Not sure what printer to use. Can someone help???
- Thread starter Tracy1979
- Start date
xfactor printing
Senior Member
- Joined
- 2011
- Posts
- 647
- Geo
- united states
Hi Tracy. Welcome.
I assume this is your first step into this business.
When you say you want to print books, what quantity are you planning?
Think of your first year and your first five years.
Will they all be black and white only?
Will they have illustrations?
Will you need to produce color covers?
Soft cover only I assume?
How will you bind them?
How will you trim them?
(You can either have a manual perfect binder that you can get used or a more automated routine.)
What will your turnaround time be?
And add up your profit per book/job and see what kind of numbers you have.
I would recommend seeing if you can setup a tour of an established press near you and ask for a tour of their operation to get an idea of what is involved either now or in your future. Maybe it will make sense to get your volume up by using an established press to do the work and you add value by bringing the jobs in and doing prepress until you have enough volume to spend $100,000+ on equipment. Or maybe you have a niche and can make it work on very small volume and smaller equipment to do something a major press can't do economically and that doesn't work on existing print on demand web offerings. The printer you posted would be on the very small end (very difficult to get enough volume to make money printing one book at a time on it) and you will need a whole lot of other (and bigger) equipment to finish the books nicely.
I assume this is your first step into this business.
When you say you want to print books, what quantity are you planning?
Think of your first year and your first five years.
Will they all be black and white only?
Will they have illustrations?
Will you need to produce color covers?
Soft cover only I assume?
How will you bind them?
How will you trim them?
(You can either have a manual perfect binder that you can get used or a more automated routine.)
What will your turnaround time be?
And add up your profit per book/job and see what kind of numbers you have.
I would recommend seeing if you can setup a tour of an established press near you and ask for a tour of their operation to get an idea of what is involved either now or in your future. Maybe it will make sense to get your volume up by using an established press to do the work and you add value by bringing the jobs in and doing prepress until you have enough volume to spend $100,000+ on equipment. Or maybe you have a niche and can make it work on very small volume and smaller equipment to do something a major press can't do economically and that doesn't work on existing print on demand web offerings. The printer you posted would be on the very small end (very difficult to get enough volume to make money printing one book at a time on it) and you will need a whole lot of other (and bigger) equipment to finish the books nicely.
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ChristiaanT
Member
- Joined
- 2016
- Posts
- 7
- Geo
- guatemala
good answer xfactor, many questions!
ghuerth
Senior Member
- Joined
- 2012
- Posts
- 152
- Geo
- Fullerton College, California, USA
I have seen to many shops buy the equipment expecting to get the work and go under due to not having the income to make the monthly payments. Get your customer base, broker your work till you see enough income to support a shop then purchase needed equipment to do it in-house. Have the work-flow, don't hope for it. Small duplicator, large offset, digital print and finish. Lots of factors. What is your niche?
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