer chooses, is produced one at a time.
Lead Times
Producing a new cover design takes about two weeks for board covers and 10 mil laminated, and three to four weeks for hardcovers. This is a one-time step per design, and the same lead times apply when you reorder, which is why the reorder point matters.
Once your covers are here, every order ships in our standard 3 to 5 business day print-on-demand window, the same as any other product we produce for you.
October through December is our busiest period and projects can run one to two weeks longer. If your covers need to be in place for a fourth-quarter launch, order them well ahead.
Personalizing a Stocked-Cover Product
A stocked cover is printed before the order exists, so per-order names and quotes cannot go on the cover the way they can on a print-on-demand cover.
They can go inside. Because the interior prints fresh for every order, a buyer's name, initials, or a dedication can be printed on the title page or a dedication page. The cover carries your foil or deboss, the interior carries theirs, and the book still arrives personal.
Who This Is For
The fit is one cover design and interiors that are not all the same.
Personalization is the clearest case. If you let buyers put a name on the title page, choose a layout, pick a start month, or add sections, that interior has to be printed for that order anyway. The cover does not. So the cover is made once and made properly, with the deboss, the foil, and the materials only a run can pay for, while the interior does the varying.
If every copy of your product is identical, a straight print run is simpler. This model earns its keep when the interiors differ. If you are building a configurable product around it, see how build-your-own planners put the pieces together.
One caution worth naming. A stocked cover product costs more to make and needs to sell at a price that reflects it, and that price is very hard to defend in a marketplace grid where the only visible variable is cost. Read why a premium product sells better direct before you decide where to list it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to order 25 finished books?
No. The 25 minimum is on covers only. Those covers sit in your inventory and each one becomes a finished product when an order comes in for it, with whatever interior that order calls for.
Does the minimum apply again when I reorder?
Yes. Every cover order carries the 25 minimum, including reorders of a design you have run before.
Am I charged to store my covers?
Covers held with us are billed like any other stored inventory. There is no pick fee when we pull a cover to build an order.
Can the interior page count vary from order to order?
Yes. That is the point of printing the interior on demand. Within the range your cover and binding can accommodate, each order can be a different length.
Can my buyers get their name on a stocked cover?
Not on the cover, since it is printed before the order arrives. It can be printed inside, on the title page or a dedication page, because the interior prints per order.
Ready to Price a Stocked Cover Program?
Send us your cover design and your layout list and we will quote the covers and the per-order production.
