a place for zinesters - writers and readers

Low Cost Production?

I've used Office Depot to do two issues of my comics in zine format, each one had 10 standard pages folded in half, printed double sided, and a card stock cover. I got a better deal by buying my own ream of card stock and then having them use that. Making 100 issues of each zine, that came to 200 copies (I did the folding and stapling) for $214.

Is there a cheaper way of making them? Kinkos was too high priced. I looked at Eagle Printing on Brown Deer Road in Milwaukee for lower cost per page, but they weren't going to save me much. I'm just wondering if there's a place that can get things printed a tad cheaper. I don't need color, just black and white.

The overall quality on the 200 already done came out ok, I did sell 44 issues at an event, which totally made back the price of the print run (each zine came to $1.14 to make, I sold them for $5 each). But I wish they were a tad clearer, since they're photocopies of photocopies off the original drawings. I'm waffling over putting the next issue together from scanned cartoon strips on my computer and just taking a digital copy to the printer on the next one.

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Permalink Reply by Rick Bradford on January 6, 2010 at 1:42pm

Well, there's always the possibility of printing them at home with a laser printer if you have one or can make that initial investment. I'm not smart enough to do the math but it seems to me you can get a ton of pages printed out of those toner cartridges (of course, cartridge prices seem to vary between printer models).

There may even be a thread around here with a basic breakdown but I'm not sure...