Interesting facts on paper quality (hint for a certain publisher)

[Richard T. Eger]

Dear John,

Yes, I did say you guys were taking yourselves too seriously, then seriously took most of you to task. How else to make the point, but use the same seriousness of argument, other than a dismissive single-liner, which could be considered haughty and dismissive? So, yup, I transgressed.

I haven't caught all of Jukka's posts and understand, if this is a constant sore point he keeps rubbing, i.e., ribbing the British, then it is time for him to get the message and quit irritating the people he is trying to convince of his cause.

I don't know whether I am in the minority or not as regards a preference for glossy paper. I think, given everything else equal, we should be able to agree that a better image is preferrable to a poorer image. I gave 2 examples of books with superior printing. I have literally no interest in the Hawker Hurricane, but, when I took a look at the Hiscock book, and, considering that I was contemplating doing a co-author book with similar types of material, I snapped up a copy of this fairly inexpensive book ($21.95 U.S.). So, rather than belabor the point, let me offer you a challenge to pick up a copy of this book, then compare it to others you think are of good quality. If that doesn't set your sights higher, I don't know what will.

As for Jukka not providing the name of his supplier of information, he simply may not want to get the fellow in trouble with his company. He said as much as that. Demanding the name of deepthroat, having it refused with good reason, should end it right there. All Jukka was trying to say when he started this thread was that he had learned that glossy paper costs less that a dollar additional in the cost of a 320-page A4 sized book versus matte paper and, wouldn't we be willing to pay that small amount extra for the added quality? I repeat that the rest of the publishing costs are irrelevant, as we are dealing with a differential cost.

Regards,
Richard

[Jukka Juutinen]

Richard, thanks for the support! You have been the only one who understood my points perfectly.

Let´s refresh some facts. The book on which the one dollar difference is based has 320 pages in American 8.5" x 11" (i.e. the area per page is about 5% lower than that of the A4 format [210 mm x 297 mm]) format and is about an American Army unit. The book´s print run is 3000. The paper used resembles paper used in e.g. Grub Street´s "Buffaloes over Singapore" (i.e. of considerably lesser quality than the paper used by Classic). The total paper cost was approx. $22,000. Now, if that very crude (OK for printing text but very unsuitable for illustrations) paper was replaced by real glossy paper (e.g. International Air Power Review), additional paper cost would have been $3000 for the whole print run, i.e. one dollar per book. Now, some of you might ask why didn´t they use the glossy paper. Well, the book was intented for American mass market. As the book is, the cover price is $29.95 and the better paper would have pushed the price to $32.50 (to allow for bookseller discount). Now, due to the perverse nature of American mass market, that $2.50 increase beyond the threshold of $30 would have halved the sales, according to their market analysis.

That publisher was ready to admit that the European book market is different and here such effects do not take place. And I doubt that a $2.50 price increase of e.g. Helicopters of the Third Reich woud have affected the sales a bit.

[Six Nifty .50s]

Originally Posted by Richard T. Eger

Dear John,

Originally Posted by Richard T. Eger

Yes, I did say you guys were taking yourselves too seriously, then seriously took most of you to task. How else to make the point, but use the same seriousness of argument, other than a dismissive single-liner, which could be considered haughty and dismissive? So, yup, I transgressed.

I haven't caught all of Jukka's posts and understand, if this is a constant sore point he keeps rubbing, i.e., ribbing the British, then it is time for him to get the message and quit irritating the people he is trying to convince of his cause.

I don't know whether I am in the minority or not as regards a preference for glossy paper. I think, given everything else equal, we should be able to agree that a better image is preferrable to a poorer image. I gave 2 examples of books with superior printing. I have literally no interest in the Hawker Hurricane, but, when I took a look at the Hiscock book, and, considering that I was contemplating doing a co-author book with similar types of material, I snapped up a copy of this fairly inexpensive book ($21.95 U.S.). So, rather than belabor the point, let me offer you a challenge to pick up a copy of this book, then compare it to others you think are of good quality. If that doesn't set your sights higher, I don't know what will.

