Just some minor thread necromancy...
I went to Staples and found a couple things of note, particularly that rotary page trimmers look cool but, like the guillotine trimmers, they don't handle large numbers of pages well. The heavy duty ones can handle up to 30 pages at a time, though. They're also priced as if you were a company buying for the stock room instead of a poor comic artist.
Price to make digest comics yourself:
- Long reach stapler: $29.99
- Heavy duty rotory trimmer (12 inch, 30 pages, nice trimmer): $99.99
- 5000 standard Swingline staples: $1.75
- Brother HL1440 Laser printer: $179.98
- Toner (good for 3000 pages): $49.99
- USB2 cable: $29.98
- 2 year warrenty on the printer: $34.99
- Three reams of printer paper (500 pages): $3.89 x 3 = $11.67
- Two reams of card stock (150 pages): $4.89 x 2 = $9.78
- Tax: $28.57
- Total: $476.69
28 page comic = 14 prints + 1 cover (15 prints)
This comes to about 200 comics per toner cartridge and requires 3 reams of printer paper and 2 reams of cardstock, not to mention the hundreds of staples you pull out when you screw up.
Cost to you per comic = $2.38 (if you can manage to sell all 200 copies!)
If you sell them at $3.00 a copy, you break even after 159 sales. (ie, that laser printer paid for itself) The rest is profit.
Result: The quality of the printouts is very good but the toner doesn't stick to the cardstock well. It keeps coming off on my fingers when I fold the cover. Also, the cover is B&W when I would prefer color but the color would require another printer ($200) and photo ink ($15 x 6 for 220 pages). Also the printer makes the cardstock curl up. There might be an opening in the back that lets you feed it straight through, but when I did it, the printer was against a wall so I didn't bother to check.
.........................
Another method would to make copies at Staples:
- Long reach stapler: $29.99
- Heavy duty rotory trimmer (12 inch, 30 pages, nice trimmer): $99.99
- 5000 standard Swingline staples: $1.75
- Economy paper copies at Staples: $0.05 / copy x 2800 = $140.
- Cardstock copies at Staples: (don't actually know yet.): $0.10 / copy x 200 = $20
- Tax: 21.44
- Total: $313.17
Cost per comic: $1.57 if you manage to sell all 200.
If you sell the comics for $3.00 each, you break even after 104 sales.
If you only printed 100 comics:
Total: $225.41
Cost per comic: $2.25 and you break even after 75 sales.
The Brother HL1440 took between 15 and 30 minutes to print an entire comic because the poor printer wasn't designed for more than text documents. I intend to try out making copies using the laser printer proofs I made last night just to see where it takes me.
Cafepress : A Worthy Site or a Rip-off?
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4500364/I remember when it was okay to be a young boy and excited about Michael Jackson without it being creepy.
Michael Jackson wanted to star in a movie about a man who turns into a car that
Using the photocopier at work is having more allure all the time.faub wrote:Just some minor thread necromancy...
I went to Staples and found a couple things of note, particularly that rotary page trimmers look cool but, like the guillotine trimmers, they don't handle large numbers of pages well. The heavy duty ones can handle up to 30 pages at a time, though. They're also priced as if you were a company buying for the stock room instead of a poor comic artist.
Price to make digest comics yourself:
- Long reach stapler: $29.99
- Heavy duty rotory trimmer (12 inch, 30 pages, nice trimmer): $99.99
- 5000 standard Swingline staples: $1.75
- Brother HL1440 Laser printer: $179.98
- Toner (good for 3000 pages): $49.99
- USB2 cable: $29.98
- 2 year warrenty on the printer: $34.99
- Three reams of printer paper (500 pages): $3.89 x 3 = $11.67
- Two reams of card stock (150 pages): $4.89 x 2 = $9.78
- Tax: $28.57
- Total: $476.69
28 page comic = 14 prints + 1 cover (15 prints)
This comes to about 200 comics per toner cartridge and requires 3 reams of printer paper and 2 reams of cardstock, not to mention the hundreds of staples you pull out when you screw up.
Cost to you per comic = $2.38 (if you can manage to sell all 200 copies!)
If you sell them at $3.00 a copy, you break even after 159 sales. (ie, that laser printer paid for itself) The rest is profit.
Result: The quality of the printouts is very good but the toner doesn't stick to the cardstock well. It keeps coming off on my fingers when I fold the cover. Also, the cover is B&W when I would prefer color but the color would require another printer ($200) and photo ink ($15 x 6 for 220 pages). Also the printer makes the cardstock curl up. There might be an opening in the back that lets you feed it straight through, but when I did it, the printer was against a wall so I didn't bother to check.
.........................
Another method would to make copies at Staples:
- Long reach stapler: $29.99
- Heavy duty rotory trimmer (12 inch, 30 pages, nice trimmer): $99.99
- 5000 standard Swingline staples: $1.75
- Economy paper copies at Staples: $0.05 / copy x 2800 = $140.
- Cardstock copies at Staples: (don't actually know yet.): $0.10 / copy x 200 = $20
- Tax: 21.44
- Total: $313.17
Cost per comic: $1.57 if you manage to sell all 200.
If you sell the comics for $3.00 each, you break even after 104 sales.
If you only printed 100 comics:
Total: $225.41
Cost per comic: $2.25 and you break even after 75 sales.
The Brother HL1440 took between 15 and 30 minutes to print an entire comic because the poor printer wasn't designed for more than text documents. I intend to try out making copies using the laser printer proofs I made last night just to see where it takes me.
Warren
Comics. Drawn poorly.
------------------------------
It's grey, not gray. And it always has been.
Lauren's Wing - The fund for animal care
Comics. Drawn poorly.
------------------------------
It's grey, not gray. And it always has been.
Lauren's Wing - The fund for animal care
-
Faub
- The Establishment (Moderator)
- Posts: 3698
- Joined: Tue May 20, 2003 2:53 pm
- Location: Missouri, USA
- Contact:
Well, my little expedition to Staples was a bust. The copier sucked up one page and it caught on something so the copy was off center. Then it sucked up the next page and decided it didn't like where the story was going so now I have an accordian. Fortunately, the guy was nice and didn't make me pay for the copy I'd already made (yeah, a whole dime's worth). The quality really wasn't what I was hoping for, but then I am using a pencil instead of ink.
There's a $600 color laser printer that would do exactly what I'm looking for but the toner is $100 x 3 (color) + $150 (black) for 4000 copies so it would almost amount to buying a new printer every time I ran out of toner. Still, it would be so cool.
I shouldn't go to these places.
There's a $600 color laser printer that would do exactly what I'm looking for but the toner is $100 x 3 (color) + $150 (black) for 4000 copies so it would almost amount to buying a new printer every time I ran out of toner. Still, it would be so cool.
I shouldn't go to these places.
Okie wrote:http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4500364/I remember when it was okay to be a young boy and excited about Michael Jackson without it being creepy.
Michael Jackson wanted to star in a movie about a man who turns into a car that
