If you plan to send laser printout to the printing house, your
printout should be high-resolution printout. That’s because
the printer will take your pages and photograph them to create
the film for the printing plates. Since the film is a copy of
your pages, the film and the resulting plates will have a
slightly lower resolution than your original pages. The final
printed book will also have a lower resolution than your
original pages, so it’s best to start the process with the
highest possible resolution.
What’s resolution as applied to laser output? Resolution
is measured in dots per inch. The greater the number of dots per
inch, the higher the resolution.
Today, on a reasonable budget, you can produce laser printout
in either of two resolutions:
- 300 dots per inch (dpi)
- 600 dots per inch (dpi)
There are 1200 dpi laser printers on the market too, but the
prices are high. Such high-resolution laser printers are
unnecessary for book preparation. It makes more sense to send
your electronic book files to the printing house to produce a
book of equal or higher resolution.
At the lowest level of resolution, you can send your 300 dpi
laser printout to the printing house. Historically, you have
lots of company. Small software firms and self-publishers have
been sending 300 dpi laser printout ever since the 300 dpi laser
printers became available in the mid 1980s. However, even an
untrained eye notes the obviously lower quality of a 300 dpi
book when comparing it to a higher resolution book. Although 300
dpi laser printout submissions were common until recently, we
can produce higher resolution now, and readers expect higher
resolution.
At the next level of resolution, you can send 600 dpi laser
printout to the printing house. At 600 dpi, your book will
appear appreciably clearer than a 300 dpi book. The 600 dpi
lines and letters will be finer than those in a 300 dpi book,
and your graphics will be easier to distinguish. Many of the
smaller software companies and independent book publishers are
still submitting their books in 600 dpi laser printout.
