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From: chuq%plaid@Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: comp.text.desktop
Subject: Re: Xerography or Offset?
Message-ID: <18410@sun.uucp>
Date: Fri, 8-May-87 14:29:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.18410
Posted: Fri May  8 14:29:34 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 9-May-87 21:15:19 EDT
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From: seismo!harvard!linus!watmath!looking!brad
Date: Thu May  7 19:15:18 1987
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd. Waterloo, Ontario

Offset becomes a win when your circulation goes up, not when your
number of pages goes up.

At 200 copies, most (almost all) of your cost is the plate cost and
setup cost.  The paper and press time are a fraction of this.

There are three kinds of offset printing, mind you

	paper plate - real cheap, quality same as a photocopy
			only one run of a few thousand per plate

	silver plate - medium price, high quality, only one run
			allowed, but up to 25,000

	metal plate - expensive, as many runs as you like, high quality.

Most copy shops can copy onto card stock or heavy paper.  You can
do your covers this way.  For colour, you need offset, but again there
is nothing stopping you from doing your covers in offset and the
rest on a copier.

A cheap copier will not satisfy your needs as it won't be able to do
collating etc.  You can lease a good copier for one or two hundred
a month on a long term lease.  It will still not look as good as the
$50,000 copier at the copy shop.

My suggestion, call around to the copy shops, tell them what you have,
tell them you will guarantee to do 12 issues there if they give you
a good price and maintain good service.  They will chop the price down.
One might even offer to beat anybody's price.

Methods of binding, covers etc. have little to do with xerography.
It's only what the shop will do for you.

BTW cost of stock is only a small part of the copy shop's expenses.
They pay about .2 or .3 cents a sheet for it in the quantity they
purchase in.
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473

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Chuq Von Rospach	chuq@sun.COM		[I don't read flames]

There is no statute of limitations on stupidity