PDF to book printing, done by an actual UK book printer. Upload your PDF, choose paperback or hardcover, and we print and bind it in-house in Exeter — from 10 copies, with a free file check on the PDF itself and a free digital proof to approve before the run prints. Only have a Word file? We convert it to a print-ready PDF at no charge.
Live prices from the same engine as the full calculator — no email, no sign-up. Pick the spec that matches your PDF and watch the per-copy price respond.
From file to finished book in four steps — and the first sentence of each is the honest answer, not the sales version.
Choose size, pages, paper, binding and quantity in the quote calculator — live prices, under a minute — then upload your interior and cover PDFs. Word files accepted and converted free.
We open your PDF and check it properly — trim size, bleed, image resolution, fonts, colour, spine width. Anything that would print badly gets flagged and explained before a sheet is printed.
A free digital proof of your book — check it, approve it, and the run doesn’t print until you have. Want a real, bound copy in your hands first? Add a printed proof copy.
Printed and bound in-house in Exeter — standard production 3–4 weeks from proof approval, express options when the deadline is tight. Wrapped, boxed, dispatched via DPD or pallet.
Most online print services treat your PDF as a finished instruction: whatever is in the file gets printed, and any problem in it becomes your problem — discovered when the boxes arrive. We work the other way round. Every PDF that comes to us gets a free file check by our prepress team before anything is printed, and then a free digital proof before the run. Here’s what we actually look at, and why each one matters:
| What we check | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Page size vs trim size | The PDF pages must match the book size you’ve ordered. A Word default (A4) ordered as an A5 book either shrinks your type by 30% or crops your margins — we catch the mismatch and tell you which fix you actually want. |
| Bleed — 3mm | Anything meant to print to the edge of the page must extend 3mm beyond it, because every book is trimmed after binding. Missing bleed is the single most common PDF fault — without it, a hairline of unprinted white can appear at the edge. |
| Image resolution — 300 DPI | Images below ~300 DPI at printed size look soft on paper even when they look fine on screen. We flag low-resolution images by page number so you can decide: replace, shrink, or accept. |
| Fonts embedded | A PDF without embedded fonts can silently substitute typefaces at the press — your carefully chosen text reflows in someone else’s font. We check embedding rather than discover it in print. |
| Colour setup | Presses print CMYK; screens show RGB. We convert RGB files carefully and flag anything that will shift noticeably — and we make sure body text is 100% black, not a four-colour “rich black” that prints fuzzy at text sizes. More in our guide to CMYK vs RGB. |
| Spine width vs page count | Your cover PDF’s spine must match the real thickness of your book — which depends on page count and paper. We calculate it from your actual spec (try it yourself on the spine width calculator) and check your cover against it. |
| Page count & order | Blank pages where you meant them, chapter openers falling on the right-hand page, and a page count the binding can actually accommodate — small things that separate a book from a printout. |
None of this costs anything, and none of it is automated-only — software runs the preflight, a person reads the result. It’s the difference between a printer and an upload form.
A print-ready book PDF, in one paragraph: pages at the finished trim size (plus 3mm bleed wherever ink reaches the edge), single pages in reading order (not printer’s spreads — imposition is our job), images at 300 DPI, fonts embedded, and ideally CMYK colour with body text as plain 100% black. Export the cover as a separate PDF — for paperbacks as one flat spread (back + spine + front), for hardbacks we’ll supply the exact case dimensions, or generate them with the free cover template tool.
Not sure how many pages your manuscript will make? The words-to-pages estimator turns a word count into a typeset page estimate for any trim size. And if any of the jargon above is new, our guides to bleed, DPI and print file formats each take three minutes.
The same interior PDF can become a perfect-bound paperback, a PUR-bound paperback for heavier use, or a thread-sewn hardcover — only the cover file changes, and we’ll give you the exact dimensions for whichever you choose. Trim sizes run from B-format (the standard UK mass-market novel) through A5, Royal and B5 to A4, with custom sizes available; if you’re unsure, the book sizes guide shows every UK trim at honest relative scale.
Worth saying plainly, because almost nobody offers it at short run: we turn PDFs into real hardcover books — sections thread-sewn, case-bound over board, printed paper case or cloth with foil blocking, from 10 copies. A family history, a thesis, a client gift or a personal edition of your own novel can be a bookshop-grade hardback, not just a stapled document. The hardback printing page covers materials and options in full.
