The 2nd Book Of Great Printing Tips From A Printing Pro
This book is the second collection of blogs I have written since the last booklet and having done so over a period of the past year in order to help keep my clients informed and provide them with an understanding on how to get the most out of your printing jobs and at the same time reducing your costs. I hope you too find this helpful. 4-18-12 Ira Blacker
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INDEX
PLAN A PRINT JOB
Page 5
MAGAZINE PRINTING
Page 7
CATALOG OR MAGAZINE
Page 13
DIGITAL PRINTING
Page 14
CALENDAR PRINTING
Page 16
WRITING COPY
Page 18
PRESENTATION FOLDERS
Page 19
BOOK PRINTING
Page 21
REAL ESTATE PRINTING
Page 25
MANUAL PRINTING
Page 27
GRAPHIC DESIGN TIPS
Page 29
ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS Page 31
How Do I Plan For A Commercial Printing Job? Let’s just say this is the first time you stepped up from the printing work you have done in the past from the quick printer you had dealt with on your smaller printing runs. Or, maybe your boss just dumped this whole thing in your lap and asked you to plan the job and get the printing quote. So now what do you do and more to the point what do you need to know about planning your commercial printing job? These are the categories you will need to have knowledge of as well as some tips and choices within them: FILES: As commercial printers no longer, except for single color line art, deal with hard copy “camera ready” art, you will need to provide files that will be referred to in any printing quote you will receive as “output ready”. This means you supply the file and the printing company “RIPs” (Raster Image Processing - or processing your files to the printing pre press format for printing) them to plates. Your files should be created in graphic design software such as InDesign, Quark or Corel. Should you have used anything other than professional graphics software, you can count on the fact that the printing company will not have that software and will not be able to output your files. If you did utilize non professional software, then you will at least have to create a PDF document to give the printer. Your document should be in a single page document tree and NOT in spreads, with any art that you want to go to the very edge extended at least 1/8” around all sides of the page where it “bleeds”. All images used will need to be a minimum of 300 dpi (dots per inch) to avoid poor resolution (fuzzy images). PRINTING FORMAT: This is a choice that if you cannot make a professional printing press can advise you on. Based on the quantity of the run, size of the page, how many pages that you have will dictate where your best interests lie as to which format suits you best. The three basic choices are digital presses such as the iGen, which use toner that can look like ink, the sheet fed and the web printing presses. QUANTITY: Unless you have a fixed quantity requirement, such as a specified mailing, never leave yourself short on the run nor print the same thing several times throughout the year. It is double the cost to print the same item twice and virtually pittance to print more of them once the job is running. Therefore when getting your quotes, ask the commercial printing company to give you at least three different quantities, so that you have a basis of understanding of your costs over the year. PAPER STOCK: Paper is divided essentially into two classes: Coated and Uncoated. The coated stocks are gloss, matte and dull, with the latter being almost indistinguishable. The reason for using coated stocks, which are not really coated but polished, is to allow for the ink to sit on top of the paper, rather than sink in as with uncoated “offset” stocks, is that the images will print crisper and cleaner when using coated paper stocks. Sometimes when a softer look is required, uncoated stocks may be your answer. The most import thing to know about paper right now is that on the longer web runs, paper is about half the cost of your job. This is why, when money is tight, we always recommend the lighter grades. SIGNATURES: Commercial printing companies print on either large “parent sheets” or rolls that either sheet at the press end or fold into bindery ready signatures. It is important to understand the utilization of signatures, as when you “fill the signature” you are getting the best pricing per page. This is especially important for companies printing magazines or anything where you are selling add space, as your per page cost is higher on partial signatures than on full ones. BINDERY: The basic bind for commercial printing is saddle stitching, with two staples going from the outside of the spine to the inside of the booklet. This sometimes can be one or even three depending upon the variables of the run. Perfect binding is more costly and is a glue-binding, such as your standard soft cover book. Other options include comb bind, which while not very attractive, allows for a lay-flat option when you require printing on the spine. Otherwise spiral or Wire-O is the more attractive alternative.
DIRECT MAIL: If your piece is going into the mail, it will need to be processed for the best rates. Understanding postal regulations is not only important so that your piece be accepted by the Post Office for mailing and not bounced as unacceptable, but also for the best rates. Bulk mail is the least expensive and bulk mail by carrier route even more so. The only requirement here is that you mail to an entire zip code and cannot cherry pick who receives your mailing and who does not. Providing your mailing is of a reasonably large quantity you may also be able to qualify for co-mailing where we can take your piece and amalgamate it with a million or more other pieces for the best rates available to the largest mailers. This is just a small overview of what you will need to know about commercial printing and I do recommend that you take a look at some of my earlier blogs that may offer you more specifics closer to what you project may entail. There is also a free booklet you can download from our web site chock full of commercial printing information.
Anyone Can Start A Magazine, Even You! You know it would be a fabulous idea to have a magazine in order to promote your company’s message or even to attract advertisers but you are stumped when you pose the following questions: What the heck do I know about producing a magazine? Where do I start and what do I do? Well, believe it or not there are some easy answers thanks to today’s technology. WHAT IS MY STARTING POINT? The very first thing you need to do is to understand and be able to define the niche you are seeking to promote with your magazine. What is my message? What product or service will my magazine be able to promote for me? Who is my audience that I want to reach? Can I attract advertisers? Once you have defined your audience and your message to be incorporated into your magazine start going through all of your emails, notes, writings, memos, blogs and all written materials where you have focused on your message and the benefits of your product and/or services to your specific audience. Magazines are successful when they have a defined audience, who especially have an affinity or need for your product or services. Make sure to digitize any of your writings and create an overall PDF. If you need to organize them in any fashion, Adobe Acrobat will allow you to manipulate pages by moving them around with your computer mouse.
I HAVE GATHERED MY MATERIALS; WHAT NEXT? In an era of self publishing, home businesses and the DIY (Do It Yourself) era, there are many free as well as inexpensive services that can gather your materials and automate them into a very serviceable magazine. They can take your writings and turn them into a nice looking PDF magazine that can even be suitable for magazine printing. One of them is Tabbloid, by HP, where you can add your URL or blog feed and it will email you a perfect PDF with nice design added. This is absolutely free and without any further commitment. Another one is Zinepal, which will create a print ready magazine as well as one that works for mobile devices, iPad and Kindle. With the Zinepal service you have a limited amount of pages you can produce, plus they drop their logo onto it. The paid version, will not add their logo and you can produce longer versions and have the ability to customize and edit your work. PROFESSIONAL DESIGN Should you decide on hiring a professional graphic designer to layout your magazine, especially with the intention of magazine printing, you will want to make sure you have seen their work for other magazines and have a fair idea of your own regarding your layout expectations. The designer should be able to easily understand what your niche and message is as well as your audience, which would also include potential advertisers. Their work should compliment your message and be able to bring it to the next level. One important item, especially if you are intent on presenting your issue for magazine printing, would be sure the graphic designer has a clear understanding of the expectations of what is required by the commercial offset magazine printer and that their work will be “press ready”.
