If you want to include colour images in your story, there are two colour quality options available for print-on-demand: standard colour and premium colour. Both options are printed on 70lb uncoated white paper, the difference lies in the ink quality, which is—unsurprisingly—higher with premium colour. When choosing between the two, consider the importance of your interior images to your story, and the effect on print cost.
Choose premium colour when colour images are central to your story, such as with illustrated children's books and high-quality photo books, and when quality is most important to you. The lower the page count, the smaller the difference in print cost between premium and standard colour.
Choose standard colour if keeping the print cost low is most important to you, and when your book includes colour elements (such as images, tables, or graphs), but these images are not central to the story or the book is made up of mainly text. If the goal is to keep the print cost as low as possible, many authors find standard colour to be of adequate quality.
To get a better idea of how these specifications can change the print cost (and thus the royalty) of your book, try our Author Compensation Calculator.
Note that Print on demand distributors do not offer the option to print certain pages in different ink types. This means that if there is a single page you would like to see in colour, the entire interior must be considered colour. If the content of your book does not rely on colour images, we suggest choosing a black and white 50lb option (creme or white).
One the other hand, if your book is black & white and paper quality is more important to you than keeping the print cost down, you can have choose the Standard Colour White paper option, so that it will be printed on thicker 70lb paper (even if you don't have any colour in your book's interior).
More information can be found in our Book Setup Guide
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