As for Jukka not providing the name of his supplier of information, he simply may not want to get the fellow in trouble with his company. He said as much as that. Demanding the name of deepthroat, having it refused with good reason, should end it right there. All Jukka was trying to say when he started this thread was that he had learned that glossy paper costs less that a dollar additional in the cost of a 320-page A4 sized book versus matte paper and, wouldn't we be willing to pay that small amount extra for the added quality? I repeat that the rest of the publishing costs are irrelevant, as we are dealing with a differential cost.

Regards,
Richard

There are other practical reasons why most books are not published on high-gloss or semi-gloss paper. Printing large amounts of small text over hundreds of pages is generally not a good idea, because the glare off the glossy surface increases eye strain. That drawback will become more noticable if your room lighting is uneven, in which case you will be rubbing your eyes after a long reading session.

For most people, readability is more important than picture quality, but I can understand why many customers would rather see unit histories and technical histories printed on gloss-coated paper because these tend to contain very many photos, drawings and paintings.

[Richard T. Eger]

Dear Six Nifty .50s,

You do raise a very valid point which I hadn't considered. I grabbed 3 books and did a sitting chair comparison and I could see exactly what you are talking about. You can position the matte paper in any position without affecting readability, but care must be taken with the glossy paper, which is really semi-glossy, as glare can easily occur. And, as the pages will tend to hump near the spine, one needs to be careful.

So, maybe those old time book designers knew something we lost - putting the photos in clumps on gloss paper, while keeping the text on matte. Of course, there then isn't the immediacy of text to illustration.

I'm not exactly sure now what the compromise should be, but I am not happy with the photo reproduction quality on matte paper. I want to see the subtle shading differences and not have them lost in a sea of black or monotone. Grab Hiscock's book and you'll see what is achievable. Then the question is how to get there without glare.

Regards,
Richard

[Jukka Juutinen]

I have heard this sorry excuse before. Any book becomes unreadable if the light comes from certain angles and as a person who reads several hours a day I haven´t noticed any particular eye strain due to gloss. I do have experienced eye strain, but due to insufficient lighting, coarsely printed text (one Finnish doctotal thesis on summer 1944 campaign was cheaply printed on matte paper and the text lacked a great deal of crisp) on crude paper, too large and poorly chosen font or too wide column. I have found that Jane´s yearbooks suit my eyes very well, crisp printing, small font and 4 columns per page.

Originally Posted by Six Nifty .50s

There are other practical reasons why most books are not published on high-gloss or semi-gloss paper. Printing large amounts of small text over hundreds of pages is generally not a good idea, because the glare off the glossy surface increases eye strain. That drawback will become more noticable if your room lighting is uneven, in which case you will be rubbing your eyes after a long reading session.

For most people, readability is more important than picture quality, but I can understand why many customers would rather see unit histories and technical histories printed on gloss-coated paper because these tend to contain very many photos, drawings and paintings.

[Jukka Juutinen]

Since I have been accused of negativism, I offer you some positive critique. Do grab Warren Bodie´s book "The Lockheed P-38 Lightning" (Motorbooks). I think this is the best aircraft book in terms of layout I have ever seen. No wasted space, illustrations are well blended with the text and the font is very well chosen. 256 glossy pages, softcover large format for $25.

Worth noting is also Eagle Editions and their quality. First class paper, first class binding. My only complaint is the largish font used in the recent To War with the Yoxford Boys book. Urbanke´s Green Hearts has better and smaller font.

[Ruy Horta]

It isn't simply Glossy rules all and not using it means an inferior standard, which is strongly applied by one party here.

Personally I prefer good quality matte paper over glossy paper.

There must be more very silly people like me out there...

Last comment from me on the issue.

[Richard T. Eger]

Dear Ruy, et al,

Points are raised pro and con. But, I also sense a buggy whip mentality: That's how it has been and should be into the future. We wouldn't have "progress" in its most general form if it weren't for someone trying to improve something or creating something new, like the computers and Internet through which we are having these very discussions.