MAGAZINE PRINTING One of the things you will need to do is to also spend your time familiarizing yourself with the basics of commercial magazine printing. What is a signature, what are the ideal page counts, what is the best paper to use, should it be all color or just some of the pages? A quality magazine printing company, can not only make your issue look good, but can also provide you with some help regarding the answers to these questions? With today’s technology and equipment you can also produce short run magazines on the digital presses from Canon or Xerox and a very economical unit cost that you could previously only get from running larger quantities.
The Benefits Of Your Own Company Magazine I am sure your company is blogging today as a method of getting your message out about your product or services. Have you considered the benefits of publishing your blogs as a basis for a company magazine? There are many benefits to publishing your own company magazine, whether as an in house periodical or to also send to your client base. An in house magazine builds camaraderie and loyalty among the employees as well as an excellent p lace to exchange ideas within the company. It is also a convenient and attractive place to disseminate your documents and information. It can also serve as a unique and attractive catalog for your products and services, but at the same time comes across as a more user friendly and soft sell source for that product information. It not only allows you to show off your products and services, but your employees as well. It puts a “face” on your staff and invites the reader into your company’s home. Having a company magazine also sets you up as an expert in your field. Authoring the details and benefits of your product or services, allows you to stand out as an “authority” on the subject on those products or services and people like to deal with “authorities” and “experts” in a given field. Here is a chance to shine, writing about what you know best an d offering others insight into your business while espousing the benefits of dealing with you. What better and more unique idea, than printing your own company magazine. Just think of a world where you can exchange ideas with employees, peers and clients without ever speaking. An In-house magazine can brighten and better the work place environment in a very short space of time. A happy workplace has been found to reduce the number of sick days by employees. At the same time as you keep your employees in a happy state, you also gain a fabulous marketing tool for your product or service. It helps build your brand and allows you a medium to thank clients with posts about how they utilize your product or services as well as a place to reward employees for their contribution, by posting articles and pictures of them and their accomplishments within the firm. By having a company magazine you enter an exciting new realm of presenting your information in an interesting manor. You can have a professionally created magazine that can communicate your company’s ideas and goals in the friendliest of fashions. At the same time as highlighting your product or service, and further branding your company’s image, you additionally gain in employee loyalty as you have increased their desire to be part of your team and you benefit by their increased output due to their increased level of enjoyment for coming to work each day. You can “connect the dots” with your company magazine by tying all of these things together in one attractive and professional looking magazine. To encapsulate: With a company magazine, you get the benefit of creating a happier work force, extolling the virtues of your clients, getting out the heretofore drone messages, usually done on simple company bond or note paper, helping your branding and getting out your message describing the benefits of your product or service. Don’t wait any longer. Take the plunge into a creative approach to growing your business. Printing By Design can help you every step of the way. As a professional magazine printer, we can even help you with the design and layout in addition to the magazine printing itself. In addition to printing magazines, we are also able to create for you an online version of the very same issue.
AFTER Your Magazine, Catalog Or Book Is Printed… After the printing of your magazine, catalog, book or other printed material, the services you can receive are many. You can benefit from a myriad of them that you previously may have thought you needed to find a second vendor or more in order to complete your project. Drop Shipping: Once you place a single order for printing, the order, upon completion can segregate your magazines, catalogs, books, or other printed materials and ship them to multiple locations right from the printing plant. If your clients are in, let’s just say a dozen cities across the country and each location needs 5,000 catalogs, you don’t need to place a dozen different orders. Simply provide your printing company with your drop ship list and advise them of any prefered drop shipping instructions so they may completely arrange to have your catalogs shipped to all of the different addresses. This takes the hassle out of your shipping requirements and does so with optimal rates and services, due to the experience and knowledge of one who ships daily. Direct Mail: With direct mail services by the printing company, you benefit by having the same company take your project from press to post office. You get the best rates possible based on the variables from your mailing. The printer’s postal permit is ink jetted, along with the addressee information right on your magazine. You can also have a label printed if that is your preference, as well as sending it out in a poly bag or envelope if you prefer. For reasonably large sized jobs you can benefit from co mailing services, so that your printing and direct mail marketing project can mail at rates even lower than carrier route. We do this by combining your direct mail piece with that of other large customers in order to get these special rates. We know how to get you to the post office with not only the best looking printed piece but save you the optimal money doing so. Insertion to News Publications: You can benefit by inserting your piece to a larger publication for distribution over the same area as the newspaper. For example, we print the Remax magazine that covers a large amount of Westside cities. That magazine, once printed, is delivered to the Daily Breeze and inserted to their weekend edition, thus distributing the Remax magazine to the Breeze readership.
Door To Door Distribution: This is usually reserved for door hangers, but if you have a coupon magazine, or any periodical that would benefit from being dropped at someone’s doorstep of their home, than this is another alternate way to get your message out there. One side benefit of this is, that like direct mail, if the printing press ships your magazine to a distribution house, you then are able to avoid tax on the print run.
