The company, which launched the Illustrated Choice initiative at the recent London Book Fair, is building upon its Publisher's Choice offering for short-run digital mono text printing.

It aims to give publishers the opportunity to print litho quality, short-run illustrated books at a unit cost more commonly associated with longer print runs.

Biddles is pitching the service at publishers looking to produce between 100 and 500 copies of books, which require the quality of halftone reproduction.

The printer is producing books for the Illustrated Choice service on its Xerox DocuColor iGen3 press, which are then finished in-house.

Managing director of Biddles Rod Willett said: "Illustrated Choice is a natural extension of our award-winning Publisher's Choice service, which guarantees typical litho unit costs throughout the sales life of a book."

He added: "We think of Illustrated Choice as the art world of short-run digital print."