Note to Printer: This Customer Information Sheet is not yet complete. An electronic book is being prepared with all of the information, which will be available by late 1992. However, there should be enough here to get you started. The electronic book will include all of the forms noted and will be updated for desktop publishing. ======================================================================= So You Want To Produce A Program? Producing a program for a special event such as a beauty pageant, reunion, sporting event, etc. can be a great deal of fun, and it is not as difficult as you might think. The information you will find in this packet will enable you to produce a top quality publication at the lowest possible cost. It is important that you understand that you don't have to do all of the work. We will be happy to do as much or as little of it as you wish. Don't let all of the enclosed information scare you. We have had customers bring us in a stack of photos, articles and ad copy scratched on bits of paper, telling us to print them a program. We have also had customers who brought in everything in a highly organized manner, easy to read, with virtually no explanation required. Most of our customers fall somewhere in between. All end up with a program or booklet that they are proud of. Any printer is a service company. On most jobs, paper stock, film, other materials and press time are a very small part of the job. The most expensive part of most jobs is the preparation of the job...getting it camera ready, shooting and stripping the negatives, and burning the plates. This is called "make ready". After the job comes into the printer and a job ticket is written, the first stop is the typesetting and paste-up department. When the typographer picks up the job ticket, the first thing he or she does is write the starting time down on the job ticket. He then takes everything out of the job ticket and determines what has to be done to the job. When everything is sorted out and organized, the typographer must make a dummy of the publication. That can take anywhere from a half hour to an hour. Next, any pieces of clip-art or illustrations that the customer requests are looked for. As an example, if you have a note that you want an illustration of a family of four here, want a dog there, and want a U.S. Flag somewhere else, the typographer must look through some 75 books of clip art that is in our library in the attempt to find what he thinks you want. That could take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. Once the illustrations are found, the typographer must determine an appropriate type size and style and start setting the type. If the type is neatly double spaced typewritten, that should go rather fast. If handwritten, taken from newspaper clippings, illegible with numerous grammatical or spelling errors, it will take longer. Once the job is typeset, pasted up, illustrations put in place, it is ready for you to proof, and the typographer writes his finishing time on the job ticket. If you find any keyboard errors, they will be corrected "off the clock". However, if you decide that you would like to make some changes - regardless of how minor, the typographer clocks in again, makes the changes and clocks out. If the publication is a very tight one with a great deal of copyfitting, a change as small as adding a word or two or a sentence could possibly result in having to completely reset the job and paste it up again. If, on the other hand, you provide a dummy showing where you would like what, all copy is submitted double spaced typewritten, a run sheet is provided for all ads, editorial and photos, all photos and illustrations are included and keyed to the articles or ads they go with, you have done much of the work of the typographer, and can save much of the production time cost. With this in mind, go through the various sections of this packet and decide just how much, if any, of the work you would like to do. The more you do, the more money you will save. The typographer is a one person department that has an overhead cost of approximately $45 per hour. He can be most effectively be used by sitting at the typesetter making a beautiful finished product. To save the most amount of money on your job, you want to submit your work to the typographer as complete as possible. As an example of extremes, when we were in Houston, we used to do a 56 page monthly magazine. The publisher of that magazine provided a complete dummy of what he wanted, provided all photos and illustrations keyed to the articles or ads, pencil sketched each ad the way he wanted it, and provided all editorial and text double spaced typewritten. His monthly cost ran approximately $980. We did another 64 page publication each month, where the publisher submitted everything handwritten (almost illegible), brought ads in without logos and scratched on the back of business cards or little pieces of paper, and had us look for virtually every illustration or logo he required. He did not proof his copy until after we had already typeset it and pasted it up, making numerous changes on the final copy. His cost averaged $4,800 per month. Both customers were quite pleased with their finished product and pleased with their cost. The one did most of the preliminary work and the other preferred to spend his time selling advertising and have us do all of the work on the production of his publication. It is up to you as to how much work you want us to do. The one thing we can assure you is that you will be pleased with the finished product regardless of which route you elect to take. Advertising Sales If you plan to have advertising in your program or booklet, it should not cost you anything to produce. In fact, you should be able to make somewhat of a profit on the piece. In the case of something like a beauty pageant, if you handle it properly, you will make more profit on your program than you will on your event. The first thing you should realize is that those individuals advertising in your publication are doing so for some other reason than actually advertising. If they are an astute businessperson, they realize that the possibility of any advertising in this type of publication generating any additional business for them is somewhere between slim and none. They are doing so because they want people to know that they support either the organization or an individual in the organization. The exception to this is those few companies who have the funds to do institutional type advertising - simply wanting to keep their name in front of the public wherever possible (soft drink bottlers, banks, etc.) How Much Can I Charge For My Ads? As much as you can, of course. But you must be realistic. As I noted above, your advertisers will be doing so simply to support you. Once you have determined how many copies of your program you are going to require, you can easily determine how much each one of those pages are going to cost you. See our booklet pricing schedule for those prices. If you find that you are going to need 500 copies of a 24-page booklet and you are going to need 12 of those pages (including the covers) for your own material. That gives you 12 pages available for advertising. If your book is to be 8 1/2 x 11, your cost per page is going to be $24.30 per page, plus typesetting, or a total of $583.20. Your 12 pages of advertising must carry the cost of the entire book, so your cost per available page of advertising is $48.60 plus typesetting. You might want to figure a price of $100 for a full page, $60 for a 1/2 page and $40 for a 1/4 page. That would cover the cost of your book. How Much Will The Typesetting Cost? That is almost like asking how high is up? Giving a firm price on typesetting without seeing how the material is to be submitted, are there any charts or graphs, are their any forms, how complicated it will be to put together, etc. etc. etc., is almost impossible. As a very rough figure, on very simple pages, you will need to figure about $17.50 per page. The more complicated the page the more it will cost. Booklet Printing Prices The below prices are based on white 70# offset with white or color 65# vellum bristol or white 65# coated cover, printed in black ink. Must be in multiples of 4 pages. Does not include any typesetting. Quantity 4.25x5.5 8.5x5.5 8.5x7 8.5x11 ==================================================== 50 $ 9.75 $10.00 $12.05 $12.15 100 10.45 10.85 13.35 13.50 200 11.85 12.55 15.90 16.20 250 13.65 13.95 17.25 17.60 300 13.95 14.25 18.55 18.95 400 14.75 15.95 21.10 21.60 500 16.05 17.60 23.65 24.30 750 19.25 21.70 29.90 30.85 1,000 22.40 25.80 36.05 37.70 How To Figure Costs: Say you have 20 pages inside plus 4 cover pages on an 8.5x5.5 booklet for a total of 24 pages. 100 copies would cost 24 x $10.85 per page or a total of $260.40 or $2.60 per booklet. On 500 copies it would be 24 x $17.60 or a total of $422.00 or $.84 per booklet. We can provide you with layout sheets to do your own typesetting on, or if you prefer, we can typeset and paste it up for you at an additional charge. The below typesetting charges are minimum charges for very simple work and do not include tabular work, technical terms, wrap arounds, etc., which will be billed at our hourly rate. Prices based upon your providing clean double spaced typewritten manuscript or as ASCII text from a word processor. Does not include author changes after type is set. Additional Flat Charges Typesetting 4.5x4.4 @ $10.00 per page 8.5x5.5 @ $12.50 per page 8.5x7 @ $15.00 per page 8.5x 11 @ $17.50 per page Photographs 1 to 5 @ $7.50 each 6 or more @ $5.00 each Color Ink 1-color other than black - $15.00 Multi color - Must be quoted Other paper stock - Must be quoted