Live numbers from our calculator, not marketing rounding. The first six rows are the same book at rising quantities — that’s the curve that matters: press setup costs the same at 10 copies as at 500, so every copy after the first few carries less of it.
| Book | Specification | Quantity | Per copy |
|---|---|---|---|
A5 paperback from PDF |
200pp mono · perfect bound · 80gsm white |
10 | £9.10per copy |
A5 paperback from PDF |
200pp mono · perfect bound · 80gsm white |
25 | £4.60per copy |
A5 paperback from PDF |
200pp mono · perfect bound · 80gsm white |
50 | £3.10per copy |
A5 paperback from PDF |
200pp mono · perfect bound · 80gsm white |
100 | £2.35per copy |
A5 paperback from PDF |
200pp mono · perfect bound · 80gsm white |
250 | £1.86per copy |
A5 paperback from PDF |
200pp mono · perfect bound · 80gsm white |
500 | £1.67per copy |
B-format novel from PDF |
250pp mono · perfect bound · 80gsm cream |
100 | £3.01per copy |
A5 hardcover from PDF |
200pp mono · sewn & case bound · 80gsm white |
50 | £4.40per copy |
A4 colour book from PDF |
100pp colour · perfect bound · 150gsm matt |
100 | £7.58per copy |
Prices include UK delivery and exclude VAT — though note that printed books are zero-rated for VAT in the UK, so for most book jobs there is none to add. Colour interiors, heavier papers and hardcover binding raise the per-copy price; quantity lowers it. For the full picture see UK book printing prices, or get an exact quote for your PDF.
Novels, memoirs and non-fiction, print-ready from a typesetter or formatted at home. Short runs to sell directly, or alongside POD — our self-publishing printing page covers the economics.
Family histories, memoirs for the grandchildren, recipe collections, travel journals — PDFs that deserve to be real books. Ten copies covers a family.
TTRPG rulebooks, campaign settings and game documents bought as PDFs or written as one — printed and properly bound, they survive the table. Check the licence allows printing for personal use; then send it over.
Operation manuals, training workbooks, onboarding documents — the PDFs everyone has and nobody reads on screen, printed at exactly the quantity you need.
The university template produces the PDF; we produce the bound thesis — sewn hardback, foiled spine, to your institution’s spec.
Annual reports, research publications, exhibition catalogues, society journals — designed once as a PDF, printed properly instead of office-printered.
Yes — a PDF is exactly what we print from. Send one PDF for the interior (pages in reading order, single pages rather than spreads) and one for the cover, choose your size, paper, binding and quantity, and we handle the rest: a free file check, a free digital proof, then the run. From 10 copies, printed in-house in Exeter.
Pages at the finished trim size, 3mm bleed on any edge where ink reaches the edge of the page, images at 300 DPI, fonts embedded, and CMYK colour preferred (we convert RGB carefully if that’s what you have). Don’t worry about getting it perfect — the free file check flags anything that needs attention before printing.
The big levers are page count, colour vs mono, binding and quantity — as a marker, an A5 200-page mono paperback is £2.35 per copy at 100 copies. Per-copy prices fall steeply between 10 and 250 copies because press setup is the same at any quantity. The table on this page shows live prices, or price your exact PDF spec in under a minute.
Yes — the same PDF that makes a paperback makes a hardcover (hardback) book: thread-sewn sections, case binding, printed paper case or cloth with foil blocking. From 10 copies, so a PDF can become a small run of genuinely bookshop-grade hardbacks.
Our standard runs start at 10 copies, and per-copy cost is highest at the smallest quantities because press setup is identical at any size. If what you really want is to see one finished copy first, every order includes a free digital proof to approve before the run prints — and you can add a printed proof copy if you want a bound copy in your hands first.
Yes — send the Word file and we convert it to a print-ready PDF at no charge, then send it back for your approval before anything prints. Exports from Canva, InDesign, Affinity Publisher and Google Docs are all fine too; our guide to formatting a book in Word helps if you’re still laying out.
Every job gets a free file check: page size against your chosen trim, bleed, image resolution, font embedding, colour setup and whether the spine width matches your page count and paper. We flag anything that would print badly and tell you how to fix it — or fix it with you. Then a free digital proof to approve before the run (printed proof copies optional).
The same size as the finished book — if you’re printing A5, the PDF pages should be A5 (plus bleed). We print B-format, A5, Royal, B5 and A4 as standard, with custom trim sizes available. Unsure which suits your book? See the UK book sizes guide with its actual-size picker.
The file check happens when you upload; your free digital proof follows straight after; and standard production runs 3–4 weeks from proof approval. Express options are available when a deadline is tight — tell us the date before you order and we’ll confirm honestly what’s achievable.
Price it in under a minute, upload it, and have a real bound proof in your hands within days — printed in-house in Exeter, from 10 copies.