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Products

A product is a type of book you have set up to order: a set of physical attributes that RPI manufactures, under a product SKU that you choose. You create products on the Products page of the RPI Print API Dashboard.

Each order item specifies its product by the product SKU.

Product SKU​

The product SKU is the identifier your orders use. Each order item sends it as sku, and RPI Print API looks it up among your account's products. An item whose sku matches none of your products fails validation.

You choose the product SKU when you add the product, and the dashboard fills in a suggestion you can keep or replace. A product SKU must be unique within your account. You can change it later, but be aware that an order that still sends the old SKU will then fail validation.

Your account can have only one product for each combination of attributes.

Attributes​

A product's attributes describe the book RPI manufactures. When you add a product, the dashboard asks for them one at a time:

  • The size, which is the book's trim size.
  • The cover type, such as softcover or hardcover.
  • The paper, which is the paper's weight and finish.
  • The interior color, which is how the pages are printed.
  • The bleed, which says whether the design may run to the edge of the page.

The dashboard shows the book's price as you choose. Product specifications shows the attributes that change a product's dimensions and gives a template for each combination.

Page count is not an attribute. A product allows a range of page counts, and each order's interior book block decides how many pages that order's book has.

Prices​

Each product has a base price and a per-page price. The base price covers the product's minimum page count, and every page above that minimum adds the per-page price:

unit price = base price + per-page price × (page count − minimum page count)

RPI rounds the unit price to the nearest cent, rounding a half cent to the even cent. An order item's price is its unit price multiplied by its quantity. Shipping and sales tax are charged on top; see Shipping.

RPI takes the page count from the order's interior book block. To see what an order will cost before you create it, call POST /orders/pricing/estimate, which returns the order's items, shipping and tax. See the API reference.

Manufacturing SKU​

Every combination of attributes has a manufacturing SKU, such as BKPH_HCIW_STD_11.000x8.500IN_80C_GL_40_100T_GLS_44. The manufacturing SKU is the same for every customer, and the Manufacturing SKU column of the Products page shows it for each of your products. It identifies the product that Product specifications and its templates describe.

Orders do not use a manufacturing SKU. An order item specifies your product SKU, which RPI maps to the manufacturing SKU of your product. If you kept the dashboard's suggested product SKU, the two are the same.