Printing: The Basics Print

Print Times

All printers across our global network have a normal production of 3-5 business days, but your shopping cart will display the estimated production time specific to your order. 

Business days are defined as Monday - Friday, and the first printing day is the day after the order is placed. For example, an order placed on a Monday will be sent to the printer by Tuesday and is expected to print between Thursday (day 3) and the following Monday (day 5).

How Do I Choose My Ink?

• Standard Black & White - Standard black & white printing for novels, memoirs, and other text-heavy books.
• Premium Black & White - Heavy ink coverage is great for books with black & white images, graphs, or other graphics.
• Standard Color - If your book is predominantly text but has a few color images, standard color is the right option for you.
• Premium Color - The best color printing on every page with rich colors and heavy ink coverage.

Should I Choose Standard Color For My Book?

Standard Color is intended to provide an economical color printing option for books with limited color, such as color text, graphs, diagrams, and small imagery. It is not recommended for books with heavy use of images and color, as we cannot guarantee favorable results. For high-quality saturated color on every order, we recommend Premium Color.

Because Standard Color printing is a wet ink process, the use of it to print books with heavy use of color is prone to a number of issues. These include faded color, streaking, loss of clarity, creasing, show-through between the pages, and wavy pages.

Please Note: Lulu utilizes a global network of print partners, which use different presses. This means a Standard Color product may occasionally be produced with a result closer in appearance to a Premium Color product in terms of color vibrancy and saturation, but we cannot guarantee routing to these specific presses on all orders of the same project. We do always ensure that all orders are produced according to the expected quality of the interior color option ordered. When matched with a file that has limited use of color, Standard products will print consistently favorably.

While some Standard Color orders may not display issues for image-rich content, it remains a possibility from order to order. We are not able to provide replacements for books that display these issues when the Standard interior option is selected for these types of files.

Premium Color print of an image-rich book:

Potential print issues in the same book printed as a Standard Color product:

How Do I Choose My Paper?

• 60# Cream – Uncoated: Traditional cream paper most frequently used for black & white novels and workbooks.
• 60# White – Uncoated: Versatile and economical white paper commonly found in a wide range of books.
• 80# White – Coated: Ultra-smooth, high-opacity bright white paper used for photo books, magazines, and comic books.
• 100# White – Coated (Calendars Only): The heaviest available stock, used to create durable, vibrant calendars.