Creating A Successful Magazine
In the course of our day we supply many magazine printing quotes to potential publishers who feel they have a basis for success. Many never can get it off the ground, as they hit the business obstacles as they try. So I thought I would consider what the steps are which hopefully may add to the success of a potential magazine for a new publisher and these are some ideas for your consideration. Here are 8 great tips to start you off with. 1-Define Your Niche Market: You will not be able to appeal to everyone with your magazine anymore than one can appeal to everyone they meet in life. Therefore choose an audience that you are both expert in and that could benefit from reading what you have to offer. Example: If you are in Colorado, and you are an expert in Heavy Metal Rock, your magazine could be entitled “Colorado’s Metal Rock Scene”. Create content specific to that niche market. Understand who your readers are and cater to them. 2-Create Compelling Content: Supply your readers with compelling content that hopefully they cannot find elsewhere. Hire the best writers you can afford to and leave them to their own creativity. Always remember the old adage: “Content Is King”. 3-Utilize Great Photos: To quote Rod Stewart, “Every picture tells a story, Don’t It?” The photographs you chose for your magazine printing and publishing venture should tell a story in the best sense of photojournalism. They should capture a moment and that moment should be able to summarize the event or story itself. A classic example is the Marine’s raising the American flag atop Iwo Jima. 4-Create a Stunning Cover: Utilize your best photos along with some creative headlines that compel the reader to go inside your magazine in order to find out more about your cover story. 5-Ad A Quality Sales Force: Do you have capable persons who can sell utilizing the “Unique Selling Proposition”, who can clearly make the case for your magazine about the “benefits of advertising” in it? Aim them at the biggest advertisers possible, as it takes as much effort to land the big guys as the local dry cleaner. At the same time, go after the ones that want to bring their product or services to the attention of your readership niche. This is another reason to define your exact niche. 6-Understand Your Costs: It is important for you to understand what a page dedicated to advertising will cost you. This must include those pages of pure content amortized over the advertising pages. It will include your cost to create the adverts, which you can either pass on to the customer as a design fee or have the advertiser supply you with an add to size and spec for your magazine printing requirements. Some knowledge of how to print a magazine will help here. Ask your magazine printer about economic paper stocks and press signatures so that you have your magazine printing costs under tight control. Example: For every 16 pages you have a press “signature”, so you do not, if you can help it want to break them up into 4, 8 or 12 pages beyond the initial signatures as they will cost you more money per page than any other signature when you print a magazine. 7-Be Interactive with Readers: Utilize polls, forums, request feedback, and even ask about what the reader would like to be reading about next. Better you should serve steak to a steak eater, than fish! 8-Develop An Online Presence: Having a well organized web presence can double as a place for more content, interactivity with your readers and you as well as an additional tool for your sales force to sell ads with by telling the advertiser that they will be present in not just the magazine printing but online as well. You can even benefit from an “ePublication” version of your magazine which you can post on your site. PBD offers one and it can be seen at http://bit.ly/yHtMSZ . You can also update your content with your live web presence, thus offering your readers more content and keeping their “eyeballs” in your direction.
HOW CAN I PROMOTE MY MAGAZINE
Social networking: LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter Targeted advertising: Based on the habits of consumers in your niche Sponsor local events: Run an event in your area that can draw in potential local advertisers Offer your magazine for free Develop corporate partnerships: Align your magazine with a local team, charity or organization Ask for endorsements
ADVERTISING IN YOUR MAGAZINE Narrow your area of distribution to keep your investment small. Stick with local companies when seeking advertising. If you have to give a couple of free ads away to start the ball rolling do so. Understand what your total per page cost is, so you know how many ads you will need to eventually break even as well as what to charge. Allow the local shop owners to include a discount coupon so that people not only have an additional reason to acquire a copy, but the advertiser will also be able to see and tabulate his return on investment in your magazine. If you are printing magazines, also be sure to have an online version so that the advertiser gets a double bang for his buck. Create a dummy issue so you can present a visual to potential advertisers. Write articles that relate to advertisers you are looking to attract. Here are some links that you will find useful and as referred to above. http://www.zinepal.com/ http://www.tabbloid.com/ http://www.pbdink.com/cd.html http://www.pbdink.com/magazine_printing.html
Conundrum: Should I Utilize A Catalog or a Magazine Format To Promote My Products? This is an interesting question, sort of like Godzilla vs. Rodan, who fought each other in those black and white Japanese films from the sixties. It almost sounds like minutia when you first think of it. In fact, who would really think about it? Well, it just may be something to look at as each offer a different perspective as to how to display your wares. Let’s take a look and compare the advantages of each. Magazine Printing: Magazine printing is great for a company that does not have many products and has the ability to write interesting copy rather than just brief item descriptions. If one has a large amount of products than it would crowd the typical magazine look. The advantages of using a magazine format for your product line are as follows: 1-It is more personal, as it allows you to “tell a story”, and involve the reader, thus better promoting your brand. 2-The articles you write can be more in depth, discussing the many benefits of your product and the finer details of them, including stories about the usage of your products. 3-If well done, customers or potential ones, may look forward to receiving your next issue as you are offering something of value beyond just a listing of your items. 4-The format may allow you to offer advertising space with non competing companies or if you wholesale your product to retailers, adding adverts for them. 5-Magazine printing is more of a unique concept than the standard catalog and will set you and your brand apart from others. Catalog Printing: Companies who print catalogs tend to have a wide array of products and thus require more space than the conventional magazine may allow. Generally speaking the catalog owner will need all of the space possible to display product and pricing thus little space is left for editorializing. The advantages of catalog printing are as follows: 1-Catalog printing allows for the display of a wide array of products, price lists and detail. 2-With a catalog style, one would typically have an index to sections and product styles that you may not in a magazine format. 3-Where cost is a factor, your investment will be less if you are not utilizing as much print area on articles and editorializing than you would in a magazine format. 4-While magazine content may tend to be dated, catalog printing is “built to last” and be thumbed through on hopefully a regular basis and the only thing that may or may not date it is pricing of the items. Which is best for your brand, catalogs or magazines? I will leave the answer to that up to you. However, whichever one you choose, we hope that you will choose PBD to be your magazine or catalog printing company.
