Wondering how to get a journal published? Now you can preserve your life experiences by publishing your very own custom journal—online. Publishing Xpress is a journal printing company that can help you create a one-of-a-kind journal that uniquely frames your story and can be enjoyed for generations to come. Custom journal printing has never been so simple.
We offer many choices for your journal printing. From the color and size of your journal to binding options and coatings, choose exactly the look and feel you want. If your journals are 80 pages or fewer, you can use saddle stitched. For larger journal print jobs, you may also select perfect binding, plastic coil binding, or wire-o binding.
Love making journals but are running out of ideas? Check out these 21 cool journal ideas and start a new custom journal for yourself today!
Journal Printing and Binding
Perhaps you’re in college now and recording your thoughts in a journal? Maybe you’ve long graduated but kept a journal as part of an English class? Or maybe you took a trip of a lifetime and documented with photos and your thoughts? Give new life to your memories by converting your journals into a polished, self-published journal. With online journal printing, you can do just that without breaking the bank. Our online calculators can give you an instant quote on your printing project:
Trusted Journal Publishing
You may have spent months, even years, penning your personal journals. Publishing Xpress is an experienced and professional journal printing company—we understand your memories are priceless. We will ensure your finished product is not only affordable, but the quality published journal you envision. Check out our client spotlights that highlight some of the journals we have printed:
In this context, we consider a journal a book that has already been completed and may contain just text or text and graphics. If you are thinking about a journal printing project that you can write in, take a look at our notebook printing category.
Consider these tips when preparing your journal for printing:
This type of journal is one where you are typically reading the document. There is no need to write in the journal or lay it out flat. Thus, while you can use any of our four binding options, perfect binding and saddle stitching are the most frequently used options. With saddle stitching, you can only print up to 80 pages and the book must be printed in increments of four pages. Each sheet of paper has 2 pages printed on each side, so four pages. The sheet is then folded in half, gathered with the other sheets, and then staples are placed in the spine to hold them together. We can use perfect binding on books from only 8 pages to well over 400 pages.
We offer a wide range of paper options and almost all of them will work well with this type of project. It really depends on your preferences. If you have time, we would advise requesting our free sample packet. We will send you samples of all four of our binding options — perfect binding, plastic coil, saddle stitch, and wire-o. The plastic coil book has samples of all of our papers stocks as well as gloss and soft-touch lamination. It’s a great resource when you are making decisions about how you want to print your journal.
If your journal project will have pictures in it, make sure that they are high resolution (at least 300 dpi) and have been converted to a CMYK (cyan-magenta-yellow-black) color profile. Online photos and those taken with cameras are typically in an RGB (red-green-blue) color profile. Printing presses print in CMYK, so they will convert to the format if you have not done so. This can cause unexpected color shifts, so it is better if you convert the photos from RGB to CMYK.
Don’t let the saying fool you — most people do judge a book by its cover. Thus, you want a journal cover that will convey your journal’s theme as well as peak a reader’s interest. If you’re not happy with the cover you’ve designed, why not give Publishing Xpress a shot at designing the cover? For only $100, our designers will design your front and back cover along with the spine, based on your vision. You give us basic information and we’ll take it from there. If we don’t get it right the first time, you get two rounds of revisions. All this for only $100! If you need more than two rounds of revisions, extra revisions are only $25 a round.
Your journal will look more professional with page numbers. Either center the page numbers on the page or put them on the outside edges of each page. Don’t just place them on one side of the page, since some can get caught in the spine. Odd page numbers should be on the right and even page numbers should be on the left.
Make sure that your journal has ample margins on the inside pages. We recommend at least 1/2 inch on all sides plus an extra 1/8 inch on the bound side of the page. Don’t cram every page with as much text as you can possible fit in. That makes the page overwhelming for readers, who won’t want to read the book then. We recommend indenting paragraphs, since that is usually more visual appealing to readers.
Before you start laying out your journal, look through some books that you think are well designed. What do you like about those books? What font is used? How large is the font? How large are margins? What style conventions do they use throughout the book? You don’t have to copy another journal exactly, but you can incorporate features that you find appealing.
Publishing Xpress are the Custom Journal Printing Company for You!
Interested in learning more about journal printing and binding? Our client service representatives can answer your questions and help select the right journal printing services for you. You can reach us at 1-877-977-3779, email us at help@publishingxpress.com, or chat online (our chat feature is in the lower right corner on every page of our website). Or take a look at some of our other book printing ideas.
