I get asked this question a lot, usually at industry events or in emails from aspiring authors. “What’s the difference between a publishing house and a printing press?” Sometimes the question comes with a slightly embarrassed tone, as if the person suspects they should already know the answer. They shouldn’t feel bad about asking. The distinction isn’t obvious from the outside, and the publishing industry hasn’t done a great job of explaining what it actually does, as opposed to what most people assume it does.

The short answer is this: a printing press puts ink on paper. A publishing house decides what to put ink on paper for, and then handles everything that comes before and after the printing. The printing is actually one of the simplest parts of the entire process. The complicated, time-consuming, expensive parts are the ones that most people never think about.

What a Printing Press Does

Let me start with the printing press, because it’s the more straightforward of the two. A printing press (or more accurately in 2022, a printing company) is a manufacturing operation. It takes a digital file, usually a PDF formatted to precise specifications, and produces physical copies of a book. The printer doesn’t care about the content of the file. It could be a novel, a cookbook, a phone directory, or 300 pages of the letter “Q” repeated. The printer’s job is to reproduce the file accurately on paper, bind the pages together, and deliver the finished product.

Modern book printers use two main technologies: offset lithography and digital printing. Offset printing uses metal plates that transfer ink to rubber rollers, which then press the ink onto paper. It’s fast and efficient for large runs but requires significant setup time and cost. Digital printing skips the plates entirely and prints directly from a digital file, similar in concept to a desktop printer but on an industrial scale. Digital is slower per page but has virtually no setup cost, which makes it economical for short runs and print-on-demand.

The printer also handles binding. For paperbacks, this typically means perfect binding, where the pages are gathered into a block, the spine edge is roughened and glued, and a cover is wrapped around the block. For hardcovers, the process is more complex: the pages are sewn together in sections called signatures, the spine is reinforced, and the whole assembly is attached to rigid board covers. Some books use other binding methods, like saddle stitching (stapling, essentially) for thin booklets or spiral binding for cookbooks and manuals.

Good printers also provide pre-press services: checking the digital file for errors, making sure the colors will reproduce correctly, and producing proofs for the publisher to review before the full run starts. Some printers offer basic design services, but this is a sideline for them, not their core business.

That’s it. The printer makes the physical object. They don’t find the author, develop the manuscript, design the book, market it, distribute it, or sell it. Those are the publisher’s jobs.

What a Publishing House Does

A publishing house does everything else. And “everything else” is a lot more than people realize. Let me walk through the process from beginning to end, because I think the scope of what publishers do is genuinely underappreciated.

It starts with acquisition. A publisher finds books to publish. This means reading manuscripts and proposals, evaluating their commercial and artistic potential, negotiating contracts with authors or their agents, and deciding which projects to invest in. At a large publishing house, the editorial team might review hundreds of submissions per month and acquire a handful. At a small house like ScrollWorks, I personally read every submission that makes it past our initial screening, and we acquire maybe ten to fifteen titles per year.

Acquisition is a judgment call with real financial consequences. Every book we acquire represents a commitment of money (the advance paid to the author, the production costs, the marketing budget) and time (typically twelve to eighteen months from acquisition to publication). If we acquire the wrong books, we lose money and miss the opportunity to publish better ones. If we acquire the right books, we build our reputation and our revenue. This is the single most important thing a publisher does, and it’s entirely a matter of editorial and commercial judgment.

The Editorial Process

Once a book is acquired, the editorial process begins. This is where the manuscript is developed from its submitted form into its published form, and the difference between the two can be significant. I’ve worked on books where the final published version bore only a passing resemblance to the original submission. The ideas were the same, but the structure, the pacing, the voice, and the argument had all been reworked through multiple rounds of revision.

The editorial process typically involves several stages. Developmental editing comes first. This is the big-picture work: looking at structure, argument, pacing, character development (for fiction), and overall coherence. The developmental editor might suggest rearranging chapters, cutting sections that don’t work, expanding sections that need more development, or rethinking the book’s central argument. This is collaborative work. The editor makes suggestions; the author decides which ones to accept. Good editors have a light touch and a clear vision of what the book is trying to be.

After developmental editing, the manuscript goes through line editing, which focuses on sentence-level writing quality. The line editor works through the text paragraph by paragraph, looking for awkward phrasing, unclear logic, repetition, inconsistency, and opportunities to strengthen the prose. This is painstaking work that requires a strong ear for language and an ability to improve someone else’s writing without overwriting it.

Then comes copyediting, which is the most technical stage. The copyeditor checks grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style consistency. They verify facts, dates, and proper nouns. They ensure that the book follows a consistent style guide (most publishers use the Chicago Manual of Style). They flag potential legal issues, like unsourced claims or passages that might be libelous. A good copyeditor catches hundreds of small errors that would otherwise end up in the finished book.

Finally, there’s proofreading, which is a final check of the typeset pages for any remaining errors. By this point, the text should be nearly perfect, but typos have a way of surviving every previous round of review. The proofreader is the last line of defense before the book goes to the printer.

All of this editorial work is done or managed by the publisher, not the printer. The printer never sees the manuscript in its rough form. The printer gets the finished, polished, typeset file.

Design and Production

While the editorial work is happening, the publisher is also handling design. This includes the interior design (typeface, margins, chapter headings, spacing, treatment of illustrations and sidebars) and the cover design (which is a whole separate discipline). The cover is arguably the single most important marketing asset a book has. It’s the first thing a potential reader sees, whether in a bookstore, on a website, or on social media. A bad cover can sink a good book, and a great cover can give a mediocre book a fighting chance.

