Need to look at the costs of a very small (10~) print run of a 500~ page manuscript

The Ender

I just want to get an idea of the cost for doing a run of about 10 hardcover bound, glossy paged, full colour books, with 8.5 x 11 dimensions. I've tired Googling through online printers, but a lot of the listing are for vanity POD publishers that:

A) I don't trust the quality of the work from

Probably are not giving good prices

C) Only offer the printing services as part of a 'publishing package', which I'm not interested in

There is a local printer in town that I'm going to check the prices of next week, but I want to look at online printers as well because I've heard good things about it.

Atlus Parker

Amazon offers an on demand self publishing service through https://www.createspace.com/. Have you checked that out?

Derrick

-Derp- Print run is in the title.

It's going to cost the print shop 10 cents a page (per side) to print it. Then you've got the glossy paper and the finishing work (binding).

500 full color pages is going to cost a good chunk at retail.

Deebaser

Yeah, those books are going to cost absolute minimum $150 a piece if you're going for double sided color on 500 pages.

The Ender

Thanks for the suggestion @Atlus Parker, and thanks for giving me an idea of the price range I'll be looking at @Derrick & @Deebaser.

I knew these wouldn't be cheap; I just wanted to know roughly how much I'd have to ask for up front in order to get a run done.

Deebaser

If you go with a spiral binding and mostly BW double sided pages, it will be so much cheaper.

Spiral binding should cost between $8-15 and you can put any sort of cover, so long as they can punch it.

The Ender

Yeah, but it's for a collector's edition book. I don't think most collectors would be happy with black & white, unfortunately. :P

Spiral binding is pretty interesting; I'll have to see about that.

Deebaser

Fair enough, but I was just suggesting that you can save a buttload by skimping on some of the colored pages.

Disclaimer: I have not worked in a print shop for about a decade. That said, at your best most awesomest bulk discount rate, you're probably looking at around $1 per double sided color page vs. $0.18-0.22 for BW on decent paper.

Assuming you're going with 250 double sided sheets, If you can even 100 of the more dense text sheets on BW, you're saving about ~$80 per copy.

There could have been advances in Color copier machines since I stopped making copies at Office Max, but it's something to think about. It is something that people do.

Wezoin

Deebaser wrote: »

Fair enough, but I was just suggesting that you can save a buttload by skimping on some of the colored pages.

Disclaimer: I have not worked in a print shop for about a decade. That said, at your best most awesomest bulk discount rate, you're probably looking at around $1 per double sided color page vs. $0.18-0.22 for BW on decent paper.

Assuming you're going with 250 double sided sheets, If you can even 100 of the more dense text sheets on BW, you're saving about ~$80 per copy.

There could have been advances in Color copier machines since I stopped making copies at Office Max, but it's something to think about. It is something that people do.

There haven't been - $0.08 a side for b&w and 49 - 75cents a side for colour are pretty standard.

You may be able to get some bulk deals, but a lot of print shops do their bulk deals based on copies of the same thing - the one I worked at for instance will offer discounts starting at 50 copies of each page.

What I would recommend is ask any local universities/colleges if they own a print shop - typically these are slightly subsidised to help their students, but usually the general public can use them too. They also tend to have people much more capable than a Staples/chain copy shop simply based on the fact that they aren't just working from a set menu of functions and can kind of 'go off the script' so to speak.

EggyToast

Have you looked through Lulu's offerings to see if they'd match up with your needs?

Deebaser

I figured as much. Also if you self collate the Color pages, you'll save crazy money at most shops on labor.

Basically run the BW pages seperate from the color pages with the color pages in a seperate color only run. Then just go through and insert the color pages where appropriate. It'll be annoying as fuck, but it beats paying $TEXAS for the labor of a dude making $8.00 an hour.

jwideman

Your local printer will likely give you the best deal, since you avoid the costs of shipping, which for nearly a dozen 500 page hardbound books is going to be outrageous.

The Ender

Wezoin wrote: »

Deebaser wrote: »

Fair enough, but I was just suggesting that you can save a buttload by skimping on some of the colored pages.

Disclaimer: I have not worked in a print shop for about a decade. That said, at your best most awesomest bulk discount rate, you're probably looking at around $1 per double sided color page vs. $0.18-0.22 for BW on decent paper.

Assuming you're going with 250 double sided sheets, If you can even 100 of the more dense text sheets on BW, you're saving about ~$80 per copy.

There could have been advances in Color copier machines since I stopped making copies at Office Max, but it's something to think about. It is something that people do.

There haven't been - $0.08 a side for b&w and 49 - 75cents a side for colour are pretty standard.

You may be able to get some bulk deals, but a lot of print shops do their bulk deals based on copies of the same thing - the one I worked at for instance will offer discounts starting at 50 copies of each page.

What I would recommend is ask any local universities/colleges if they own a print shop - typically these are slightly subsidised to help their students, but usually the general public can use them too. They also tend to have people much more capable than a Staples/chain copy shop simply based on the fact that they aren't just working from a set menu of functions and can kind of 'go off the script' so to speak.

Thanks; there is a (small) college nearby, so I'll see if they have a printing department. I'm sort of doubtful that they have a printing press tucked away somewhere in that place, but it never hurts to ask.

The local shop (which is just a mom & pop operation, not part of a chain) was a no-go: they don't do manuscripts of that size.

Lulu & Amazon's offerings seem like pretty typical vanity PoD fare, which I don't usually like, but I bookmarked them anyway just in case. Amazon's prices seemed pretty good to me, especially for PoD.

MushroomStick

A printing press? Make sure that where ever you end up going runs digital. There's no way a project this small is worth getting plates made.

Grobian

Deebaser wrote: »

I figured as much. Also if you self collate the Color pages, you'll save crazy money at most shops on labor.

Basically run the BW pages seperate from the color pages with the color pages in a seperate color only run. Then just go through and insert the color pages where appropriate. It'll be annoying as fuck, but it beats paying $TEXAS for the labor of a dude making $8.00 an hour.

The last time I printed a mix of color and b&w the copyshop had a printer that automatically detected which mode to use and just spat out the numbers at the end (e.g. 80 total, 20 color pages, 60 b&w) and I paid accordingly. There was no manual labor at all.

But I don't think their hardcovers would work for 500 pages, so this might be different at a "real" printing shop.


/edit: 500 pages is only 250 sheets if you print doublesided, so it would work. I just checked their prices and 500 color pages would be 150€ + cost for the binding (2€ - 15€ depending on what you want) at my local copyshop.

Aldo

jwideman wrote: »

Your local printer will likely give you the best deal, since you avoid the costs of shipping, which for nearly a dozen 500 page hardbound books is going to be outrageous.

This completely depends on where you are. When I asked local print shops for a quotation to print my thesis I either got told that they didn't work for individuals or got quoted retarded prices because I wasn't ordering in large quantities. So eventually I just went with a webshop that was super cheap and delivered awesome quality. However, the prices you got so far sound similar to what I got on that website (it's all in Holland, so I'm not even going to bother linking).

By the way, I think all serious shops do the "smart color/BnW" printing thing Grobian describes.