Our philosophy (The advisers) is to use a local printer. We feel it is important to keep our business in the area. In the past, we have had problems with a local printer, only to have another local printer come to our rescue. After that company was bought out we found another local print shop and we are now working with them for a second year.
We met with our account representative from the printer last evening. He came to the school to talk with us. We outlined our ideas with the rep and looked at samples. I cannot tell you how important it is to be able to have a face to face. We were able to see and touch actual samples of the cover stock and text stock that we wanted to use in this years mag. We were able to talk about the paper size and the colors we wanted to use.
The other benefit that we found, with our present printer, is the technological aspect of printing. We are able to work on our file in Adobe InDesign CS at school, burn it on a CD and send it to them. They pull it into their system and we have a proof in a few days. Now it's gotten better! The have an FTP site that we can upload the file to! That means that when we are finished we send it to their server and they pull it down. The amount of time that this saves us, from even two years ago, is staggering. Going from printing our magazine completely ourselves, to sending the file electronically, in less than three years?!
Find a printer that will talk to you. Better yet find a printer that will sit down and show you printing and paper samples. The printer has probably done this for a while and can help you with problems as they arise.
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Well here's an update to this post. We got the quote back from the printer. It was way over what we thought it was going to be. This isn't a point in the process to give up. We immediately got our brains together and began brainstorming how we were going to deal with this. We have a plan to go with, but we are going to start by talking with our rep about our options.
I'll update this soon, hopefully with a good solution.
This year we have decided to use an internet printer. In the past we've done it locally, and each time it has been overly expensive and frustrating. The internet printer we are planning on using has sent us paper samples. They boast it takes 2-3 weeks to print and ship. We are praying nothing goes wrong...
I was wondering your group sells copies of your magazine once they are printed to raise money? If you do, how much do you charge and how successful is it? In the past we've tried to sell some but never sold more than a few copies at graduation.
Yet another update to the situation. The printer came back to talk to us. He suggested a change in the page size. We were able to get 4-color for every page and cut the cost by $1500. This is why I said in the post to not give up. If you discuss it with your printer they may have solutions to your very problem.
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