Printing, cost per page.

[Andy1]

Hi,
First post, hope in the right place.
Looking at a small business which will need A4 booklets. Have quotes from local printers - ok above 300 but for small runs printing at home may be more cost effective.
Does anyone have a rough idea of the ink cost per A4 page? Will use some colour, but mostly black and white.
If I may ask too - can anyone recommend a printer? Needs to print double sided A3 size (which I then fold and staple into A4 booklets)
Thanks,
Andy.

 

[Lucan Unlordly]

How many booklets do you intend to produce each print run?

 

[Andy1]

How many booklets do you intend to produce each print run?

At first as little as 20 a week, hence print at home. Once established, say after 2 years, possibly 1000 for each run. Thinking when hit 300, give to local printer or online printer with delivery.

 

[WaveJumper]

Well my experience with printers is you get what you pay for if you want very good quality copies and printing double sided, don't buy cheap. For the amount you want to run would it not pay to go somewhere like Pronto Print get them to print your pages and then put the booklets together yourself

My current printer is Epson ET-14000

 

[The Byre]

We use an Epson A3 inkjet printer for stuff like that.

 

[Lucan Unlordly]

At first as little as 20 a week, hence print at home. Once established, say after 2 years, possibly 1000 for each run. Thinking when hit 300, give to local printer or online printer with delivery.

We had similar ideas, bought a half decent printer for £400, inks, stapler etc., and soon found out that the quality was not good enough, that the printer needed to be run more regularly else it would dry up, that you always needed to keep spare inks at £35-£55 per cartridge and so on.
We got greater use by using ring binders, cardboard backing sheets and crystal clear fronts, but this of course gives more of a training course look.

Bearing in mind you can go online and get 100 A4, 16 page brochures printed for £112, that has to be the way to go?

 

[Andy1]

Well my experience with printers is you get what you pay for if you want very good quality copies and printing double sided, don't buy cheap. For the amount you want to run would it not pay to go somewhere like Pronto Print get them to print your pages and then put the booklets together yourself

My current printer is Epson ET-14000

Occurred to me too and tried this approach with Minuteman but no saving - cost to just print pages wasn't much different to print and bind.

 

[Andy1]

We had similar ideas, bought a half decent printer for £400, inks, stapler etc., and soon found out that the quality was not good enough, that the printer needed to be run more regularly else it would dry up, that you always needed to keep spare inks at £35-£55 per cartridge and so on.
We got greater use by using ring binders, cardboard backing sheets and crystal clear fronts, but this of course gives more of a training course look.

Bearing in mind you can go online and get 100 A4, 16 page brochures printed for £112, that has to be the way to go?

The booklet is the product (it's not a catalogue or advertising) so trying to squeeze a profit out of each one, even at the early stage of the business. £1.12 per book you quote above is too high. Best I have found online, for a run of 100, is about 73p including delivery. If printing less than 100 I will need to print at home unless I want to factor in a loss first 6 months or so.

 

[BusterBloodvessel]

Firstly, if your actual product is this booklet itself....do you really want it to be something that's printed off on a home printer and stapled together? No edge-to-edge printing, it won't be perfectly aligned, it will have marks and bends from handling, the print quality won't be as good.....it will just scream of unprofessionalism IMHO.

Plus, is it really any cheaper? Let's say your printer is £500 and as you suggest you print 20 a week, let's say for the first 6 months before going commercial. That's 480 copies - almost £1 per copy. Even if you get up to 50 a week it's still 42p per copy. That's before we even mention ink, paper, and...YOUR TIME! Your time isn't free, how long are you going to spend folding and stapling booklets?

I appreciate the printer is an asset that will be available for much longer but if you are looking to spend maybe £500 - £1000 purely to do this exercise, then I would be more inclined to look at it as you could use that money to finance purchasing finished booklets professionally at your £73/100 price. Even if you throw 80 a week in the bin to begin with - at least your product is exactly as you want it, it's consistent as to how you always want it, and your time is free to spend on growing your business.

 

[prophet01]

@Andy1
With the little information you've provided the reality as a see it is, and I'm happy to stand corrected, that to call what you're doing a business you'd have to take account of the cost of your own labour when talking about profit otherwise it's a hobby. With such a low print run of 20 booklets a week I can't see any way that you'd be able to make a profit on that basis.

It'd be helful if you'd answer these questions

What is the publication about and who is the target market.
What finished quality is required?
How many pages is your booklet?
What quality of paper are you looking to use?
Will the cover be card ?

I bought this top of the range Oki ES9431 A3 colour laser printer four years ago principaly as a little treat for myself but then started using it to print A4 menus for our restaurant in Thailand using waterproof card. Saved a stash of cash over the printing costs on that basis alone. Grubby tourist fingers and Thai weather extremes requires renewal of menus at least twice a year.

 

[Lucan Unlordly]

The booklet is the product (it's not a catalogue or advertising) so trying to squeeze a profit out of each one, even at the early stage of the business. £1.12 per book you quote above is too high. Best I have found online, for a run of 100, is about 73p including delivery. If printing less than 100 I will need to print at home unless I want to factor in a loss first 6 months or so.

Factoring in a loss based on minimal expenditure for printing suggests you haven't thought about whether the time spent producing magazines wouldn't be better used selling them?

Who is putting these together, editing, layout, artwork etc.,?

 

[Andy1]

[/QUOTE]

Factoring in a loss based on minimal expenditure for printing suggests you haven't thought about whether the time spent producing magazines wouldn't be better used selling them?

Who is putting these together, editing, layout, artwork etc.,?

Thanks for your good thoughts. At this time don't wish to go further into detail about the booklets, originally just after an idea of ink cost per page.

 

[Andy1]

Firstly, if your actual product is this booklet itself....do you really want it to be something that's printed off on a home printer and stapled together? No edge-to-edge printing, it won't be perfectly aligned, it will have marks and bends from handling, the print quality won't be as good.....it will just scream of unprofessionalism IMHO.

Plus, is it really any cheaper? Let's say your printer is £500 and as you suggest you print 20 a week, let's say for the first 6 months before going commercial. That's 480 copies - almost £1 per copy. Even if you get up to 50 a week it's still 42p per copy. That's before we even mention ink, paper, and...YOUR TIME! Your time isn't free, how long are you going to spend folding and stapling booklets?

I appreciate the printer is an asset that will be available for much longer but if you are looking to spend maybe £500 - £1000 purely to do this exercise, then I would be more inclined to look at it as you could use that money to finance purchasing finished booklets professionally at your £73/100 price. Even if you throw 80 a week in the bin to begin with - at least your product is exactly as you want it, it's consistent as to how you always want it, and your time is free to spend on growing your business.

Very good thoughts, and I agree quality is paramount, and the time saved is useful.

 

[Andy1]

Thanks for your thoughts. Good to get an idea of the brains and support available on here. Very early doors, not going to take the plunge until semi-retirement in 2 years or so, but laying the groundwork. Don't care for gardening or golf that much.