April 2025

Building my own printing factory.

In early April I started sourcing the best book printers in the world. My initial list was large but I filtered it down to 13 printers who focus on art books and whose printed books I think are extraordinary.

After sending over the design files of my book cover, the type of art paper I want to use (and all other technical jargon that will make Table of Gods a Porsche and not a Fiat), I started receiving quotes. I suspected the book would be expensive to print, but not this expensive.

As I’ve said before, I won’t budge on my vision to create an extraordinary book. But at the same time, I don’t want the book to cost you $500.

My photographer helping me choose the best art paper for the book. It’s a complicated process because the look of the paper isn’t everything. How it feels is just as important. For example, one of these papers presented the colors well, but the paper felt too plastic. Another paper was thick and rough (which I liked), but the colors were soaked into the paper and weren’t as crisp as the others.

Horrified by the printing prices, I thought of Elon Musk. Let me just clarify that I don’t like politics and I rarely use X (where I know that Elon says a lot of controversial things). However, I read his autobiography a while back.

When Elon wanted to send rockets to Mars he flew to Russia to buy used ones. But the Russians slapped on a price that didn’t make sense to him, so he opened a spreadsheet and started calculating what it would cost to build his own rockets. And that’s exactly what he did!

Could I do that with my book—buy the printing equipment, employ someone who knows how to handle those machines, order the paper and other materials directly from the paper factory, and print my own book? The thought of it kept me awake that night in mid-April.

I researched all the equipment I needed, which was a lot more than I thought because of all the special effects my book has. Then I felt like a rocket scientist filling out my spreadsheet.

Here are some of the printing effects. It doesn’t include the cut-flush which is another customization. Most hardcover books have a few millimeters overhang. Cut-flush is a process in which that overhang is cut manually. It gives the book a simpler and more artistic feel (in my opinion). Keep in mind that this cover is not set in clay. The spine design, overall colors, and perhaps even the crack, will change. But the idea of having a cover with the correct cuneiform text from the world’s oldest recipe tablet will stay.

After completing the list of equipment needed to print my book, I searched for where I could buy it, starting with the Heidelberg offset press. That’s the Rolls Royce of printing machines. The price? Around $5,000,000 for their flagship model, and about $2,000,000 for their ’lesser’ model.

And that doesn’t even include the rest of the equipment, the facility, or the people to run it. I could probably get away with less if I bought used equipment, but it would still cost millions.

I’m laughing at myself as I write this. What was I thinking?

Catch 22

I went back to the printers, trying to negotiate better prices. Here’s how the discussions went:

Arim: Can you give me a better price?

Printer: Yes, if you make a simple cover, remove all special effects, and use a more economic paper.

Arim: Is there another way?

Printer: Make a bigger order.

There are three components that make my book expensive. One is the pre-press (testing everything before it’s printed) and all the setup costs, such as making moulds for my cover, preparing the press for my book, etc.

The two other major pricing components are the printing effects that include manual work and the art paper used in the book’s 350+ pages.

The setup cost is massive. That’s why each book would cost $500 if I only printed a few thousand—and I would barely break even. But the more books I print, the less the setup cost affects each one. A large order would also give me a better price on the art paper, though the cost for the manual work stays the same.

Here’s the catch 22:

Arim to printer: Can you give me a better price?

Printer: Can you print more books?

Arim: Let me see with my followers…

Arim to his followers: How many books will you buy?

Followers to Arim: What’s the price?

Arim to printer: What’s the price?

Printer: How many books will you print?

Now I’m laughing again. Not because it’s funny, but because it’s ironic. In the end, I have to take a risk. I must tell the printer how many books I will print to get a quotation. Then I’ll price the books, hoping I can sell all of them. If I don’t, I’ll be in trouble.

But no matter how many copies I print, Table of Gods will cost much more than a cookbook. But Table of Gods isn’t just a cookbook. It’s at least three books in one: a cookbook, a history book, and a mythology book. But more than anything, it’s a time machine that brings you back to eleven cities in ancient Mesopotamia through all your senses.

I promise that everyone on the waitlist will be able to pre-order Table of Gods for a special price. But if you want to help me negotiate a better deal with the printer, tell a friend who’s interested in historical cooking, Mesopotamian history, or time-travel journeys, to join the waitlist at tableofgods.com.

The more people there are on the waitlist, the more books I assume I’ll be able to sell. Right now there are about 9,000 people on this list.