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The 30-second quote form — or the instant calculator for 1–20 copies. Your price lands the same day.
Rough or ready. A real person checks your file and offers clear advice on making it ready to print. Free and fast.
Your preview to sign off before we print the run. Until approval you can still make changes to the artwork.
Stapled booklets with you in 3 days, perfect bound books in 5 and hardbacks in 7 days. Free UK tracked delivery.
Photography book printing at Ex Why Zed: short-run photobooks in hardback (case bound), perfect bound or stapled photo-zine formats, printed from your own PDF layout on silk, uncoated or heavier fine-art stocks. A real person checks colour and bleed and you approve a proof; orders are delivered in 5 working days.
Thanks for stopping by and welcome to Ex Why Zed. Congratulations on getting your PDF ready for photobook printing. We are printers of ultra-stylish, contemporary photography books. Every week we print beautifully designed books that receive rave reviews from peers and set the benchmark for putting ink on paper.
We have been printing since 2006 so sit back and relax, we’re here to guide you through the process.
At the heart of our easy workflow at Ex Why Zed is the Print Journey. Each of the 5 steps has its own hub where you can enjoy comprehensive guides, illustrated articles, captivating videos and insightful blog posts. These resources empower you to make well-informed decisions about design and styling, propelling your project from an initial idea to a winning Photobook.
Printed for photographers right across the UK. Recent photobooks include India Mae Alby's The London Rollerskating Scene, Hugo Berman's London in Silence, Adam Karnacz's Illumination in Leeds, David Southern's Shoreline in Newcastle and Colin McPherson's Goodison Park photobook There She Goes on Merseyside. Based in London? See book printing for London.
Spend a few minutes looking through our portfolio of previous Photobooks.
We worked with the 'social media channel for the cool people', Vero, to produce a photography book capturing the best examples of black and white photography from their #momo hashtag (Monochrome Monday). The resulting publication oozes class with an embossed Colorplan front cover housing 104 inside pages packed with exceptional photography.
260x196mm Perfect Bound Books.
4pp Cover onto 270gsm GF Smith Colorplan Ebony Black plus embossed logo.
White ink printing to spine.
104pp Text onto 150gsm House Uncoated.
As GQ Magazine summarised, this is an "ultra-stylish bound book" and "your new coffee table essential".
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/vero-monochrome-mondays-book
Stapled, perfect bound (glued, like a paperback) or hardback? Your page count has already decided — the whole rule in one picture.
Read the full Binding Styles guide →Silk, gloss or uncoated — what each looks and feels like, and the insider hack that saves you money.
Read the full Paper Choices guide →Bleed, page sizes, cover files and the 3 common mistakes — plus we check (or rebuild) your file for FREE.
Read the full Artwork Hub guide →Browse hundreds of real projects we've actually printed — proper inspiration, not a single AI mockup.
Real people who've been printing books since 2006 — friendly, genuinely knowledgeable, and usually replying within minutes.
Design in whatever program you love, save it as a PDF, send it over. Never done it before? A real person checks it for free.
No minimum means you can print a single copy, check the paper and layout in your own hands, then run the full batch with total confidence.
Silk, gloss, uncoated, kraft — we'll post you the real thing so you're never guessing colour and feel off a screen.
Degree hand-in, launch day, a fair this weekend? Tell us your date up front — we'll say straight away if it's doable, then build the whole job around it.
Size, number of pages and quantity are the factors that have the biggest impact on your price. Increasing or reducing these can stretch your budget.
We like to interact with our customers, find out about their projects and have a bit of dialogue rather than hide behind a massive, confusing spreadsheet on a website.
We provide a bespoke quote for each and every job because your project is bespoke and unique.
Don’t get us wrong, our process is quick and efficient but we like to add extra value by starting a conversation with you first. Remember conversations? Yep, they are what happened before your phone was glued to your head! 🙂
The largest portrait size we can print is an impressive A3 (420mm high x 297mm wide). Our maximum square size is 297x297mm. The maximum landscape size is 210mm high x 297mm wide.
For cost-effective sizes keep your catalogue within A4 portrait, A5 landscape or 210x210mm square - these are the cheapest sizes to print but do choose the size that best fits your publication.
There are a number of options for producing a one off test copy of your book. The best solution depends on the print spec of your final print run. Assuming you are going for under 500 copies, in which case we will be digitally printing then final books, then we can print a proof that is close in repro and production values. If you are printing a longer print run of 500 copies or more then it is likely we will be litho printing your books to achieve the best possible quality. The digital proof will be a guide on the layout and paper but won't match the final books.
