WIP - The World of Ascadia

[Gamerprinter]

It really depends. For most books, B/W without grayscale is what you can expect - in order to keep the price down.

However, an illustrated book (coffee table book, book of maps, etc.) full color and grayscale and be easily printed, but these books as substantially more cost to print.

If you're talking about typical fantasy literature that comes in hardback then to paper back, B/W is all you can expect.

Compare this to full color magazines. You'd think the cover price of $3 to $5 covers the cost of printing. This is not true. Most full color magazines cost $10 - $20 to print each. The advertising placed inside the magazine actually pays for the printing cost. The cover price only helps defray the cost of distribution. Full color printing for books are very, very expensive. Print-on-demand is essentially printing full color with a color copier/printer for short run, costs are still high, but actually not as high as if they were printed on offset printers for large distribution.

GP