What do you know about getting magazine print prices? Getting specifications together and finding the right specification for you can be a minefield.
Take paper weights as a prime example. How are you supposed to know what the right paper weight your magazine cover is supposed to be printed on over the inner pages? Or perhaps the binding options. Is it worth paying more for a perfect bound finish over a saddle stitched one?
Each process in printing your magazine requires a different cost centre, piece of machinery or skilled labourer. This gives you the edge to negotiate.
Now what most printers don’t want you to know is that they cannot print or finish everything in-house. Which means they too are shopping around to get the best prices not only for their materials to produce your job but to fulfil the parts they cannot deal with themselves.
Matching a magazine printing price isn’t as easy as it sounds as their are so many parts of the job that need adjusting never mind the printer taking the gamble that your magazine will run through all processes smoothly. As there is very little margin in print by you trying to manoeuvre the price lower you are asking the printer to take a gamble on their processes and machinery being sound.
In order to get the best price out of the printer help them. Show them your magazine artwork files even if it’s just a few pages. This will help the printer with putting faith in the materials being supplied are actually print ready saving them additional time on pre-press processes.
If you outsource your artwork to a designer do you know if their artwork although good to look at is print ready? Do they embed images and flatten text where they should? If you don’t know then you should. This might be costing you without you knowing. You may be sorting the artwork for your magazine yourself. in which case make sure you use one of the professional graphical packages like Adobe’s Illustrator and InDesign or Quark. They all have the ability to make magazine layouts look good but laying artwork ready to be printed is a different kettle of fish entirely.
Need some help? We would love to help you with your magazine artwork. We have designers in-house all based here in Gloucester processing, tweaking and making ‘print ready’. Want to know more? We would love to hear from you.
Why not fill in one of our enquiry forms now or give us a call on 01452 346833 today to discuss how we can save you time and money on your magazine printing / artwork.