Our services
We provide a comprehensive range of services for print and digital media (websites, eBooks, eMags, flipbooks, CDs and DVDs):
- Design
- Layout
- Typesetting
- eBooks (ePub and Kindle)
- Technical illustration
- Editing and proofreading
- Website development
- Prepress
- Print management
- Multimedia management
Tips and resources
Whether you are a graphic designer or finished artist wishing to broaden your skills, a budding author working on your first book, a member of the public seeking to improve your knowledge of English or the publishing industry, or a businessperson looking for ways to develop or enhance your communications collateral, there is something for you in our Tips and resources pages.
Tips and resources is a work in progress, so please add it to your browser’s Favourites or Bookmarks and check back regularly.
Books, reports, brochures, catalogues and manuals . . . professionally prepared for print and digital distribution
Sunset Publishing Services is a leading supplier to commercial and self-publishers, academics and scientific institutions, professional organisations and the business community, specialising in the production of quality publications.
A Brisbane-based company, we employ some of the best editors, proofreaders, typesetters and designers in Australia, maintaining the highest standards in everything we do. Whatever your publication, we can take it through every stage of the prepress process – from manuscript to press-ready PDF – ensuring that the final product will be of the best possible quality. We can organise your printing requirements, and should you require a digital-only publication, we can recommend the most appropriate format and produce it for you.
What makes us different? A publishing background!
Since its inception as Sun Photoset in 1985, Sunset Publishing Services has developed a strong reputation in the book publishing industry through a focus on accuracy and technical capability.
Sunset’s unique combination of contemporary design talent and a multi-skilled production team – which includes layout and proofreading specialists – differentiates us from run-of-the-mill design studios. Great design and layout, typographical excellence and correct use of the English language are what define us. Words such as ‘accuracy’, ‘correct interpretation’, ‘consistency throughout’, and ‘great layout and design’ are often used by our clients in unsolicited feedback.
It is our extensive background in professional book publishing that separates us from our competitors. Publishing houses demand high-quality results and usually work to very tight deadlines. As a preferred service provider to Australia’s leading publishing companies, we have earned a reputation for both quality and reliability, producing novels, reference manuals, textbooks, technical reports, scientific publications, law books and ‘coffee table’ books. We maintain preferred-supplier status with the largest book publishers, and our multi-skilled team applies this same approach and knowledge to ensure that all our commercial clients and self-publishers receive quality outcomes every time.
But can’t my local graphic designer do all that?
Well, no – not unless she or he was thoroughly trained by an experienced typesetter. Why? Because, sadly, the necessary skills are not taught in graphic design colleges. (See our comments in Maintaining standards in printed English . . . an industry gone wrong.) Until design colleges place an appropriate emphasis on typography and English skills, we at Sunset will continue to maintain a strict division of labour: a designer will perform the initial creative work, producing sample pages for the client, but it will be a trade typesetter who actually assembles the publication. It is worth noting also that everything our typesetters produce is checked by quality-control personnel, all of whom are industry-trained proofreaders.
This is the way things were done traditionally, and it is still the way the commercial publishing industry operates. The books on your local bookshop shelves are not produced by graphic design studios. A designer produces the initial template, but the publishing company uses typesetting specialists for the remainder of the work. This is the way we have always operated at Sunset, and it is how we have built and maintained our reputation. We apply this process to all our work – from 1000-page books right down to brochures and business cards.
Does that mean we don’t value graphic designers? Not at all. We utilise the services of some of the best designers in the country, taking great care in matching designer to client – and more often than not we stand in awe of the results. Once the client has signed off on the initial design sample, however, the designer’s work is done.
The essential difference between us and your local design studio is that we place exactly the same value on the content of your publication as we do on its aesthetics. We believe that form and content should complement one another. However stunning a design may be, it will have been a pointless exercise if the finished product stands ruined by poor typography, or by grammatical and spelling errors.
Testimonials
Feedback from commercial publishers
Quality and accuracy . . . we’re always very happy with the professional result of the work.
Ability to cater to our technological/procedural requirements . . . flexibility and willingness to
work with us to trial new work methods to assist us to meet our varied needs. . . . [more]
A professional approach to self-publishing
When we were approached by Doris Stutley, a well-known Western Australian writer of young adult fiction, we recognised immediately that we were dealing with an author who had done her research . . . [more]
On-time delivery
Producing material for conferences is always challenging.
When conference proceedings involve more than 100 authors . . . [more]