What steps have you guys taken to reduce your paper costs while still “looking good?” At Folio, we switched from 60# Somerset to 60# Liberty gloss because it saved us $2,500 annually across three magazines: Folio, Event Marketer and Event Design.
I can tell a minor difference in the feel but I think the “look” of the magazine hasn’t really changed. We’re also looking at reducing trim size of our titles by 1/4”. If we do this with Folio, we’ll save about $7,500 annually on paper.
We switched from a 70# Opus to a 70# Somerset last year, and saved about $10,000/yr. We're restricted in going much further because of the need to maintain high standards of photo reproduction. As a result, we've had to slightly reduce our page count this year.
A few thoughts that require candid discussions with your printer(s)...
1.) Make sure you're maximizing the largest trim-size as relative to the press-cutoff that you're printing on.
2.) New press technologies require less make-ready, and thus less paper to make-ready, and...
3.) Presses that print larger sigs, require less make-ready time (thus paper) per page
4.) If you're printer is a big paper buyer, they can leverage better paper deals (they buy paper like stock-brokers buy shares...buy low!)
5.) If you're printer buys the paper, then you save money in "time-value of money". If you buy the paper, you're billed by a merchant immediately. If your printer buys your paper, then you don't get billed until after the job prints, so your cash collects interest in the bank longer.
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