WHAT REALLY IS DIGITITAL PRINTING AND HOW DOES IT BENEFIT ME? I often get the question, “do you offer digital printing?” The question usually comes from people who do not truly understand the meaning of the term “digital printing” and thus everyone has a different interpretation of it, and as a result using their “unique interpretation” for digital printing are assuming by requesting digital, that it will fill some specific requirement that they have. So, let’s take a look at what digital printing really is. The answer to this question is that it is in reality several forms of printing and not just one. The general assumption of most people who ask “do you do digital printing” is that it is file to paper and in many cases that is not true, as the wider use of the term implies. Let’s then talk about all of the forms of “digital printing”. Most presses today are "so called" digital and that encompasses a wide area of printing. Our L.A. facility has "digital" web presses. Our Docutech Facility has “digital direct to paper” presses. Thus, how do they all differ is the real question as well as how the consumer can take advantage of each type of press based upon their requirements, time schedule and budget. The existing technology is as follows: 1-Ink Jet Printing – This method encompasses anything from your desk top inkjet printer, through the standard roll fed inkjet printers as used in most copy shops and the higher end Giclee printers with higher line screens and fine art papers. The ink is sent directly to the paper from a digital file by propelling droplets of ink onto the paper. 2-Laser Printing – This technology is based on using toner and not ink. It uses a dry photocopying format that actually goes back to the late 30’s and perfected by Xerox with the Docutech and iGen for color. This is the same technology that is in your desktop laser printer for your computer and with the iGen or the Canon or other equivalents the color versions can successfully print on gloss paper as well as uncoated stocks. The Docutech does not print well on gloss coated paper. One thing these presses cannot do well is print on any paper that is not smooth and that has ridges. The problem with papers such as linen, felt, wove or other non smooth surface is that the toner does not lay down well. You would spend more money on wasted paper and man hours experimenting to find one that works, that it would be cheaper to print on offset. 3-Indigo Printing - This technology, which is now a bit dated due to cost of operation, can use many forms of paper, but still limited by only paper that is processed with a special coating which allows the inks to adhere. This process is similar to offset in that the ink transfers from plate to blanket to paper and can even use many Panton colors and Fluorescents. Generally speaking, for standard commercial printing this is not a cost effective solution and lends itself more to prototypes for ad agencies, and the like. 4-Offset Digital Printing – With either web or sheet fed offset presses, the use of the term “digital printing”, while in standard usage, is not totally appropriate, if you compare it to the full digital technology of file to paper of the above technologies, but rather the burning of the plates directly from the digital RIP (processed digital file) to the printing plates, without the use of film. The advantage here is that film was an intermediary process, set between your file and the plates. When the file was used to create film, and then the film was utilized to burn the plates, you many times had uneven surfaces created by the film, so that when the plates were burned sometimes the registration of the four CMYK c olors was not perfect. Thus when setting up the press, you required the pressman to manipulate the plates in order to make up for this deficiency. When this process was not working well you would see dots of one color peeping out from another color, or white lines around an image or box in the printed piece. With “digital direct to plate” printing, there was no film to warp and registration became almost a non issue on a well maintained printing press. Hopefully, this will allow you to understand that the term “digital printing” is a generic one, without a specific definition
that will be of benefit to you and that you need to consider which of the forms of “digital printing� best suit your needs. Fo r long run magazine or catalog printing, your only bet is the web offset press. For short run book printing, you would be best served with the Docutech and iGen for color printing and for that high end prototype, if your need and budget allow, then the Indigo is for you.
Calendar Printing As an Effective Marketing Tool
You can benefit by printing calendars as a promotional tool for your business as by doing so you not only can get your message out about your products and services but do so in a way that lasts all year, while only investing in the production of the calendar once. If you want to promote your business and aim it on an upward growth pattern, then as all business must, promotion and advertising is a business necessity. What can separate your message from your competitors is if you do it in style and with a twist, your business message cuts through the crowd. In addition, it is a nice way of staying in touch with your customer base as well as using calendar printing as a tool to attract new customers with. Promotional Calendars are a proven and cost effective way to market your business throughout the year. It is a fabulous image booster and most people look at it as if it were a gift rather than a promotion thus differentiating it from a brochure or other standard printed piece. Calendar printing is a classy way to present your message and your brand. One recent independent survey portrayed the usefulness of a business gift and an important to your business as it is a functional printed message. It is a good idea to choose great photos for any calendar printing venture as it becomes a reason beyond the functional one of seeing the date for the viewer to appreciate it. The better the images, the longer the eyeballs of those you want glued to it will be there. Make sure to target your exact demographics with the photos you choose. With calendar printing there is limited room for your message, think clearly how you can keep your message concise and on point. Don’t forget to include a “call to action”, such as “contact us now” within your copy. You can even have little promotional messages on many if not all of the dates. When calendar printing, stay conventional on the specifications in order to maximize your investment and keep your costs down. A standard and cost efficient calendar size is 8.5 x 11” opening to 17 x 11” and easily fits into a standard booklet envelope for mailing. The standard page count is 28, which allows for 12 monthly grids, 12 images and a four page cover. A “self cover”, where all the paper is on the same stock is the most cost effective way to print calendars and is less money than if a heavier stock for a cover is used. 100# gloss book is the standard paper stock used and anything thinner will rip through when hung on a nail or hook. Some quick points on the benefits from calendar printing: 12345678910-
A great promotional tool for your products or services. Your products or services are in front of your prospects all year long. Impress your customers with a “virtual business brochure” with a new twist. Increase your brand visibility. Your brand is promoted not just monthly but daily. If you are an organization, calendar printing is a great fund raising idea. Calendar printing is cost effective, with only a once annual investment. People like the idea of receiving a gift and calendars are welcomed and can be presented as such. Use great photos that target the demographics of your customer. Use concise and to the point copy.
I Want To Create A Calendar To Promote My Business, But I Don’t Know How! It is not that difficult to create a business calendar in order to avail yourself of an additional tool to promote your business and a tool that also has a side benefit of creating good will when you send it to your customer base. Everyone needs a calendar, so why not send them yours? Let’s look at the very first steps in order to easily organize all of the ingredients to create a calendar for your business. Th e basic ingredients of the calendar printing stew are as follows: Images: There are plenty of royalty free stock images to be had by downloading from internet sites. One just has to “Google” “free high resolution images” and you will come up with many, some free and some for mere pittance. The key phrase is HIGH RESOLUTION and this means 300 dpi at the size you need in order to create your calendar. More than likely they will be in RGB, meaning Red, Green, Blue which is the color system for your screen, printer, television, iPod, but not for commercial calendar printing. Your calendar printer may be able to accept RGB images, but they will need to be converted in the RIP process at pre press by default, where you no longer have the ability to color correct the images as needed or preferred on your own. Needless to say, choose images that promote your product or service and ideally ones that folks would find attractive enough to hang on their wall. Calendar Grid: If you possess Adobe InDesign, then they have a wonderful “paint by numbers” “calendar wizard” where you can create your own grid. Another is to use Microsoft Excel, but don’t forget to save it as a high resolution PDF, as most commercial calendar printing companies will not want to accept Excel files. Also as with anything Microsoft, you risk the shifting of images or copy as their programs are not of the stable quality needed for commercial printing. Plan Your Calendar Months: If the year is already well into its start, you either can plan for a calendar for the new year or do a 36 moth or partial year calendar, while giving yourself enough leeway in timing in order to plan, create and print your calendar. With calendar printing timing is important, as calendars are a functional item. Build It to Last: Make sure you utilize the correct paper weights when calendar printing. The industry standard for a one year calendar is 28 pages. This includes two pages for each month of the year, one image page and one grid for the month, plus a cover page. The most cost effective calendar printing is utilizing all of the same paper, which would be 100# gloss book/text and not any thinner because in order for the calendar not to rip through the nail it hangs on, that is the minimum paper weight you can safely use. If you want a heavier cover weight paper, then it is just fine to drop the inside text stock to a lesser weight. Add Important Dates: Don’t forget to add all of the holiday dates to the calendar grid you are constructing. If you use Outlook for email or similar programs, there is a built in calendar with all of the important holidays listed. If you are creating a calendar for a particular group or organization, add the relevant dates for them. Also, if you are selling a product or a service add relevant dates, such as a monthly sale, etc. to your calendar grid, as it is a great way to promote the sale or company event. A quality made calendar with good functionality and great visual impact can be a great marketing piece for yourself, your company or your organization. If you take the time to create one of quality, you will be rewarded by the success it affords you.
