Dust Covers for Your Children's Book
Upgrade Your POD books with dust jackets.
I choose to use POD (print on demand) services to print my books because it’s a business plan that works for me. I prefer to Sell First-Print Later. The traditional offset printing methods are a Print First-Sell Later business model where you print, warehouse, and hope you can sell. It requires an investment upfront for each book, and ongoing warehousing fees. Instead, I choose to minimize upfront costs and cut out the warehousing.
In return, though, POD often has limited options for printing. For hardcover picture books, I choose case-printed hardcovers, which means the cover image is printed onto the hardcovers.
When you choose offset printing, you can do this also, or you can use a solid color cover, with a texture such as a linen feel. And then, you add a dust cover or dust jacket that has the cover image. Some schools and libraries prefer the dust cover and even add additional plastic over the dust jacket to extend the life of the book. Another option for a library with heavy use from kids is rebinding, such as Permabound or Bound-to-Stay-Bound. For these, the bindery cuts off the old binding and rebinds with sturdy, kid-resistant bindings. These are usually done order-by-order, and aren’t available for my books.
I finally found an option for dust covers for my books! For paid readers here are some images and a discussion of when you might want to use this option.
