Small Print Runs for SME’s

A common problem faced by many small companies is to economically produce small quantities of high quality printed material. Here, I mean a quantity of less than 50 with over 16 pages – it could be a technical brochure, training manual, user guide, personnel policies manual, staff manual, etc.

The colour InkJet/Laser printer has helped considerably in achieving this objective. But problems still remain, with the time it takes to physically stack and bind the material in a professional manner and not just putting it into a ring binder of some sort.

Printers normally charge uneconomic prices for doing such work, especially if you are an infrequent customer.

Now a second unrelated problem. It is said ‘everybody has a book in them’. This may be true, but how do you get it published, printed and distributed?

Well in this age of the internet, it has an answer to this last problem – welcome to the age of Personal Publishing websites like www.lulu.com and www.bobsbooks.co.uk (just 2 of the many sites). They will print your book for you, put it on a list of titles and when someone orders will send the printed book to them and what is more you can earn income from it. All very good for all those budding authors.

And here is the answer to our first problem, of how small companies can get professionally printed and bound books at an economic price.

Create an account on your favourite Personal Publishing website, prepare your material and get it into PDF format (that is easy now with free readily available PDF software printers). Then create a project and upload the PDF file and the necessary information, before ordering your copies. No need to worry about distributing it or getting a price mark-up, you will be the only person ordering it.

This method can also help reduce costs, as you only need to order the number of copies you have an immediate requirement for. So in a stroke removing the problem of what to do with out of date printed manuals.

Due to the flexibility of this approach you can easily keep the manual up to date and order the odd copy as and when required.

Is it economic, well compared to the costs of buying top quality paper, ink cartridges/toner, etc. I have found that PP websites come out slightly more expensive. Now add in the cost of labour for time spent minding the printer and binding the material together, then the cost of the PP websites is economic and the finished article quality is much higher.


Two problems solved/resolved by the same solution!