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It's always hard to succeed in this business. Ya always have to find a smarter way to get things done and make it more profitable. Sometimes you have to take things at very low margins. Sometimes you can find a way to gang a couple jobs. Often it's smarter to job out than to produce in-house...

We are a trade shop and price this stuff all the time. For a fast check, for example, go to a site like 4over's and that can give you an idea of what your cost "oughta" be. Cost,not price. Member discountprinting gives you a good rule of thumb on retail pricing, of course bearing in mind that...

That's the reason so many books in the recent past were produced as untrimmed, spine-glued signatures. The purchaser would either hand slit the sides or take the book to the town bookbinder to trim out individually and case in. This was a very common situation less than 30 years ago with any...

As a friend of mine is fond of saying, "More is better". Find a way to make it more profitable... I know it sounds simplistic, but these are the choices you have. You might wish to bear in mind that additional work costs essentially only wear-and-tear, labor, supplies, and utilities. You don't...

Depends on the size of your shop and the complexity of the mix, as the other contributors have said. I view meetings as usually a waste of the time and talents of at least 3 people. As social beings, we immediately move into political mode with things... not informational mode. You may wish to...

We used to put water in the ink cans years ago. It was fine for letterpress inks in spite of the fact that water will oxidize things very slowly. (Rusty nails in a bucket of water is your reminder.) I'm not so sure how it would work with offset inks because water is, as my high school chemistry...

A word of caution, prompted by Cosmo's remark: "MAKE SURE YOU'RE MAKING MONEY WITH YOUR PRICE, NO MATTER WHAT PRICE YOU CHARGE." You are trying to make a profit on each job (or at least on each customer), and the most possible profit without endangering your future profits. You may need to turn...

The question that none of us has asked you is this: How much paper and what kind do you need counted in a day? If the answer is 400 lots of 500 to 3,000 letterheads each, you will probably need a different system from 40,000 sheets of parent size cover paper at one time.

Exactly right... use your resources the best way. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn't make sense to collect up front. That's why we call it "intelligent competition"... not every job is worth winning for every printer.

As with all things, this can be negotiable and can actually be the way to tip the scales for work to come to your shop. If you have a customer who pays promptly and has a small mailing, you'd have to be somewhat daft to put them through the whole "postage check" scenario that some of my dumber...

One of the more difficult things to do, though, is to determine your "true costs". There are formulas, but they are based on some "difficult to determine" assumptions: how much a month do you expect to pay for labour, shop rental, machine rental, your own pay, supplies, etc. Divide that total...

A fair enough analysis of where we are. The hard part is that we are often quantifying unknowns and unknowables. Yes, we can have viewing booths and everything else that can make a "system"... but if there is a single deviation from the system such as a request of "I'd like it a little hotter...

Here's why I did not reply and yet viewed the post: Your subject line was teasing enough that I did want to see what you were "asking about/offering/etc" ... but I do not have the information you need. If your subject line had been written as "I need a userguide for Prinect Package Designer"...

Remember that that is their offer. You're free to reject it. And you ought to. If they start their relationship with you on such a low standard you can be sure that things will never improve between you. You will have to negotiate every penny and holiday. Unless you need such an employer, flee...

You may wish to look at the "multiloft" materials available from Convertible Solutions. From your description, I imagine you would simply trim a printed white sheet slightly smaller than the yellow sheet, collate, and cut.

Papel editorial is a grade of paper that is no longer made as an "off the shelf" item for printers in the United States and, I imagine, most "first world" countries. It is an unsized and uncalendared (or minimally calendared) pulp paper that resembles construction paper, but is slightly...

Years ago I read in a librarians' journal about testing this stuff. As I recall, they said that a day in a 300º oven is equivalent to about 10 years. But, not to take my memory as gospel, I'd find a job that was printed say 10 years (or better, 20 years) ago on similar paper for comparison...

I'm shooting from the hip about this, but I would give up on them, and quickly. If they can't control this much of their business, they certainly won't be able to help you keep a pristine reputation. You can bet on that. Remember that "actions speak much louder than words"; non-operating demos...

Better index of the health of the industry. What does it mean? When my competitors go out of business I am getting a bigger piece of the pie. If the pie is also shrinking faster than they are going out of business, then things are going to still be getting even tighter for me. Of course this...

Today's dollar is worth about $0.65 in year 2000 money. Profits per establishment should be higher (even in a non-inflationary sense), simply because there are less of us to share the pie. Dr. Joe is not terribly convincing. I contend that the better index is how many of your competitors failed...