As I have collected magazines that date back into the 40's, the change in quality has been very apparent. My 40's magazines are generally on very cheap, now quite brittle, matte paper. Photo quality is coarse halftone. Color? What color? Things got a tad better with the RAF Flying Review, better quality paper, but still matte, and still of dubious photo printing quality. This was later supplanted with Flying Review International, produced on semi-gloss paper (what, I think, we are lumping together with glossy), but of still less than stellar photo quality printing. This transitioned into the first incarnation of Air Enthusiast International, which wasn't a notable improvement in print quality, except that the color plates looked better. This was followed by Air International, a potential step slightly backwards. Today's Air Enthusiast may be a mite better. Overall, though, there is a definite improvement over the quality of the 40's and 50's.

Is that good enough? Not in my book. How many of you out there have taken a book or magazine image and scanned it at 100, 200, 300 dpi or more? Immediately you saw that the image wasn't analog. It's a halftone, or, in the case of color, likely multi-pass printing, which can make it look better, but it still isn't analog. But, with today's 5 megapixel cameras, we are getting to the point that the results of film analog and digital can't be differentiated in the range that we would find useful. So, it isn't that the printed image is digital, but how coarsely digital it is. That's the improvement that we should be pushing for.

Remember when Monogram had a lock on quality? There was Monogram, the gold standard, and then every other publisher. What did Tom Hitchcock know to create such a premium product? For those fortunate enough to have a copy, take a look at his 1982 edition of Smith & Creek's Jet Planes of the Third Reich. It was printed in Singapore. It doesn't match today's standards, but, back then, it set the standard. Why the Far East has the best presses in the world, I don't know, but, in my experience in buying books, they do. And they keep getting better.

I've got a 1998 Hewlett-Packard HP-722C inkjet printer. In its day, it set the standard. Today, it is out of date. We can get literally analog appearing prints off of the latest printers. Beautiful photos. There's a whole market in photo quality printers that has developed over the last several years.

I don't believe that the technology is not there to do better in magazine and book photo printing. Like Jukka, I want to see better.

Okay, let's take it from a pragmatic historian point of view. Say I want to compare photos from the print media. Is photo A a photo of the same aircraft as photo B? Not only do I want clear detail of the aircraft, but also what is in the background. I don't want to zoom in, only to see a sea of halftone dots. Last spring I spent a bundle on Ken Bokelman's Me 262 photos, only to find out that most were published in the 4-volume S&C Me 262 books. Shucks. But, what I do have, are analog prints. I can take them and blow them up to see fine detail, something I am limited to in the S&C books. Not only do I not run into dots, but I also can see subtle shading, rather than a sea of black or monotone.

How many of you have a photo in your collection, been there for years and years, then came along another photo and all of a sudden you realized the true significance of that older photo? You grab it out, put it on your scanner, zoom in on that one new detail, and then you say "Oh my G-d! I didn't know that was there! It's been there all along, but I never realized it!" If that photo is analog, you have a lot better chance at a Eureka moment than if it is something that was published in RAF Flying Review back in the 50's.

When I look at poor photo printing quality, I think, how sad, so much information originally available, but lost due to lousy printing.

Okay, I'm obsessing on photos. Clearly, the text is important. Depending on what is being presented, one or the other may be significantly more important that the other. Still, what's important to one may not be what is important to another. A single photo in a highly text oriented book may provide a crucial clue to a longstanding question. Here's such a case:

On page 181 of Hugh Morgan's Me 262 Stormbirds Rising is a photo looking from the rear into the fuselage of the U.S. Navy Me 262B-1a as it was slowly being disassembled by the Texas Airplane Factory. At the time, I was trying to assist Arthur Bentley for the fuel system layout illustrations for the 4-volume S&C Me 262 opus. It's a small printed image, but remarkably detailed, and withstood enlarging rather well. The fuel tanks had been removed, but the fuel lines remained. Still, there was detail I couldn't make out on the right side. I subsequently visited the Me 262 Project in Everett, Washington, where I happened onto an original color copy of the photo. Immediately, more detail stood out, which eventually helped in creating the final drawings.

The photos weren't the main thrust of Morgan's book, and some others were distinctly below par in printing quality, but that particular one was remarkably good. The point is you grab it where you can get it. Insisting on a rising tide to lift all boats mentality is the way to go. The status quo is not.

Regards,
Richard