Care to Quote???

kdw75

Well-known member
Just curious what anyone else would charge for 25 4/4 booklets with 68 pages self cover on 80# gloss text. Full bleeds heavy coverage and 24-hour production time. Saddle stitched. We bid about $450.
 
Assuming finished size a4 and print ready PDF supplied with trim and bleed and using fiery rip to layout on v80.
​​We'd be in for about €250euro. (ireland)
 
Assuming 8.5x11, I came up with $314.25 for 25 and $445.30 for 50. My pricing includes a $55 "rush" fee. Did you lose a bid or did the customer balk at the quote? Or am I too low? Pippip's price coverts to $285.54.
 
Assuming 8.5x11, I came up with $314.25 for 25 and $445.30 for 50. My pricing includes a $55 "rush" fee. Did you lose a bid or did the customer balk at the quote? Or am I too low? Pippip's price coverts to $285.54.

I think we left money on the table. The run size was 12x18 with a finished book size of 8.75x11.25. I noticed several online sites with online pricing were charging closer to a thousand dollars and that was for 2-day production.

They were used to dealing local and said our price was "Amazing".
 
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About $575.00 with our V180P, but $700.00 on our J75 with guillotine trimming. I would say either price is acceptable to a client in reality and is a good price to ask for 24 service, no matter your location.

I'm using Futura Gloss for what it's worth. I don't believe in running Blazer or Xpri for most booklets.
 
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Hmmm...a price range of $285 - $700.00 for the same job? Seems a bit of an extreme range or is that typical for digital?
 
We run into that quite a bit. The people on the low end are hungry for work. The people on the high end don't need the job.
 
I'm a fan of value-based pricing and I have seen discrepancies on small quantity booklets like this before. I just looked up the price of a large corporate copy shop nearby and they were at $750. And I know it wouldn't look nearly as good as what anyone on this forum good do. I think most of the differences come from two reasons - how they are finished, and perceived value. Most of us are probably paying about the same for clicks and paper (about $60) but some of us have inline finishing which would keep the labor costs down and some of us would be stitching each book by hand. Of course, how we all calculate hour hourly rate makes a difference. A job like this should only take two to three hours to do for one person, even if they had to stitch them by hand. I think $500+ is too high for 25 books. If I was a buyer, I would think that was ridiculous. But at my price of $315, I guess that's why I drive a minivan instead of a Charger SRT. Lol!

Guess I need to re-evaluate my estimating program does booklets. That quote I gave above is what it spit out. Normally, I do search around to see what other places are charging. But it would also depend upon who I was giving that price too. I have some customers that would think $315 was stupid and I have some customers that would think $750 was great. After twelve years of estimating, you get a little tired of guessing games. I wonder if other manufacturing industries have this problem?
 
I'm a fan of value-based pricing and I have seen discrepancies on small quantity booklets like this before. I just looked up the price of a large corporate copy shop nearby and they were at $750. And I know it wouldn't look nearly as good as what anyone on this forum good do. I think most of the differences come from two reasons - how they are finished, and perceived value. Most of us are probably paying about the same for clicks and paper (about $60) but some of us have inline finishing which would keep the labor costs down and some of us would be stitching each book by hand. Of course, how we all calculate hour hourly rate makes a difference. A job like this should only take two to three hours to do for one person, even if they had to stitch them by hand. I think $500+ is too high for 25 books. If I was a buyer, I would think that was ridiculous. But at my price of $315, I guess that's why I drive a minivan instead of a Charger SRT. Lol!

Guess I need to re-evaluate my estimating program does booklets. That quote I gave above is what it spit out. Normally, I do search around to see what other places are charging. But it would also depend upon who I was giving that price too. I have some customers that would think $315 was stupid and I have some customers that would think $750 was great. After twelve years of estimating, you get a little tired of guessing games. I wonder if other manufacturing industries have this problem?

My paper and click cost is about $100.00.
 
Can you tell me what type of paper you are using and how much it is per m?

Veritiv brand. Used to be U-Digital. They switched branding but same paper. 12x18 sheets run $40/m. Can usually get it a little less when buying bulk. Also Midland paper has a Korean paper that usually runs $50/m.
 
Hmmm...a price range of $285 - $700.00 for the same job? Seems a bit of an extreme range or is that typical for digital?

Quite normal in our business.

As a trade shop, we'd come in at about $275 FOB our doors and be happy.

If our trade customer asked how much to charge the end retail customer I would tell her "between $350 and $600, depending on what you think you can get."

Usual market around here would seem to be $375 to $525, though.

A lot would depend on whether you're a franchise, the customer-printer relationship, whether you're trying to grab the customer from a competitor, whether this is a one-off opportunity, and a lot of other factors.

Yep, it's a crazy business.
 
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Paper and printing is around $1.5 per book.. The rest boils down to the cost of labor.. Which is why automation is destroying the mom and pops.
 
This client has plenty of money. Their primary concern is a quality product and on time delivery no matter what. They print these for auctions where a select group of buyers are being catered to.
 

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