34 Cost-Cutting and Time-Saving Production Tips
3. But keep the end use in mind.
“[Print-on-demand] comes into play at Oxford,” says Weinstein, who stresses to his staff that their job is all about creating files that can be repurposed with ease, a way of thinking dictated by market necessities. “We are not creating a print product, we are creating files that can be used to create a 3,000-copy print run or held for POD or shifted to Web sites. It’s content creation.
“The delivery methods, the time-to-market being asked of everybody, has been changed and shortened,” he notes. “Customers want multiple deliveries at the same time, print and online simultaneously, especially in the educational market, and we’ve got to do it.”
4. Consolidate paper choices.
“The big buzzword in production over the last 10 to 15 years is consolidation, and that does apply to paper,” Weinstein says. “Right now, in fact, we are talking to printers about consolidating the number of papers we use.”
Weinstein notes that having one printer keep 12 different papers on hand for a publisher is now “a luxury that, because of cost and time to market, nobody can afford anymore. … So we’ll say, ‘OK, there are three or four that are relatively similar, let’s just print [with] one.’”
Weinstein adds that consolidating paper options is both a time- and cost-saving move, as it eliminates expensive special ordering of small amounts and ensures your printer has the right paper on hand when you need it.
5. Plan ahead for reprints.
“Publishers take various positions on reprints, whether they automatically downgrade the paper on the second printing, on the fourth printing, or not at all,” says Weinstein. “As you’re planning out what you want your printer to stock, that philosophy or decision of reprinting needs to be factored in, so that if you are going to downgrade your paper, you want them to stock not just the first print [stock], but the second.”