Cover design involves a complicated negotiation between art, commerce, and genre convention. A literary novel needs a different kind of cover than a thriller, which needs a different kind of cover than a self-help book. Readers have learned to decode cover design conventions, often unconsciously: they can tell from the cover what kind of book they’re looking at and whether it’s aimed at them. The designer’s job is to create something that signals the right genre, communicates the book’s tone, and stands out among the dozens of other books competing for attention.

Production management is another publisher function. Someone has to coordinate the timing so that the editorial, design, and printing processes all come together on schedule. Someone has to choose the right paper stock, the right trim size, the right binding method. Someone has to negotiate with the printer on price, quality, and delivery dates. Someone has to manage the ISBN, the Library of Congress cataloging data, the copyright registration, and the metadata that ensures the book shows up correctly in bookstore and library databases. This is unglamorous work, and it’s invisible when it’s done well, but when it’s done poorly, the consequences are real: delayed publication, misprinted pages, incorrect pricing in online stores.

Marketing and Publicity

The publisher is responsible for marketing the book. This is one of the areas where the publishing house’s role is most different from the printer’s, and where the most misunderstanding exists. Marketing a book involves advance reader copies sent to reviewers, press releases, media pitches, social media campaigns, author events, bookstore partnerships, advertising (increasingly digital), and trade marketing aimed at booksellers and librarians.

Publicity, which is a subset of marketing, involves getting the book and the author in front of media. This means pitching book reviewers at newspapers, magazines, and websites. It means booking author appearances on podcasts, radio shows, and television. It means arranging book tours, signing events, and festival appearances. None of this happens by itself. It requires a publicist (or a team of publicists) who has relationships with media contacts, understands the media cycle, and knows how to frame a book in a way that makes it newsworthy.

Small publishers like us have smaller marketing budgets than the Big Five, which means we have to be more creative and more targeted. We can’t afford full-page ads in the New York Times Book Review (few publishers can, honestly), so we focus on channels that reach our specific audience: targeted social media advertising, partnerships with relevant influencers and bloggers, email marketing to our subscriber list, and direct outreach to bookstores that serve our readers. For a title like Bitcoin for Absolute Beginners, our marketing looks very different than it does for a literary fiction title like The Cartographer’s Dilemma, because the audiences are different and the channels that reach them are different.

Distribution and Sales

Getting a book into stores is another publisher function, and it’s one of the most complex. Distribution, the physical process of warehousing books and shipping them to retailers, is handled by distributors, which are specialized logistics companies that work with publishers. A publisher contracts with a distributor (Ingram, Baker & Taylor, and the Big Five’s own distribution arms are the major players in the US) to store inventory, process orders from bookstores, and handle returns.

The returns system, incidentally, is one of the oddest features of the book business. Unlike almost any other retail industry, bookstores can return unsold books to the publisher for a full refund. This means that when a bookstore orders 20 copies of a new title, they’re not making a firm commitment to buy those copies. They’re taking them on consignment, essentially. If the books don’t sell, they come back. This system was established during the Great Depression to encourage bookstores to take risks on new titles, and it has persisted ever since, despite being economically irrational for publishers. We budget for returns (typically 20 to 30 percent of shipped copies come back), and the cost is factored into our financial planning for each title.

Sales, as distinct from distribution, involves convincing bookstores and online retailers to stock your books. At large publishers, dedicated sales representatives visit bookstores months before a book’s publication date, presenting the upcoming catalog and taking orders. At small publishers, we often handle sales ourselves or through a shared sales force that represents multiple small presses. Getting a bookstore to carry your book is not automatic. Shelf space is limited, and bookstore buyers have to be convinced that a title will sell well enough to justify the space it occupies.

Rights and Licensing

Publishers also manage subsidiary rights: the right to publish the book in other formats (audiobook, e-book), in other languages (translation rights), and in other territories (foreign rights). A book originally published in English in the United States might be translated into twenty languages and published by different publishers in each country. The original publisher negotiates these deals, either directly or through a rights agent, and the revenue is split between the publisher and the author according to the terms of their contract.

Film and television options are another form of subsidiary rights. When a Hollywood studio options a book for adaptation, the deal is typically negotiated by the author’s agent, but the publisher benefits from the increased visibility and sales that come with a screen adaptation. Some publishers have dedicated rights departments that pitch books to film producers; others leave this to the agent.

So What’s the Difference, Really?

The difference between a publishing house and a printing press is the difference between a movie studio and a film developing lab. The lab processes the physical medium. The studio develops the creative product, manages the talent, handles the marketing, and distributes the finished work to audiences. Both are necessary; neither can replace the other.

When someone self-publishes a book, they are, in effect, taking on the publisher’s role themselves. They edit (or hire editors), design (or hire designers), market (or try to), and distribute (usually through Amazon’s self-publishing platform). The printing itself is typically handled by a POD service like Amazon’s KDP or IngramSpark. The self-published author is the publisher. The POD service is the printer.

There’s nothing wrong with self-publishing, and some self-published authors do extremely well. But it’s worth understanding that when you choose to self-publish, you’re taking on all the functions I’ve described above. Every decision that a publisher would make, from cover design to pricing to marketing strategy, falls on your shoulders. Some authors thrive with that level of control. Others find it overwhelming and discover that they’d rather focus on writing and leave the publishing to people who do it professionally.

At ScrollWorks Media, we handle all of these functions for the authors we work with. From the first editorial conversation to the final marketing push, we manage the process of turning a manuscript into a book and putting it into readers’ hands. You can see the results in our catalog, where every title represents the full range of publishing work: editorial development, design, production, marketing, and distribution, all coordinated to give each book its best chance of reaching the readers who need it.