Booklet pricing.. ?

[narcisis]

Hello fellas,

I need abit of advice - I've just been given the job to make a magazine booklet for my clients products. Not "professionally" however, when I say this I mean it's going to be printed out on a regular printer page by page and just stapled together.

I'll have to make custom art, manipulate photos, and roughly design 25-30 pages.

I was thinking around $300..? Suggestions?

[uberslayer™]

That price sounds right if you mean per page. It depends on how much time you plan to spend on it I charge out at about $30 -$40 an hour for basic GD work. Then you have to take into account the that big grunty machine you are working on and forked out for, + software, etc. How many copies are you printing? When you say page by page you do mean you're going down to the copy centre? Not on the old desk jet surely? Getting stuff laser printed on a primo machine is pretty cheap really and a bit of glossy paper makes your work look a lot better.

[narcisis]

Originally posted by uberslayer™
That price sounds right if you mean per page. It depends on how much time you plan to spend on it I charge out at about $30 -$40 an hour for basic GD work. Then you have to take into account the that big grunty machine you are working on and forked out for, + software, etc. How many copies are you printing? When you say page by page you do mean you're going down to the copy centre? Not on the old desk jet surely? Getting stuff laser printed on a primo machine is pretty cheap really and a bit of glossy paper makes your work look a lot better.

Well basically I'll just be designing the pages, and sending him the image files to print out himself. $300 per page? Wow.. but I dont want to scare this guy away with a fee like that, I need this client. What would be a good suggestion?

[uberslayer™]

It all boils down to how long it's going to take you. If it's a case of formatting one page and then just adding different content, it'll be quick and you can charge less. If you have to manipulate a lot of photos and format covers, index, content, etc. differently it'll take ages and you have to charge accordingly. Sometimes if you get known for doing cheap work you get stuck with that and everyone expects you to work for peanuts. Also depends on the quality they are expecting (get someone to proof your work before you send it 'cause it sounds like you're new to this) it takes a long time to get things perfect.

I think you need to sit down and work out how long the jobs going to take you, then work out what you think you're worth an hour (don't go below $25 or you're shooting yourself in the foot) times these two numbers together add tax and draw up a nice quote with a letter head (makes you look professional) if you're worried about losing the job just explain your method for quoting and then say that it's negotiable quality vs price/time frame

[MG315]

what i'd suggest is do one of the pages now before you tell her a price and see how long it takes you (use placeholder text, stock images...) then multiply that by your hourly rate and add half for all the changes you'll need to make and prepress work.


How many of these are being printed? my print studio does b&w prints at $.10 and color at $.45 and thats from the normal printer. if theyre doing 1000+ you'd do it with an offset printer which would save you even more moeny. Whatever u do, dont print them out of some cheap printer that came with your computer. the quality will be bad and you will spend a lot of money on ink. I havent had a time when it wasnt cheaper to print it at my studio than to print at home(although small things are more convenient to print at home)

[uberslayer™]

Also depends on the size/resolution of the images you're working on. I did a job recently which was used for group presentations. Each page was A2 (big) x High Res. and there were a lot of photos. Even on my grunter just opening each file took long enough to fustrate me. So if you'ree working on an older machine or they want high res. large images, remember whatever you do is going to take longer than just how long it takes you to drag and drop a few piccies.