Catalogs, Brochures And The USP
There is more to creating great catalogs and brochures then just wonderful pictures and descriptions. First of all, ask yourself what should be quite obvious; what is the purpose of my producing a catalog or brochure? The answer will come to you in a second; to sell your product or services! Therefore what are the tools you need to best sell them? You will need great photos, accurate descriptions and COMPELLING COPY. In most cases, people tend to focus on the images and descriptions in their catalogs and brochures, but neglect to add compelling copy. Most likely this is because they are experts in the production of their products and or services, but not in the language of sales. So where does this leave the creator? It leaves you with only two thirds of the job done in order to get your message across to your intended purchaser. We can produce a wonderful printing job of your catalog or brochure, but what do you then have: A fabulous picture book? Is that enough? No, it is not! What is the U.S.P.? It stands for the Unique Selling Proposition, which is a marketing concept that describes how you should portray your product or service as a unique one that can benefit the purchaser of it. Some early examples of uniqueness were Wonder Bread: "Wonder Bread Helps Build Strong Bodies 12 Ways" and FedEx: "When your package absolutely, positively has to get there overnight". In addition to uniqueness, a good selling proposition must portray the benefits of the product of services to the customer. Today’s customer is not much interested in what you are “offering”, but how that which you offer, benefits them. The next catalog or brochure that you produce should incorporate well written copy that clearly defines the benefits to your customer. Examples of things that should be in your copy’s content are: • • • • •
“What makes our product/service unique? (Provide the answers to that question in clear and concise terms). “You will benefit by utilizing our widget in the following 5 ways”. (Go on to itemize them). “We guarantee our product fully” (more than likely you already do this, so portray it in your copy). “Why do business with us?” (Ask questions and provide detailed answers with the benefits to the customer). Free Offer: Everybody likes something for free. Offer a minor product or service should people choose to do business with you.
These are just a few of the things that will help you write well written copy of sales that can portray the benefits and uniqueness of your product or service. It will help explain why people should choose you to do business with and not your competitor. It will also put your product or service in its most favorable light. The next time you consider creating a catalog or brochure for your business, remember, that just because some guy in China a thousand or so years ago stated “a picture is worth a thousand words”, that times have changed. A compelling description about your product or service, what makes it unique, and how people will benefit from having it may be worth more than the picture. In any event, you can have your cake and eat it to, if you use quality doses of both. We hope the next time you require a printed catalog or brochure for your business you will think of us and our unique services, which not only include the best quality commercial printing of catalogs and brochures at the right price, but you can also benefit from using one of our excellent copywriters who truly understand today’s language of sales.
Display It Out Loud, I Rock N I’m Proud! The Art of Presentation Pardon my play on words using the James Brown title, but as I wanted your attention for my presentation, what better way to do so in order to discuss the value of using the “presentation folder” to present your printed message with? The presentation folder makes a bolder statement about your materials when presented inside of one. It not only shows quality, but that you deeply care about your message and the products or services that you have to offer. Let’s look at some of the uses, styles and benefits of presentation folders: 1- They do not age: if you leave your contact information off of the folder itself and in its place have your business card inserted to the die cut slits on the folder pocket, your folder supply can last a very long time, allowing you to print them in higher volume, so as to benefit by far better unit cost per folder. 2- Creates a great display: Your company flyers, brochures, catalogs can all fit in the pockets and can be organized for ease of use. 3- Folders come in many sizes and styles: The standard presentation folder is 9 x 12” with two 4” pockets, with usually the one on the right having the business card slits. The other pocket can also have a single slit about two thirds down, to accommodate a CD or DVD, without the added expense of a case or insert art for them. For “wider loads”, and those who “truck” more materials, folders can easily be constructed with three or even four panels, for that extra storage you may need. Additionally, if push comes to folder, there is also the “capacity” folder, where the pockets and spine are built extra deep, so more items can be inserted. Other standard sizes are 6 x 9” or 4 x 9”, or anything you can imagine. 4- Printing styles for folders: Ink on paper is standard, but you can also use foil, embossing or die cut designs to embellish yours. Embossing or de-bossing is the raising or lowering, by use of a die, the paper and may be “blind” or “registered” to the ink image. 5- The question arises: Do you print on one side or two? Many people do not realize that the presentation folder is constructed after the press sheet prints flat and that the pockets are part of the outside artwork (and printed upside down, so when they roll up, they are correct) and that just because the pockets print, that still does not mean that it is printing on the inside. However, one can, as a real nice look is a flood coat of ink on the inside for a nice rich contrast. 6- Interesting display of collateral materials: It is easy to re invent the wheel with pocket folders, as so long as the folder fits on the press sheet, you can adjust the layout. There is the side pocket rather than the one at bottom, and it can be 5” or 8” deep. It can die cut on a slant for a very interesting look. However you can create a great look very inexpensively simply by how you trim your inserts. By staggering the height of several inserts, with one being an inch or so lower than the one behind it, you can create inserts with different color banners, each standing up as if they were tabs in a book. 7- If your products or pricing changes frequently: Then presentation folder printing is perfect for you, as it not only serves as the perfect display for your printed materials, in a nice neat package to hand off to a customer, but it allows you to promote your brand and make the necessary changes to your product line by changing the inserts or flyers on a regular basis without changing the look or feel of your company presentation. I hope I have given you some ideas on how to best present your companies brand and materials and using a presentation folder to do so is a time honored and classy way.
