If you’ve been thinking about creating a daily planner, the right time to start is right now. Over the last few years here at Vervante, we’ve helped hundreds of clients create and sell the daily planners of their dreams. We want you to have a successful experience, too, so this year we are committed to providing step-by-step guidance for planning, creating and launching daily planners for any year - or even undated planners too!
Planning ahead is the key. Understanding the steps it takes to create a planner will help avoid last-minute stress if you’re launching for the new year. So for today, we wanted to share with you a simple 7-step overview of the process with suggested timelines for creating a daily planner.
Step 1 | Know Your Timeline If you are creating a planner for a specific year and would like your planner to ship and arrive by a specific time, be sure to find out what the deadline is with your printer. Planning ahead for steps in the process such as design turnaround, ordering samples, beta testing, and print times is also essential to know.
Step 2 | Select Your Topic, Size & Specs
The sky is the limit when it comes to topics and types. Start by asking yourself: Who is your audience and what type of planner would best serve their needs? The size and specs for your planner are the foundation of what you’re building. For ideas and inspirations, check out the Vervante Video Vault.
Step 3 | Time to Design
Design matters. If you want to do it yourself, you can use programs like Canva or InDesign to create your planner pages. Or you can hire a professional graphic designer. Just make sure your planner design is both beautiful and functional for a high-quality look and feel.
Step 4 | Decide on the Details: Extras & Add-Ons
It’s all the little extras that can make a planner extra special. Check out the Vervante Video Vault showcasing features that can add both fun and functionality, such as colors of wire-o and spiral binding, metal corners, elastic straps, stickers, and more.
If your planner is intended to be used for more than 90 days, we encourage you to use a board cover or hardcover. A printed softcover is great, however, with daily use it probably won’t hold up.
Cover options
Board covers
Hardcovers can be printed, faux/vegan leather or linen. The faux/vegan and linen options are generally also foil stamped. We have color options on our site HERE.
Laminated softcovers
Softcovers or softcovers with poly overlays
Binding options
Metal wire-o binding
Metal spiral binding
Plastic spiral binding
Casebound hardcover
Punched for disc binding
Step 5 | Pricing & Production
Use the free quote tool on our website home page for free printing quotes and information. We provide a wide range of cost-effective, customized options for printing daily planners so you can get what you need, when you need it, and exactly how you want.
Step 6 | Presentation
A beautiful planner deserves beautiful packaging. If you want to make a great impression right from the start, we can help by providing custom boxes, shipping labels, message cards, stickers or bookmarks that can be included with your planners to give it a personal touch that will really impress customers.
Step 7 | Orders, Shipping and Fulfillment
Successful launches and happy customers depend on having a streamlined sales and shipping process. We can list your planners on Amazon, help you sell from your own website, or list your planner in our online Bookstore where we can handle credit card payments for you. Fulfillment and shipping are also done for you as we print, package and ship your planners anywhere in the world.
We hope this helps you to avoid that “I’m not sure where to start” feeling that many people often have. We’re excited to help you create new planners and are here to help every step of the way.
If you're ready to send in your print files, but not sure exactly how they need to be formatted - this email is for you. Print file preparation is extremely important, so even if you're not ready to start printing just yet, be sure to save these instructions to help you down the road.
How to prepare your files for printing
We know you’re excited to get your new product printed and we want to expedite the process as quickly as possible for you. All files must be submitted as print-ready PDFs using the "Upload Files" link on your Author Dashboard. When you upload your PDFs, our team downloads your files and reviews them to ensure that they are set up properly for printing. Many of our customers create their own print files using applications such as Canva, while others hire a professional graphic designer. Both methods are fine, just remember that your PDFs must contain bleed and crop marks in order to be considered print-ready.
Please note that there is a charge of $35 for file uploads. This includes new files as well as updates or changes to existing products. We recommend that you double-check your files before uploading to ensure that they are print-ready.
If your PDFs contain bleed and crop marks and our team confirms that they are print-ready, your product will be added to your Author account quickly. If your files are not print-ready we’ll let you know what needs to be corrected. When you’re ready to upload your correct PDFs, please re-submit all of your files again using the "Upload Files" link in your Author Dashboard and completing the specification document.
