whether you're publishing or self publishing you're going to need to print some short runs of your books - either as samples or to show to publishers and agents.
If you're writing a novel, you're laughing. Not only will you almost certainly have easy access to a black and white printer, there are also loads of digital book printers (just google digital print or short run print or self publishing)
if, like the kitten stories you need a lot of colour, brace yourself.
The first 6 kitten books have 48 pages (I'll talk a little more later about why 48 - it's a print thing) that means a sample set of books will involve just under 300 pages. I really checked hard and the lowest quote I got was at KallKwik. They would offer me the super, account, industry bulk rate of 25p a copy. The drawback - to get bulk I'd have to print ten sets (3000 pages!) The cheapest quote I got for just 300 was almost double. It looked a bit gloomy - £750 of print for a reasonable quantity of samples or £150 for one set!
I had a real moment at this stage - it's all well and good wasting your evenings and weekends on a silly pipe dream but £750 makes you an idiot. I know you should be commited to your work but still...
luckily my friend Jon came up with the solution - it actually works out cheaper if you buy a laser printer of your own. I agonised for a while and spent a lot of time researching. I now think the best option for my type of project is a Lexmark c530dn. It cost £280 with a set of toner cartridges but they are actually doing a £75 cashback deal until april. It should give me 4000 pages at 5% cover so with my colour density I reckon I'll be able to do about 6 sets of the books before I need new toner. A full set of new toner will set me back £240 (I know, it's mad isn't it!!) and would do me around another six sets. I will let this blog know how many it actually does but I'm hoping that I'll get my samples for a total of £400 and I'll still own the printer (surely worth £100 on ebay? maybe not)
A warning though - it's huge - about a metre square.
there's a link to it here.
http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=49WQ&SearchType=1&SearchTerms=lexmark+c530dn&PageMode=3&SearchKey=All&SearchMode=All&NavigationKey=0
I know I've still spent at least £200 quid but that's not quite so mad and at least I have something to show for it. I do love my printer.
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