The Seven Deadly Sins of Book Printing Being a printer we of course are getting files all of the time for the printing of books and while many are appropriate, quite a few are less than so. I will do my best here to list some of the pitfalls along with adding some help on the proper way to handle the situation so that your book printing comes out to the best of your expectations. Here are some, but not all, of the mistakes folks make with their book printing project. My intent here will be to cover printing issues and not publishing ones. 1-Amature Looking Cover: Just because you used Word to create your text by yourself, do not assume that a cover for your book printing project is OK also created in Word. First and foremost, you are a writer and more than likely not a graphic artist. Let a professional handle this part of the project. Also Word, unless you are a master with it will default the images to a non printable 72 dpi, which is just 5% of the pixels needed for high resolution printing. 2-Improper PDF File: While you may be able to get away with text created in Word and having done so quite well, the printing company will not accept your files. This is because Word is not a stable graphics program and things can shift in the flow of copy, even from computer to computer using the same version. This is why book printers will not accept Word as a printing file for books or anything else. You can easily resolve this creating a PDF file from the Word document. The two things I will tell you though when doing so are to be sure to uncheck the box that is the default setting for fonts. You want to load in your fonts in case the printer needs to make last minute changes on your behalf. The second issue is to watch out when using text or image boxes. The space they take up is large, unlike a graphics program and it may cover over text, which then will not print. Word does not export to a PDF, so you will need the Acrobat or similar program. 3-Non Efficient Book Size: Book printers set up the press utilizing signatures. A signature which can be anywhere from 16 to 64 pages, depending on page size and press and after “imposition” by the pre press department at the book printer’s, the pages are laid out in anything but a reader’s format. They are laid out so that once folded, they then fall into a reader’s order. Size does matter when printing books. It matters in that the more pages out of a single form and if an even amount of forms, the more efficient on the book printing press and thus your wallet. If you choose an oddball size, assuming the book printing company will even accept it, you will have a poor yield from the signature and a corresponding poor price for the job. The answer is size your book for the best yield and typically that is 5 3/8 x 8 3/8” for a standard soft cover or hard cover book. 4-Non Risky Layout: Make sure that you are not cramming in too much copy onto a page. It not only looks amateurish when copy runs up close to the edge, but you are taking a risk that it will get cut off during the book printing production. Allow at least 3/8” all around if on a web press, where most runs of 500 or more are done. This is because book printing presses tend to be the older printing presses and have more “jiggle” or movement of the roll and thus if any copy is too near the trim edge, you risk losing some of it when trimmed. 5-Bad Planning In Book Run Amount: While most books will not sell as much as the writer will hope for, if there is any chance of sales at all do not print less than you need. If you have a solid belief that you actually can sell 2,000 books and if your cash flow can allow for it, print 3,000 books. The reason for this is that a third of the cost of running a book printing press is start up and once running, these high speed presses make each additional thousand much more affordable than the first thousand. You never want to go back on the press in the same year for another run, if you can plan to print a bit more as the difference will astound you. 6-The Spine Is Too Thin: If the spine is too thin, or too fat for your book, then the dimensions for the entire cover are off and can wreck the overall look of the cover and possibly even render it non usable. The book printing company will have a chart that they can use in order to give your designer the spine width sizing based on your page count as well as the
paper the book is being printed on. It is also a good thing to not have drastically different art and colors moving from the front cover to spine to rear cover as if so and your spine is not sized correctly, color that belonged only on the front cover, will wind up on the spine. 7-Pay Extra, Coat the Cover: As you are making an investment in the printing of your book, you will want to do everything you can to protect your investment in your book printing venture. Therefore use a coating on the cover. Your book may wind up coming back as a returned item and it will be handled by the printer, yourself, a distributer, a retailer and a purchaser. The more it is handled the more wear and tear until it is no longer sellable. The best bang for the buck is UV coating, which in most instances it is put on via rollers. It is harder and more durable than Aqueous or varnish, yet not as expensive as film lamination, although it has the same appearance. 8-Bonus Item: Color Pages: If you require color pages among the black only ones, try and set up your book so that all the color falls between black only signatures and ideally all together in one signature of its own for the best book printing pricing possible. You can facilitate this by having an asterisk or numeral, which points to a footnote telling the reader where the color page may be found. Mixing in color with the black ink signatures is costly as a single full color page will cause you to pay for at least half that signature as a full color signature.
My Book Is Back From My Book Printer, But Now What? Part. 2 Now you switch hats moving from writer to promoter, or you at least tip your hat towards your left brain from your right. It is a very different thought process but can also be creative. There are several things you will need to set in motion: Distribution, Marketing, Press and Retail Outlets among others. Once again, it is time to use that same work ethic you used when you wrote the book. Therefore let’s look at some of the items you will need to tackle. DISTRIBUTION OF YOUR BOOK Companies like Amazon, Barnes and Noble and others are amenable to considering one’s book for distribution and they are capable of doing so worldwide. Others are wholesalers such as Baker & Taylor, Bertram and Ingram. However, you will not fare well without a sales team trying to push your book into the stores. Just because you have found distribution it does not mean you will be guaranteed store placement for your book printing. MARKETING YOUR BOOK http://www.pbdink.com/blog/ PERSONAL APPEARANCES If you are as well spoken with words as you are with the written word, then there is lots of free advertising out there for you which will allow you to sell your book many times in person at “the back of the room” at an event. Chambers of commerce, Churches, Synagogues and many organizations are always looking for non paid speakers for their events. You can call on them as yourself, or have a friend call as “your agent” and offer your services to speak on a topic that would interest them, and hopefully it is also what you have written about. If fiction, cull something from the plot or the characters that would have universal appeal. You could also speak about the writing of the book as well as the book itself. Believe it or not, it is relatively easy to get onto radio and TV, providing you do not mind the early morning time slots. Stations must offer public service time as part of their license to broadcast. You will find many insomniacs or early risers that are up at that time, so it is worthwhile spending time doing this. You can invite the listeners to visit your website to buy the book or come and hear you speak at an upcoming event, providing it is open to the public and not just for the organization that you would be speaking to.
GUERILLA MARKETING The term Guerrilla Marketing is now often used more loosely as a descriptor for non-traditional media, such as: Reverse Graffiti — clean pavement adverts Viral marketing — through social networks Presence marketing — marketing for being there Grassroots marketing — tapping into the collective efforts of brand enthusiasts Wild Posting Campaigns Alternative marketing Buzz marketing — word of mouth marketing Undercover marketing — subtle product placement Astroturfing — disguising company messaging as an authentic grassroots movement Experiential marketing — interaction with product Tissue-pack marketing — hand-to-hand marketing Live-in marketing — real life product placement - see related article or Hostival Connect Wait marketing — when and where consumers are waiting (such as medical offices and gas pumps) and receptive to communications ----Wikipedia PRESS FOR YOUR BOOK Once you print a book, you will not find reviews easy if at all, so you will need to become your own press person. Don’t be afraid to ask organizations or buyers to give you reviews and testimonials and you will soon have a bunch of reviews you can reprint (don’t forget also to get their written approval). You can also do your own press release, about the book and as time goes on about your appearances, shows, sales
etc. There are many eZine sites where you can submit articles about your book (http://ezines.nettop20.com/) as well as sites where you can publish press releases (http://www.prweb.com/) about your printed book and your marketing efforts. RETAIL OUTLETS FOR YOUR BOOK These are some of the larger ones, but you can also Google city by city to locate book stores, where after you print a book, you can contact the staff regarding stocking it, as well as any appearances for signings you may be able to set up.
