How / where to print...

[Lee Taylor]

I'm not sure if anyone already posted anything about this but I was wondering how and where everyone else gets their zines printed / copied? At the moment I'm at Uni and thankfully have access to free photocopies by borrowing lecturers' copy cards mwah haha so I can do it pretty easily there, but I leave in about 7 months and I'm not sure how I'll do it from then on.

Does anyone print stuff from home on their own printer, or do people tend to get them done somewhere or go to places like libraries and use their photocopiers...?

Thanks :)

[Joseph Carlough]

I asked for a laser printer for my birthday last year, and got the canon mf1450d. It get's roughly 2000 pages printed per ink cartridge, and the refills are only about $50, putting me at 2.5 cents a page. can't be it, and it has a built in scanner, so I don't need anything else for cut and pastes. I really love the damned thing, it's made my zine production triple.

[Molly Ramdon]

for the life of me I cannot find the printer you're talking about ANYWHERE!!!

:( help!

Joseph Carlough said:

I asked for a laser printer for my birthday last year, and got the canon mf1450d. It get's roughly 2000 pages printed per ink cartridge, and the refills are only about $50, putting me at 2.5 cents a page. can't be it, and it has a built in scanner, so I don't need anything else for cut and pastes. I really love the damned thing, it's made my zine production triple.

[Nona Morris]

This might be a stupid question, but I'm so new to this I've never made anything other than a single page mini-zine....

I'm having trouble figuring out how to do double sided copies on my scanner/copier.  There's an office depot next door to where I work and I started wondering....

If I took my zine to some place like office depot, would they be willing/able to make copies from the original glued together pages?

[Elaine]

My local Kinkos checks to see that it's your work (if your name is on it they'll check your drivers license name against it) but usually a couple copies of double sided are not going to be flagged, they'll just do it.  They may have to hand scan stuff that's glued but not firm along the edges, so it won't rip apart with the automatic feed, but they can do it.

 

With my home copier I put a small pencil marked slash in the top right corner of the page feeding in. Based on where it is on the printed page, I can re-feed it through the printer to come out facing the right way with the back side.

[Nona Morris]

The pencil mark is a good idea.  I was trying to read the printers manual on how to do double sided copies, and it wasn't making any sense to me.  It seemed to take too many steps to get it done....

Elaine said:

With my home copier I put a small pencil marked slash in the top right corner of the page feeding in. Based on where it is on the printed page, I can re-feed it through the printer to come out facing the right way with the back side.

[Joseph Carlough]

Shoot! I'm so sorry, I didn't realize that almost a full year had gone by and I never replied. I mistyped - it's an mf4150d! A little laser printer can go a long way. Hum. But! Here's this:

I recently bought a Brother mcw-J6710DW (I checked the name online this time!) and it is a BEAUT. It's an inkjet. It was about $250, but prints black and white at about 1.6 cents each, and the color is very true (The color prints I think are around 7 cents a page, but if you only use a little color, it'll last forever). I've had the machine for 4 months now and I'm still on the sample inks. It can print 11 x 17 poster size (I may make a newspaper style zine soon), and is just a real beast. Put away $25 bucks or so from each paycheck or money-getting event. You'll have enough for something in no time! I recommend spending a day researching some good printers, it'll make everything a lot easier having a nice one. 

ALSO, you all may be interested, Staples is running a promotion, which allows you to bring in 10 ink cartridges a month and get $2 in Staples money for them. So I recently hit up my local thrift shop, bought old weird cartridges for $5, and Staples will give me $20 for them next month. Could make some of the copying a little easier.

Molly Ramdon said:

for the life of me I cannot find the printer you're talking about ANYWHERE!!!

:( help!

Joseph Carlough said:

I asked for a laser printer for my birthday last year, and got the canon mf1450d. It get's roughly 2000 pages printed per ink cartridge, and the refills are only about $50, putting me at 2.5 cents a page. can't be it, and it has a built in scanner, so I don't need anything else for cut and pastes. I really love the damned thing, it's made my zine production triple.

[enola dismay]

i don't put my zines on computers so they have never been through that kind of printer.  always photo copy machines.  and i always find a scam.  figuring out the administrative password to a photocopy machine is sometimes doable if you look up the manual online and try their default password.  i mean, if you're into stuff like that.  there are also honor system copy machine places that rely on larger desktop publishing jobs for income.  though the copies at those types of places are often really cheap anyway, like 3 cents a page.  it still adds up to me.  also sometimes i find out that i have friends with office jobs and access to free copies.  i've been doing a thick, often produced zine for over three years now and i have never paid much for copies.  maybe you know some other students at your school who will be there after you leave and they can help you?

[Vincent Berkey]

All of these cost about 150 bucks. Printed, folded, stapled and shipped to my door.

[Elaine]

I spent $214 to have 200 copies, ten pages printed double sided, with a card stock cover printed double sided (I bought the ream of card stock, it was cheaper that way).  I had to do the folding and stapling myself.  But it brought the cost down to 'reasonable' per issue.  They gave me a $20 discount on the volume of printing.  I used Office Depot.  They were cheaper than Kinkos or Office Max.

[Vincent Berkey]

I guess I should have elaborated a little more with my post.

That picture is 225 copies of a full size magazine at 8.5 X 11 and 28 pages. the whole thing cost $165 and some change. It's docucopies and they also always have online coupons with everything from 5 to 15 percent off.

I checked Moxicopy and it was almost double the price for that. I swear by docucopies. I'm working on issue 4 now and plan on going through them again.

[Rachel Rabble]

Shamless plug here, but I know the person who runs this press.  Cheaper than Kinkos, and more deserving of your money if you don't have a copy scam or want to do a longer run:

radixmedia.org

[Bucket Siler]

I'm lucky to have a local copy shop with good rates... 5 cents a side. I try not to support Office Depot, etc. although in the past I've been driven there due to a lack of other options. In my really lucky days, I had a friend with nighttime access to his office's photocopier... sigh.