Stapled zines and booklets are with you in 3 working days, perfect bound books in 5 and hardbacks in 7, counted from approval of your print-ready artwork, with free tracked UK delivery. Lead times depend on run length and print spec — longer litho runs and premium cover finishes take longer — so if you're working to a hard deadline, tell us the date and we'll confirm we can hit it before you commit. On runs of 1–20 stapled or perfect bound copies we check your artwork thoroughly and send it straight to print; 21 copies and over, and every hardback, get a PDF proof to approve first.
The perfect bound method of binding will give your publication a square spine and professional looking finish. For further advice follow our perfect binding set up guides.
The absolute minimum number of pages we can perfect bind is 32: a 4 page cover and 28 inside pages onto 170gsm. This will give you a skinny 3mm spine.
Wire stitching is a little bit of print jargon for ‘stapling’. As an example, if you have an A5 booklet then we print it onto A4 sheets, fold them in and put staples along the left-hand edge to bind the sheet together. In some quarters, this is also known as ‘saddle stitching’. Let’s stick with stapling though if that’s easier 🙂
Yes, hardback photobooks are a superbly impressive addition to any coffee table. They do cost more for us to produce but then in turn, you can sell them for a higher cover price.
Check out our video guide on hardback books https://youtu.be/QnrOakRMBXg
Do also look through our portfolio for examples of previous publications we have printed: https://www.exwhyzed.com/portfolio-category/hardback-case-bound-books/
FOGRA39 is our prefered colour profile.
You tend to lose 2-3mm on the spine side of each page so moving any important information a good 6-8mm away from the page edge will make it actually readable without people having to force the pages flat.
Additionally, 8mm of the first and last text pages are glued to the front cover to make a hinge so best to allow 10-12mm of space on the spine side to avoid anything being completely hidden by the cover hinge.
With images that cross the spread you can cheat a little by splitting the image in two then moving the left hand half left by 2-3mm and the right hand half right by the same amount.
The three basic finishes are silk, gloss or uncoated. Each have their own pros and cons. For sharp, crips images choose silk or gloss. For a more tactile, firbrous finish but more muted images choose uncoated.
Our video guide on paper choices is a good place to start when choosing what you would like for your book https://youtu.be/JTwAvIbm6pU
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Yes, ‘text’ pages is our common term for the inside pages of your publication. They can be filled with illustrations, photography, full colour artwork…or just text if it’s a poetry book.
For the purposes of our quoting, we call a page one side of content. So, a sheet of paper has two pages - a front and a back. If you ask for a quote for 40 inside pages, that will be 40 pages of content, 40 pages in your artwork file / pdf and in the book 20 leaves printed on both sides.
They are — for the specs people ask about most. Every product page shows real prices from real jobs, and our instant calculator prices 1–20 copies on the spot. Everything else is bespoke: size, page count, paper and quantity all move the price, so we quote it properly rather than guess — usually the same working day. Send us your spec and we'll come straight back.
No. Unfortunately what is seen on an RGB, backlit screen is never going to be the same as it appears on paper in CMYK. It's just impossible to achieve that and no printer could. You will have to allow for some difference in the colours between the two mediums but having something tangible in your hands and seeing the images on paper gives the publication a charm that just sending out a pdf wont do.
Yes!
Our Print Portfolio - Over 500 Real Projects (not CGI clip art like all the other sites have 🙂
To help you make informed print choices when you embark on your printing journey, we have curated, analysed and dissected a series of recent projects to show you what can be achieved.
https://exwhyzed.com/photography-book-printing-insights/
And here are three more very different, but equally stunning examples of photobook printing.
Intimacy by Ashton Thorp is a beautifully printed, 160-page A5 photo zine with a matt-laminated uncoated cover and silk interior pages. Thoughtful design choices—like a wraparound landscape cover, subtle captions, and varied layouts—create a rich, tactile experience. A masterclass in how great print elevates powerful photography.
Sajad Ahmad’s Abandoned is a hauntingly beautiful A4 hardback photo book, printed with precision by Ex Why Zed. Wrapped in matt-laminated silk and filled with 64 vibrant silk pages, it documents a forgotten Welsh village overtaken by time, nature, and memory—preserving lost history through powerful, full-colour photography and exceptional print craft.
Rory DCS’s How To Be Fun is a bold, brightly coloured zine bursting with personality. Printed at 230x170mm with a zingy Colorplan Citrine cover and vibrant gloss pages, it’s a visual self-help guide like no other. Sharp photography, playful design, and standout print choices make this zine irresistibly engaging.
