Art Book Printing

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A well-curated art book exhibits your work in a format that’s as practical as it is eye-catching. It should be an artwork in its own right.

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”

–Pablo Picasso, painter, sculptor, ceramicist, and printmaker

Art books are portable galleries. Exhibiting your artwork between the covers of a premium-quality book elevates its status, attracts public recognition, and may draw attention from curators, collectors, and buyers alike.

At QinPrinting, we produce high-end art books for curators, galleries, and individual artists. Over 25 successful years in the industry, a dedicated team, world-class technology, and unbeatable customer service have built our global reputation as one of the world’s finest independent art book publishers.

“To be an artist is to believe in life.”

–Henry Moore, sculptor

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Custom Art Book Printing Costs

At QinPrinting, we help fine artists to print custom art books of unparalleled beauty every day. But not everyone has the resources of a Damien Hirst or an Arno Gasquet. We understand that if you’re an emerging artist or an independent gallery owner, you’ll need to work within a restricted budget. That’s why we constantly update our work processes and supply chains to make sure we always deliver superlative art books at the most competitive prices you’ll find anywhere in the world.

So, how much will it cost to print an art book with us? You can get an immediate estimate of the budget you’ll need to print a fine-edition custom art book with our at-a-glance pricing charts. Unlike most exclusive artbook printing services — which demand a minimum offset print order of 500 or even 1,000 books — we offer a minimum order quantity (MOQ) of just 100 copies and still with an attractive price advantage. But as you’ll see from the charts, the more copies you order in a single run, the less you pay per copy.

Paperback Art Book Printing Price Chart (8.5" x 11")

All prices listed in USD

Quantity	100pcs		500pcs		1000pcs		2000pcs		5000pcs		10000pcs
Page count	Unit	Total	Unit	Total	Unit	Total	Unit	Total	Unit	Total	Unit	Total
80pp + 4pp	$6.77	$677	$1.99	$993	$1.31	$1,310	$1.03	$2,066	$0.89	$4,439	$0.84	$8,368
128pp + 4pp	$10.01	$1,001	$2.99	$1,493	$1.99	$1,986	$1.56	$3,128	$1.36	$6,780	$1.28	$12,801
256pp + 4pp	$18.63	$1,863	$5.67	$2,837	$3.81	$3,811	$3.00	$6,009	$2.60	$12,983	$2.46	$24,620

Please note that all prices are EXW our facility and do not include shipping costs.
Cover: 300 gsm / 110 lb coated cover paper with matte lamination outside
Interior: 157 gsm / 106 lb coated text paper, full color printing
Cover and inner: full color printing
Binding: sewing and perfect binding

Hardcover Art Book Printing Price Chart (8.5" x 11")

Quantity	100pcs		500pcs		1000pcs		2000pcs		5000pcs		10000pcs
Page count	Unit	Total	Unit	Total	Unit	Total	Unit	Total	Unit	Total	Unit	Total
80pp	$11.27	$1,127	$3.17	$1,584	$2.33	$2,330	$1.96	$3,912	$1.67	$8,345	$1.60	$15,956
128pp	$15.49	$1,549	$4.38	$2,191	$3.11	$3,105	$2.53	$5,062	$2.10	$10,518	$2.01	$20,114
256pp	$26.79	$2,679	$7.67	$3,834	$5.20	$5,197	$4.09	$8,178	$3.27	$16,346	$3.12	$31,176

Please note that all prices are EXW our facility and do not include shipping costs.
Cover: 157 gsm / 58 lb coated cover paper with matte lamination wrapped on 2.5 mm thickness greybeard
End sheets: 140 gsm / 95 lb uncoated text paper, blank
Inner: 157 gsm / 106 lb coated text paper
Cover and inner: full color printing

For a more detailed estimate, try our easy and convenient online Printing Cost Calculator. Just follow the link, drop in your information, and get an instant quote! If you have questions, get in touch and one of our keen, attentive, in-house printing experts will be delighted to help.

Common Art Book Sizes

Art books are showcases for your best work. They must draw the observer into what we think of as a “virtual gallery experience”. A large format edition coupled with faithful reproduction gives your art the best chance to speak. While the exact dimensions depend on your art, the number of images, the length of the text, and the layout and orientation, we print most art books on premium art paper, bound in hardcovers, and from 8.5″ x 11″ to 9″ x 12″ or larger. A landscape-oriented collection of black-and-white or full-color art reproductions may be larger than an exhibition catalog for a touring show, and souvenir edition may be smaller yet.

But you’re not restricted to the size suggestions above. At QinPrinting, we specialize in customizing art book printing in any size or format to best suit your needs as an individual. Only remember that extensive customization incurs higher costs and slower turnaround times because there’s more pre-press and setup involved. But for your dream project, a high-end portfolio, or as an adjunct to an important exhibition, the added investment could be worthwhile. The decision is always yours.

Custom Art Book Paper Options

As with gallery or museum exhibitions, art books need careful curation. Quality and presentation are vital to the statement you want to make. We recommend printing on premium-quality gloss or matte art paper to get the most lifelike and pleasing results. Gloss and matte both have coated surfaces, ideal for stunning printing that will reproduce your photographs and artwork with faithful color, perfect contrast, and fine-grained detail. Gloss paper is often best for books with full-color spreads and less text, whereas books with more text may benefit from matte paper. Matte paper will still give sumptuous color or black-and-white art reproduction while rendering the text easier to read.