Please review our print specs page HERE. We provide specs for softcovers, hardcovers, kiss cut stickers, foil stamp, binders, USB flash drives, etc. We do not have specs for interior files (the content for inside books, planners, journals, etc.). The only recommendation we have for text is ½” margins on the gutter/binding edge. We have found that ½” margins are enough to prevent punching through text or images for spiral, wire-o, and 3-hole/6-hole drill.
Missing bleed and crop marks seem to be the most popular reason for rejected print files. If your PDF has edge-to-edge printing, then you need bleed. This means the image should be slightly larger than the finished page size so that when we trim to the crop marks, we will cut through the image so that the printing actually prints edge to edge. Without bleed, your page/cover/document will have a white border all of the way around and the color will not print to the edge of the sheet. We have a document HERE with additional information about bleed and crop marks.
(If you're using Canva, here's a useful link describing how to add bleed and crop marks: https://www.canva.com/help/article/margins-bleed-crop-marks.)
When uploading your files, please check for these items:
Bleed and crop marks on all sides of the image
One set of crop marks on PDF
If you send more than one PDF from Canva that needs to be merged into a single print file, please make sure the Canva files are the same page size.
All pages need to be oriented the same way
Tabs are placed before odd numbered pages
Covers are the correct size for the text PDF
If you are adding tabs, the tabs and covers are ½” wider than text
If you need assistance, we are happy to help with your print files. We have a graphic design team that is available to put the finishing touches on your files if you need assistance. Tabs seem to be a bit tricky so our graphic designers can help prepare the tabs for printing. We charge $75 per hour and you can work directly with the designer to receive a quote and make the changes. If you’d like our designers to make the changes, please let our customer service team know and we’ll hand-off your project to our designers to finalize your print files. We’ll review your initial upload and give you feedback on the changes.
In order for our customer service team to be efficient and quickly add or update your product, we need print-ready PDFs. You can avoid delays and streamline the process by reviewing the documentation and checking your print files before uploading them. This will also ensure that your project will be added to your account when you upload your PDFs, rather than waiting at the back of the queue for corrections and re-uploading.
Here is a list of helpful resources for file preparation:
We know you're excited to turn your design files into real-life products - and we hope these tips will help you with a very important part of the process as you prepare to send them to us.
As we approach the end of 2020, there's a lot we could say, but here's what is most important ... we made it! We stuck it out together. And we're so grateful to be here with you as we look toward a New Year, new possibilities, and a future that we can make brighter together.
Even though most of us are pretty happy to see 2020 in the rear view mirror, there were some good things. And since a lot of you might have been a bit distracted for a few months, we thought it would be fun to round up some of the best of what we put out this year - new products, enhanced services, ideas that can help you share your talents in a bigger way. So here's our Best of 2020, wrapped up with a sparkly bow!
#1 Pandemic Pivots
The world changed quickly this year, and we all did our best to roll with the punches and change with it. Working from home brought new challenges and new opportunities, and we did our best to support you throughout.
#2 Planners Galore
Planning for the future is always fun, but there was just something about this year that make it feel absolutely essential. Daily planners exploded as one of the hottest products to make, and we make sure to give you everything you need to create planners (and journals!) that help your customers find the success they deserve.
2021 Planner Debut (planners you can still order and customize to sell as your own)
#3 Author / Entrepreneur Empowerment
Our bottom line is to help you succeed, so we are always looking for new ways to educate and empower our customers with guides, how-to's, and everything you need to take action, turn your ideas into products, and make the process and easy and lucrative for you as possible.
#4 In the Know Knowledge is power and we did our best to share the latest and best to keep you in the know. From postal policies to new product to how-to guides, our team at Vervante headquarters makes sure you stayed informed.
Paper Samples: We now have a notepad of paper samples available. It includes eight of our most popular paper options and is a great resources for helping to decide what type of paper you should choose for your books or products.
Here’s to starting 2021 in a memorable and exciting way! We'd love to know what your thoughts and wishes are for the New Year, so please feel free to email us with your ideas for products or services we can add to continue to serve you best.
If you're ready to send in your print files, but not sure exactly how they need to be formatted - this email is for you. Print file preparation is extremely important, so even if you're not ready to start printing just yet, be sure to save these instructions to help you down the road.