Barnes & Noble Book Off USA Books-A-Million Books Inc. Deseret Book, also operates Seagull Book Follett's Half Price Books Hastings Entertainment Hudson Booksellers, chiefly located at airports and train stations Joseph-Beth Booksellers, also operates Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville and Memphis Powell's Books, which includes the world's largest independent new and used bookstore Schuler Books & Music Shakespeare and Company Printsasia ----Wikipedia
Real Estate Marketing Ideas: Are You Getting Your Message Out? Real Estate marketing is on top of the list in the business of selling property. Many agents tend to not pay enough attention to the materials they are creating and printing to market their homes and buildings. What is your marketing plan? How often are you getting your brand out there? How often should you be sending your message, either by brochure printing, postcard or magazine printing to potential buyers? Real estate printing can many times be costly, but there are ways to keep those costs low. You can successfully print brochures, postcards and more by doing so smartly and save lots of money. First let me enumerate the types of printed materials available to you: The tri fold brochure, which is a single sheet flyer, printed on both sides and folded in a third, another is the real estate magazine. There is the multi page brochure and of course the old stand by the postcard. The direct-mail postcard is a great promotional tool and an inexpensive one. You can even mail at discounted first class pre sort rates for less money than larger ones mailed at bulk rates. When done correctly, they can succinctly deliver your message and garner a great response. Some tips on keeping your costs down are: 1- Try and buy all of your printing needs at one time for greater discounts 2- Whenever you can other than trying to market for quick sales, print for the long haul. It is pennies to print more. 3- Most real estate agents work in an office with others. Ask your peers what their printing needs are and put them all together as one purchase. Some tips on creating your marketing piece: 1234567-
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Portray your success story. Get testimonials. Tell a story about a particular listing, especially if you can highlight a tough property you sold. Make your Information news worthy; add success tales, tips, industry news. Drive customers to your web site where they can see expanded information about you and your successes and all of your listings. Use quality photos. If you are not adept at writing with the Unique Selling Proposition, which speaks to the benefits one receives of dealing with you rather than “your offers�; it may be time to consider a copywriter for your brochure, postcard or magazine. Target your audience well, depicting reasons to contact you and the benefits of doing so that are aimed at those your direct mail piece is addressing. Stand out by using a thicker postcard, with rounded corners, an unusual size and UV coating which create a rich and less than usual look.
These are just some of the things for you to consider and I would be happy to hear from you regarding any of your questions.
The Benefits of Manual Printing There is something about a bound manual in your hand that reeks of the word “official” to your employees or trainees. Since you must hold it in your hand, and it may or may not require two hands, it becomes a stark place holder for one’s attention, not like online versions where the hopeful reader, can skip from the manual to Twitter, favorite game or other distractions from the work load. There are many times when a computer is not even available, such as a seminar or class and then the printed manual becomes all important. The key here is that it is easier to grab one’s attention with manual printing than with other means. Printing manuals for the executive is a wonderful way to have a “bible of info” readily at hand without having to boot up the computer, or take along a lap top in order to reference important bits of information to close a sale, or answer a client’s questions. Should you need to share your information in the manual with your customers, you can readily leave a copy with them. A bonus of printing manuals is that you in essence, are an author and thus an authority. People like to deal with “the authority” of the product or service. What better way than to appear as the authority you are, than to be printing manuals that you have written. Your manual can not only include relevant information about your products or services, but also easily house charts, images and relevant company contact information, articles, sales numbers, bios of the staff and more. Printing manuals can be accomplished in a wide variety of choices, including size, paper and color. The most cost effective form of manual printing for short runs is the digital Docutech, of which a custom full color cover can be added from the color equivalent. The Docutech offers direct print to paper from your disk and collates automatically for quick and inexpensive bindery options. Should you desire longer runs, then you can benefit from our high speed web printing for manuals as well. A professional bound and printed manual offers you a wonderful opportunity to show your business at its best. If your manual is meant to be for your employees, you can include your company policies and procedures along with a stipulation that it is a requirement of employment that all be familiar with its content. By doing so you lessen the risk of potential litigation due to an employee or member of management acting in any fashion that is less than what you deem appropriate for your company policy. For this reason alone, manual printing can be your lifeline to less business stress. Manual printing allows you to also deal with your employees in a more “arms length” as well as impartial basis. You can comfortably retort in any sticky issue to “refer to the manual”.
The Seven Deadly Sins (of Graphic Design for Commercial Printing) As a result of getting many files that “are not right” from designers that are for output in commercial printing, many times, more than I care to even think of, the files are poorly constructed. The designer looks at the files on screen thinks “nice job, I think I deserve a pat on the back”: Wrong, how about a slap upside the head? Well, I thought long and hard and with the help of some very cool and knowledgeable folks in the Communication Arts group I have composed my list of the Seven Deadly Sins of Commercial Printing. 1-Image Resizing In a Document Application Many designers, whether by laziness or lack of knowledge take an image that may be 6 x 9” and place it into a design box that is 3 x 2”. Now it is true that InDesign and other applications will allow you to resize the box or the image. But what occurs is that the dots get squeezed and there is not a real reduction in size. The image is then larger what is necessary and when you do this too many times in a document you wind up with a bloated file. The net result can be a document that is way too large for a given RIP to handle and then the RIP either crashes, which does not help one's timeline, especially in magazine printing with its deadlines, and will not make you any friends in the pre press department. It also can also cause the RIP to process the files using a rather unfriendly default, which can then change the image to 72 dpi, the default of some rips. The moral to the story is never size images, unless a very marginal amount for good fit, in the design application. Size them a few percent larger for good fit and no more using Photoshop. 2-Plan the Printing Job from the Bindery Back One of the best points I make to designers and clients is that you should plan your print job from the "last stop on the train". In other words, if you are printing a catalog or book, print it out and look at it. It may work on screen, but nothing beats the reality of holding the job in your hand and adjusting it from there. You would be surprised how many designers never proof their work this way. It does not matter if it will work on press, should it not work at bindery. In the final analysis it is still a mechanical thing. Some standard examples are the 6 page brochure, the “double gate folded” catalog cover. If you do not plan your panels to meet with a 1/8” gap, then they will fold with creases or balloon out. Another example is the “map fold”, where you must first “Z fold” and then “accordion fold” as well as being careful to use lighter weight paper, or you will be creating a balloon again. 3-Don’t Expect Exact Match on Colors for Reprints or From Proofs I tell my clients that from press to printing press NEVER expect to see the exact same thing from the same files. Even the most "exacting" ink system out there, the Pantone Matching System, tells you right on their color chart book not to expect that, due to the press mechanicals, the paper, etc. and to allow for a variance of a few percent so you will be happy.