You’ll need to specify at least two kinds of paper for your custom art book: one for the interior pages and one for the cover. You may also wish to include end sheet papers, which could be the same paper as the interior, or you can choose something different; a heavier, colored or textured paper, for example, may be an excellent choice. End sheet papers not only elevate the quality of your book at negligible extra cost; they provide an ideal space for autographing and adding personal dedications to copies of your book.

Paper for Art Books

Hardcover binding is the most popular option for art books, especially for a high-end, prodigious appearance, perhaps with luxury additions such as an embossed title or metallic foil stamping. Sewn perfect binding—a style of high-end softcover which can lay flat with the pages open without breaking the spine—is an excellent choice for impressive art books that require a more informal style or for exhibition catalogs and souvenirs. We recommend a paper weight of 157 gsm / 106 lb gloss art paper for the interior pages in both cases. It’s beautiful to look at, has a luxury feel, and faithfully reproduces fine art photography.

Sewn Perfect Binding Cover Paper

Hardcover Casing Paper

Interior Paper

End Sheet Paper

Slipcase

Cover Material Options

Cloth Covers

At QinPrinting we offer traditional cloth covers in a vast range of colors.

Imitation Leather and Padded Imitation Leather Covers

We also offer imitation leather and padded imitation leather covers for books which need a traditional, superior, and luxury treatment.

Bindings for Art Books

Art books—unlike some “presentation” books—are opened, read, and looked at! So, they must combine elevated aesthetic values with practicality. We recommend “sewn perfect bound” and “sewn hardcover” as our preferred binding styles for art books. Your choice depends on your budget, the style and length of your book, and several other factors. But these two binding options both achieve optimal results, which always impress. You can open both bindings flat with no damage to the spine, too, which makes them ideal for browsing.

Sewn perfect bound

We often use this binding style for art books. We collate and print the interior pages in sets called signatures, which are then sewn together and fixed into a wrap-around cover made of heavier art paper or lightweight card stock. This option gives you a truly beautiful book for a minimal outlay.

Sewn hardcover

In this binding, we organize the interior pages into signatures which are then printed, cut, and sewn, and glued into a hard casing covered by a printed sheet which forms the cover. This binding is the most resilient and professional-looking, especially if you add special treatments such as embossed titles, debossed titles, soft touch lamination, gold, black or other color gilded edges, and metallic foil stamping; or a custom-made printed dust jacket, a slip case, marker ribbons, and sewn decorative headbands.

Whichever binding style you choose, we like to make it easy for you to design your artbook. So, you can use one of our ready-made design templates if you wish. And ask us for paper and treatment samples. We’ll drop them to you in the mail. The samples are free, so you need only pay the mailing charges.

Art Book Design and Layout Tips

Printed photographic art reproduction is the core component of all artbooks, along with beautifully formatted typography, decorative dividers, and other flourishes, if you include text. Whether you’re preparing your own layouts or commissioning a professional designer to handle the technical work for you, it’s important to understand how to prepare the finished digital files for high-quality offset printing. You must account for bleed zones, safety margins, trim lines, and borders, for example, and make sure that you’ve set the resolution and the color space correctly.

So, here are a few helpful tips to guide you when you’re preparing your digital files for the printing press.

Export your files as vectors in PDF format for the best results. Our recommended software options for art book design are Adobe InDesign or Adobe Illustrator. These will also allow you to convert your color space from RGB to CMYK, which you will need to do for offset printing.

If you can’t deliver vectors — say, if you’re exporting bitmaps from Photoshop — then make sure the resolution is at least 300 DPI. With vectors, you needn’t worry about resolution, but all other images must have a high definition to tolerate resizing without becoming fuzzy and “pixilated”.

You’ll need to add a “bleed zone” of 3 mm around all your image pages. A bleed is an extended zone at the periphery of your photo, which falls outside the area that your finished page will cover. Once we’ve printed your pages, we’ll cut them to the exact size needed for your photo book format. This “bit extra” gets cut off and makes sure that the finished image fills the page with none of it being lost. You should mark bleed zones as red lines.

Inside your bleed zone, don’t forget to mark the “trim lines”. These will define the final dimensions of the finished page. Make sure that any necessary elements of your images stop at least 10 mm / 0.394″ short of the trim line.

If a photograph or artwork crosses over two pages in a “spread” make sure that nothing essential—like the subject’s face or other important details—lie along the center crease.

If you’re working with a professional designer to prepare your files, they should be competent to make everything “print ready”. But if you’re working alone with design for the first time, these are the crucial points to remember before you submit your digital files. The responsibility for sending “print ready” files rests with you. But please don’t overthink it! We’ll be happy to “hold your hand” through the process, explain what’s needed step-by-step, liaise with your designer when necessary, and manually check everything ourselves to make sure it all goes smoothly and you end up with a perfect print of your custom art book. If we discover any errors, we’ll let you know, explain what the problems are, and help you fix them. We will never set the press rolling until we’re sure everything is perfect and you are 100% satisfied.

To learn more about preparing your artwork, text, and layout for printing, please check out our Pre-press Artwork information page.

Let’s Talk!

Designing and printing your own high-end art book—either as a premium portfolio, catalog of works, or for distribution and sale—is always as challenging as it is satisfying to complete. But at QinPrinting, we pride ourselves on our customer service and helpfulness as much as our deep knowledge of every aspect of printing technology. Get in touch today to discuss your individual needs or to request a no-obligation quote. We can’t wait to help you make your custom artbook the most breath-taking yet!