"The Nightfly" by Donald Fagen

[Lonman]

Hundreds in printing expenses? Man you need to find another printing service or something, they shouldn't cost that much. What is your design layout like, may be time for a change??
Do you have your own laser printer, this may be a cheaper route as well printing at home. A good laser printer with a duplexer shouldn't cost more than a couple hundred now days. I have a nice Dell color laser with a duplexer that ran about $600 4 years ago.

[smoky]

Lonman:

Sorry if I sound ignorant, but I do not know what a duplexer is in the context of a printer.

I have an ink jet printer and it costs me several cartridges to print ONE copy of my book. I then take that book to Kinkos to have it reproduced. My final cost for 4 copies, with binders, plastic protective sheets, 2 sided printing, 9% Arizona sales tax, and two sets of cartridges was $385 and change. My Kinko bill was about $145 of that.

I am open to any suggestions as long as I produce nice binders.

Can one laser cartridge handle 5 books with about 450 pages each? That is almost 2300 pages of printing. Oh double that, as I have 5 for artisit listings and 5 for title listings, So make that 4600 pages.

As I recall, laser cartridges cost over a hundred dollars each. And laser printers are not cheap either.

But I will try anything if I am convinced I will save money without sacrificing my product.

Oh I almost forgot. I use Music Book Deluxe to format my pages for printing and to maintain my database. Nothing special. A three column listing with artist, title, and CAVS number.

[Lonman]

A decent laser printer with duplex option (ability to automatically print on both sides of the paper w/o having to separate & manually feed the odd pages back in backwards to print the even pages) is well worth the initial cost. I have a Dell 3000CN Color Laser Printer that ran me total approx $600 with the duplex option. A 4 pack replacement of black carts run me around $170 - color carts run around $190 for a pack of complete (Cyan/Magenta/Yellow) but are not needed for strictly b & w print jobs & this b&w pack will print around 16,000 pages - almost 4 reprints for your current books at 4600 pages for $170 - so for you actual Kinkos cost (part of your mistake right off hand BTW, check the cost of local printing service OTHER than Kinkos if the laser printer isn't an option, they charge more than anyone else) but for your Kinkos cost on ONE reprint, you can get almost FOUR reprints (3 for sure) for a little more at home. May cost more initially to get it up & running but will save you much in the long haul. Also much cleaner looking than inkjet as well & do not run if the pages get wet like inkjet.
Binders & sheet protectors are a shop & save where you can. Sheet protectors go Staples 200 page value boxes. Binders depending on the size & if you need presentation format is whatever you can find the cheapest - the more expensive ones don't hold up under bar vigors any better, made this mistake a couple times, but I do always buy a few more than I need & keep some behind my booth (or with me) if a binder starts to fall apart, I can take the pages out of the bad binder & put into a new one on the spot.

[smoky]

Thanks Lonman, I really respect your opinion and this forum is very lucky to have you here contributing your knowledge.

If I lived in a stick house I would likely adopt your approach. However my home is a 40 foot diesel pusher and I travel throughout the United States. Space is at a premium when you full time in a motor coach and I just dont have room to add a big laser printer. I am pretty well stuck with a jet printer. I have a pretty good one, one of the newer HP combos (copier, printer, faxer, photos) and it barely fits in.

One idea that occured to me was to see if I can find a copy service that will print directly from my files so I don't even have to print the first copy. Are there any copy services out there that will do that? It would be a huge savings for me.

Smoky

[Lonman]

Originally Posted by smoky

One idea that occured to me was to see if I can find a copy service that will print directly from my files so I don't even have to print the first copy. Are there any copy services out there that will do that? It would be a huge savings for me.

Smoky

That's where you got to get on the phone to printing services. Kinkos is convenient because they are generally open 24/7, but they are typically more expensive than most other printers. I used to get my books done there as well, but called a few other places & found I saved almost $100 on my printing going to a local ma & pa printing service.
As far as printing from the file, I think many now days can do so, but again call around & ask. I submit my request slips in a Publisher file & they go directly from the disc to paper. I also had to submit any special font I used as they may not & would substitue for generic fonts. They even worked my request slips to save me even more money per print - 32,000 cut slips for less than $100.

[mindonstrike]

I don't know about your neck of the woods but Office Depot here will take a CD with a Word file or Excell file and print directly from it. double sided and collate to boot. They used to have a $3. surcharge for working from the cd but I'm not sure if thats still true.
Lonnie is right about Kinkos, for simple stuff like this they are way too expensive, something like 2 or 3 cents a sheet more than Office Depot.

Sam