Documentation

Print-on-demand

Our print-on-demand (PoD) service gives you first-class printing of books and other products, from multiple global locations.

How it works

When an order is placed via Print Trail for a product you have configured for print-on-demand, a fulfilment is created and assigned to the closest PoD location which can produce the order, based on the order’s shipping address.

The fulfilment is printed and dispatched directly to your customer.

Once the order is dispatched, the fulfilment’s status is updated on Print Trail. See: Fulfilments.

Preparing your print-on-demand products

These are the steps to configure your product for print-on-demand on Print Trail:

  1. First, select an existing product or create a new product
  2. Go to the product’s ‘Print-on-demand’ tab
  3. Either create a new draft PoD setting, or edit existing PoD settings
  4. Choose a print on-demand product type from the drop-down
  5. Enter the details such as number of pages and paper types.

Save as you go.

Uploading artwork

To upload PDF artwork:

  1. Go to the product’s ‘Print-on-demand’ tab
  2. Select the correct print-on-demand settings card (e.g. “Draft”)
  3. In the artwork fields on the right, click the three dots to show the menu
  4. Click ‘Upload artwork’ (if artwork already exists, this will read ‘Replace Artwork’)
  5. Select your PDF, click ‘Upload’

Repeat the same for any other artwork fields present.

👉 Before uploading artwork, please read the artwork requirements below thoroughly.

Submitting for approval

When you are happy with all your draft print-on-demand details, you are now ready to submit these changes for approval.

Print Trail manually checks all print-on-demand settings and artwork before approving for print.

  1. When you are ready, click the ‘Send for review’ button.
  2. The card’s title and message will turn orange and the card title will now read ‘Pending review’.
  3. Approval usually takes less than two business days. If there are problems, we will try to help you.
  4. Once approved, the product’s new PoD details will be used in production of your orders as long as the product is active and has Print-on-demand enabled.

👉 Tip: Make sure your product is active and its print-on-demand settings are ‘enabled’.

Making changes to your print-on-demand settings

👉 Tip: making changes to a product’s print-on-demand settings is done in a draft version, alongside the existing approved settings. This means that while you make changes, processing of orders for the product are not affected.

  1. Follow the same steps as outlined in ‘Preparing your print-on-demand products’
  2. Make your changes in the draft settings
  3. Once you’re ready, send the changes for review
  4. When the changes are reviewed by us, if they are accepted they will replace the product’s previous print-on-demand settings. (If rejected, we will let you know why and we will provide suggestions to solve any issues).

Deleting print-on-demand settings for a product

If your print-on-demand product needs to be paused for whatever reason (for instance, there is a mistake with the artwork) you can simply delete its print on demand settings by clicking the trash icon on the Approved PoD settings tab.

Artwork requirements

  • Artwork files must be PDFs
  • All fonts must be embedded or saved as outlines
  • CMYK mode
  • All images must be a minimum of 240 dpi at print size (300 dpi is preferred).
  • 3mm bleed on all sides

Additional artwork requirements for books only

  • Cover and pages must be saved as two separate PDF documents:
    • Cover must be all one flat page including the front, rear, and spine.
    • Pages must be in one multi-page document, in reading order, starting with the first right-hand page (e.g. the title page).
  • The ‘Pages’ PDF must have an even number of pages (total number of pages is divisible by two).
  • The cover artwork must have bleed (where the graphics and colours extend the page size).
  • The cover artwork must have crop marks.
  • The cover artwork’s spine width must be as instructed by Print Trail.
  • Filenames should be ‘XXX_T.pdf’ and ‘XXX_C.pdf’ (where ‘XXX’ is the product’s ISBN or SKU, ‘T’ = text pages, and ‘C’ = cover).

👉 A note on book spines: Due to slight differences in paper thicknesses used by printers worldwide, the cover spine width may vary slightly depending on which Print Trail location prints an order.

Mix and match print-on-demand with inventory, per-product

Print Trail allows you to mix and match print-on-demand with inventory, per-product.

For example, if a product sells well in the US, it can be shipped from warehoused inventory in the US, whilst orders of the same product to all other destinations can be served by our global print-on-demand.

Learn more about inventory with Print Trail.