Printing a book in China.

Freight

Because a book has to travel at least 7,000 kms (from southern China to a northern Australian city like Brisbane), it will take much longer than shipping a book from a print centre like Melbourne or Adelaide.

You can have your book delivered by sea freight or airfreight, with sea freight being slower but cost efficient.

The video (with sound) below outlines a common timeline for a China print project.

Your book launch – how and when.

A key event in publishing a book is the launch of your book. Here is a cut-down pre-launch checklist of things you need to know or have organised:

• When will the print be delivered? Do you know when the book will be physically available in Australia? When is the book literally in your hands?
• Is the book findable? How can sellers and readers find the book for purchase? Do you have an ISBN and is the metadata properly setup, is the book on book industry databases like Title Page and/or Ingram, does the book have a profile on the internet or in social media?
• Have you arranged for distribution though sales channels such as your own website (shopping cart enabled), online outlets like Amazon, Ingram or Author Freely?

It is surprising to see authors who have taken years to write their book try to compress these pre-launch mandatories (plus many others) into a very risky and unreasonable timeframe. Some authors announce their launch before the book is written or edited. These authors are setting themselves up for a lot of stress and potential embarrassment.

Study the video – you’ll see we recommend that when a book is being cleared at an Australian port is a fairly safe time to start thinking about a book launch event – note start thinking about a launch date. 

Printing timelines in China are very reliable but when its on the ship its another story both when its on the water and when it reaches Australia’s port system. When the book reaches Australia you don’t have to consider delays in freight including monsoons, typhoons or geopolitical events in the South China Sea or pirates in the Straight of Malacca. You might plan a launch event perhaps a month after arriving at an Australian port.

But you need to know union activity – something that is very unpredictable – can leave a shipment of goods sitting on an Australian dock for weeks or months. Australian Border Force held one book (printed in Malaysia) for inspection for an unexplained 4 weeks wrongly thinking the paper pages were impregnated with drugs. These are rare occurrences, some extremely rare!

Fox Merit is happy to advise you on your launch date. And during the print and delivery process we will advise you of where the book is in the timeline.