4-Deliver Files with Appropriate Bleed Settings I hate to tell you how many "so called" high end designers do not deliver files with bleed and if they remember to set them in InDesign, they forget to make the PDF the right size to show them. Set your bleeds in the design application. If on a sheet fed press they should be 1/8” on all sides. If your file has a bleed on only one edge, but goes from the top to the bottom, that is NOT one bleed, but three. If on a web press, many prefer a ¼” bleed due to “press jiggle”, meaning the high speed of a web or its age or both will have such a variance that even with 1/8” for bleeds that may not suffice. The most common mistake is setting the bleed in the application but when exporting to the PDF, forgetting to enlarge the page to show the document bleeds. 5-Understand “Image Area” Not only does it look bad from a design standpoint, to have copy or non bled images bump up right near the page edge, but if you do so, you risk some of it getting cut off during the trimming of your magazine or book. Book printing presses especially tend to be older cold set webs and have more “jiggle” to them. 6-What Creep, Me? Have you considered what will happen to your brochure if it is a multi folded piece, such as a roll fold or double parallel fold, where the stock gets thicker and thicker at the fold line after each consecutive folding of the paper? This is called
“creep” and figuring out "creep" takes some math. On standard text stock, the average is to reduce each panel by 1/32” of an inch from the last folded panel going inwards and deducting that from each successive panel, but from the size of the prior panel not the first. This way if you plan for a 4” wide brochure, you don’t wind up with a 4.5” or so one after all of the folds. Back in my music business days, the concept was "we will fix it in the mix", and that was wrong then and wrong in printing as you must plan for what happens in the bindery and not just on your screen or press. 7-Image Issues The two biggest issues which are the cause of bad images are that they are presented as RGB or that they are low resolution. RGB is NOT a system that is used in the world of printing. It is used in photography and on your computer screen, which in most cases as, your screen is not accurate in the least. In the early days of pre press, prior to the RIP defaults becoming much better, just changing a file from RGB to CMYK would not only look awful on screen, with a chalk white caste to it, but similar on press. Nowadays, the default at the RIP, gives you something quite reasonable. HOWEVER, if you want total control of your color, don’t become a musician and assume it “can be fixed in the mix”, but fix it in the foundation by changing your images to CMYK and if color correction is needed do it in Photoshop. Otherwise “ya gets what ya gets” by default and “de fault” will be yours! The other issue is resolution. Hey let’s get some resolution here buddy! Just because something looks good on the screen in no way, in this life reflects how it will look on a commercial printing press. If your files are “low rez”, then your magazine or catalog will have images that look fuzzy and the best you can do in some cases is to ghost them back or make them much smaller. Here is the deal Neil! Your screen resolution is 72 dpi and print resolution for commercial “eye pleasing” printing is 300 dpi (art printing can go double that easily). So let’s do the math, please? The actual dpi is not just 72 for what you would be seeing as a “so called clear image” on your computer screen, but 72 x 72. Now if you use the x as a times factor, 72 x 72=5184 and thus a 72 dpi image contains 5184 dots per inch. Let’s try the same for images that are 300 dpi and the required amount of dots for commercial printing and thus 300 x 300=90,000 dpi. Wow you say what a difference? The fact is that the 72 dpi image has only 5% of the dots (information) of the 300 dpi image. This is the reason why low resolutions look so awful in commercial printing. Here is a trick to check your images, should you not have a quality postscript printer to output them to. As a rule of thumb, if you blow up your image on screen to 400% you will get an approximation (note the word here, as I did not state a totally accurate result) of how it will look once your commercial printer prints it. If you see pixels, hard edges and fuzziness, just know that it was not that drink you had at lunch. Your image is junk. 8-“Bonus Sin”-Spell Check Your Files and Last Minute Details This should be obvious, but you would be surprised. If you spell check your file using the application or even Word or your email program if you must, you will not be looking at your mistakes in a commercial printing company’s proofing mechanism. If you catch your errors then, you have just flushed money needlessly down the drain as you will be charged to re RIP and re proof your files. When you hand over your files for your poster, catalog, brochure, magazine or whatever, never add more there than necessary, as you may not only confuse your printing company, but may have just bought some pre press time outputting files that were not even part of your job. The same goes for records given to a direct mail company. You may need to keep records for email addresses, telephone numbers and the like, but this is not part of what goes into the addressing of your magazine or catalog before it is mailed. Needless to say, ALWAYS provide a “style sheet”, which is the road map to your files, telling the printer what is there, should be there and any last minute instructions.
Promote Your Business Twice Over With Our 2fer Sale Most businesses will and should promote their products or services with a catalog, magazine or brochure. Some even become expert authors and write a book about their expertise in their niche, as people like doing business with experts. Now, you can have twice the impact when you print with Printing by Design, as with any catalog, magazine, brochure or book printed with us, you will receive an online version of the same item at no additional cost to yourself. Here is what the online version looks like: http://www.pbdink.com/cd.html What can the online catalog or magazine do for me? It affords your readership an additional way to view your product or services and if you have advertising in your magazine, your sales force has an additional incentive in order to sell ads. What else does the online version do? It can have hyperlinks, unlike the printed version, to your website, email or anywhere else, provided you have added them in your print file. It can be downloaded to a CD for distribution and can be viewed on many hand held devices. Is it convenient to view and use? It is available anywhere at any time where someone has the ability to go online. It can be downloaded to your desktop or handheld device and is as appealing as the printed version of your catalog, magazine or book, with turning pages as if it were real paper. You can create an index for viewers to hyperlink to sections and it even allows each reader to create their own bookmarks. It allows you to increase your subscriber and or readership base to even larger and wider areas that may have been heretofore available to you. It additionally can increase your brand awareness by adding one more venue in front of your reader’s eyes. It also meets the ever growing demand for web based content. We look forward to the printing of your catalogs, brochures, books or magazines and increasing your reach with our digital online version of same, and at no additional cost to you. This offer is subject to a minimum print purchase of which can be viewed on our home page.