Orders required for delivery before Christmas
At this time of year, ever so many people get the lovely idea of creating a custom book for a special someone for Christmas and then place an order for one or two books with a nice friendly commercial printer, i.e. Inky!
It's the last possible moment. You've never printed with a commercial printer before. There's no time to READ the artwork preparation guide, let alone fix any artwork problems. Christmas will be ruined and your life devastated if the book doesn't arrive on time. What could possibly go wrong?
So please take some friendly advice from a team which has helped thousands of people through the process of successfully printing their first book (and we'll happily help you). It's a lovely idea, but be realistic about how much time you need and what time of year we are in. Allow yourself an EXTRA week on top of the print service time you select. This is to allow time to resolve any technical problems with your book. The print service time is FROM approval of artwork, i.e. when it is all ready to print. If you select the 5 working days to print service, remember that this is an estimate, not a guarantee. At busy times it can take longer, at quieter times it can take less time. The run up to Christmas is busy! Then allow some extra time for delivery. Everyone knows that from Black Friday until Christmas is the busiest time of year for couriers. Most of the time this just means an extra day in transit. But what if your parcel is delayed for 2 days? Three days? A week? It's rare, but please do think it through. If the delay would be a minor inconvenience to you, it's worth the risk. But if it is a disaster and will ruin Christmas and probably the rest of your life, then perhaps a nice box of chocolates would be a better idea for a present? And yes, we really have had people say that to us when the courier has misrouted their delivery!
If that hasn't put you off, then welcome and thank you for your business! We will do our level best to get your order to you as soon as possible.
It's all systems go here at Inky and the vast majority of orders are leaving on time. You know the drill, the closer to Christmas, the busier everything gets and lead times may extend. So it's super important to let the helpdesk know if you have any hard deadlines and we'll do our level best to make it happen. On the flip side, we always appreciate knowing if an order is not required before Christmas.
A quick status update: Hardbacks are really busy, Softbacks are busy (but we have plenty of capacity), Punchbound (wires, coils, calendars, etc.) and booklets are normal with plenty of capacity.
We are working and shipping right up to the 22nd.
Inky shuts down every year for Christmas! Don't worry, it's not like dormice. We don't go into hibernation, it's just a little break.
This year, we will be shut down from close of business on the 22nd of December and will be back in bright and early on January the 2nd. We'll be shipping your orders as normal right up to and including the 22nd of December.
Thank you to all our lovely customers for your business in 2023!