Printcolorweb

Printcolorweb is a digital printer near Barcelona that prints books, comics, magazines, catalogs, theses and planners through online price calculators, and runs its own online bookstore where books are printed one copy at a time as they sell. The company behind it is Fullcolor Printcolor S.L., at Pol. Ind. Can Vinyals in Santa Perpètua de Mogoda (Barcelona). Its customers are self-publishing authors, publishers, other print shops, businesses and students, and it calls itself a specialist in print on demand: "Somos especialistas en impresión de libros bajo demanda."

The calculators

Every product has its own calculator, and the home page shows the range. There is a standard book calculator with delivery "a partir de 5 días hábiles," from 5 working days; an express calculator ("Imprenta rápida con envío exprés en 72 h") that delivers in 3 working days; black-and-white A5 books; hardcover books from 7 working days; comics, manga and fanzines; pre-sale and crowdfunding runs; magazines, catalogs and manuals; doctoral theses and final-year projects; an online copy shop; and custom planners and notebooks, with a minimum of 50, including planners with a ready-designed 2027 interior where you only send the cover. Delivery times start counting once the PDF has been approved for printing and goes on the press. Shipping is free to the mainland ("Península") and the Balearics on orders over 35€.

Two calculators are reserved for the trade. Registered publishers, and offset or digital print shops, get their own pricing with "Pedidos mínimos de 50 ejemplares" and neutral packaging: "El embalaje será neutro y se realizará en cajas blancas sin publicidad," plain white boxes with no advertising, so a print shop can pass the books on as its own. A separate 1x1 print-on-demand calculator is also for registered publishers only.

Formats, papers and bindings

The book calculator offers A4 (21x29.7 cm), 18x25, 21x21, 17x24 (the "Formato Trade Editoriales"), 27x15, 15x23, A5 (14.8x21), 14x21.6, 14x21, 12x18, 11x16 and 13x13 cm, plus other sizes. A hardcover in a non-standard size costs 100 € more and takes 4 days longer, because the covers have to be made to measure.

Paper comes in four families, each described on the page. Matte or gloss coated paper, recommended for books with full-color photographs, comes in 90, 115, 135, 150 and 170 grams. 100% recycled paper, not chlorine bleached and free of optical brighteners, comes in 90, 120, 135 and 160 grams and can be written on. Offset paper, bright white and stiff, comes only in 90 grams, and bone-colored "papel novela," suited to black-and-white text, only in 80 grams. Covers are 300 grams for softcovers, which the company recommends, or 2 mm board for hardcovers.

There are three bindings: perfect binding with EVA glue ("rústica fresada"), perfect binding with PUR glue, which the page says is more flexible, keeps its properties over the years and replaces sewing in digital work, and hardcover, valid up to a 35 mm spine, with covers made from three pieces of gray board. Softcovers can have 8 cm flaps, and books can be portrait or landscape. Hardcovers get endpapers in white, black, blue or red, or printed with your own design. Cover lamination options are gloss, matte, embossed texture, velvet ("laminado terciopelo," with excellent scratch resistance, in the company's words), matte with UVI 2D spot varnish (minimum 50 copies), and matte with gold or silver stamping.

Samples and file checks

Before a full run you can order a printed proof of the book. The proof is free on orders of 50 copies or more and costs 30 € + IVA below that; a proof with gold or silver stamping costs 70 € + IVA either way, and stamped or UVI proofs take 7 working days longer. The home page also has a dedicated calculator for a professional sample book "con coste reducido y sin compromiso," at reduced cost with no commitment.

Every file gets an automatic basic check. For 9.90€, a prepress technician checks the files professionally, converts them to CMYK and emails you the ripped file to approve before printing. The page lists what that covers (file size, embedded fonts, bleed, safe margins, page count and order, spine and flap size) and what it does not: it does not proofread the text or fix layout work.

Publishing and selling

Printcolorweb also helps authors publish and sell. Through its imprint, Sello Editorial Numancia, it arranges the ISBN, legal deposit and barcode for runs of at least 50 copies, 4 of which go to the legal deposit office in Barcelona. The author keeps the rights, and the company reserves the right to turn down content it considers inappropriate.

Listing a book for sale in the Librería Numancia costs 25€ + IVA, and listing it in both the Librería Numancia and on Amazon costs 65 € + IVA, with a minimum stock of 4 copies for each. The page says "100% de los beneficios son para el autor/a," all of the profit goes to the author.

The newest route is print on demand through the Librería Printcolorweb. You place an order through the 1x1 calculator, and the company prints a free sample copy, which you approve and use for the product photos. Once the book is listed, "Cada vez que alguien compre una copia del libro, Printcolorweb imprimirá una sola copia y la enviará al comprador del libro": each sale is printed as a single copy and shipped to the buyer in 4 to 5 working days, with no returns except for a printing error or defect. Listing is free; if you want an adviser to set it up for you, that costs 50€ + IVA. The page adds that publishers can use the same route to bring out-of-print titles back to market and sell them one by one. The online-sale calculator covers runs from 1 to a maximum of 100 copies.

Payment, discounts and support

Prices in the calculators are shown before VAT. Books without advertising qualify for the reduced 4% VAT rate; otherwise 21% applies. Orders from 50€ to 4000€ can be paid in up to 4 interest-free monthly installments. New customers get 15% off a first order and returning customers 5% off later orders, with some calculators excluded.

Support runs by phone, Monday to Friday from 9:00 to 17:00, as well as by WhatsApp and email, and you can book a call with one of the company's publishing advisers. The site also has a layout guide, a blog and a "Planta un árbol" tree-planting initiative.

Who it suits

Printcolorweb suits Spanish-language authors who want to see a proof, choose among many papers and finishes, and then either order a run or sell through an online bookstore without holding stock. Publishers and print shops get trade pricing and neutral packaging from 50 copies. Pricing is quoted through the calculators rather than a public table, and the phone line keeps office hours.