The printing company that produced our Curio & Co.'s new book Time for Frank and His Friend is CPI Ebner & Spiegel, one of the largest in Germany, and one of the companies that besides producing the Dan Brown books like The Da Vinci Code also did J. K. Rowling's HARRY POTTER and the Deathly Hallows. Do you remember the whole frenzy of being a best seller before the book was even finished? The whole production had to be split into 3 companies just for the German market, 3 million copies had to be produced for its first release. CPI had to solely focus on printing Harry potter for 2 weeks straight, and produced 1,000,000 books. Our book was on the same press as Harry Potter, to me that is exciting.
Yup! on this press.
I took the time to be there at the time of printing and got to see the production facility. It was a treat! So many cool things to see, the whole automation and management of the company. It was my first time seeing a WEB press. Let me tell you it is impressive on one end you have a roll of paper of about 1 meter (3.28 ft) in diameter and on the other end you have the folded signatures, ready for binding. Specially when it's something that you worked on.
I was taken to the storage where the books not yet bound are stored, and it looked like this.
CPI Ebner & Spiegel signature storage
Pixar's Monsters Inc. came to mind immediately when I was through the door. And let me tell you the picture can't do justice to the experience of seeing it first hand. Just like the Grand Canyon needs to be seen first hand, so does this. I'm not saying that a storage room is in the same league as the Grand Canyon, just that you have to see it with your own eyes. Simply cool!
I can happily say that working with them has been a really pleasant experience. They are professional and look for solutions to make things work for your product. If any of you are looking to do a production run for europe, I would suggest you contact them. See what they can do for you. I'd be happy to pass on the contact to anyone interested, just send me an email.
