Internet digital and offset printing services. What's good?

[marcfischer]

Hi all,

For a while now, when there isn't the budget to use a local printer that does the best work, I've been using two different places for that impersonal experience of uploading a PDF to a website, paying your moneys, and then waiting for UPS to bring you a box or five of printed stuff (hopefully without dropping it on its corner and dinging all of your prints or booklets). Temporary Services and Half Letter Press have used these places from time to time and I use them for Public Collectors sometimes too.

Docucopies: https://www.docucopies.com/
For cheap digital b/w and color copies and sometimes for booklets made the same way. Generally really good service, relatively fast, everything is packed well enough to not get destroyed, decent to work with if something looks bad and needs to be redone. Most of the time I'm happy with the results. Sometimes a little less so.

GotPrint: https://www.gotprint.com/home.html
For cheap offset booklets, flyers, postcards, stickers, etc. Quality is somewhat variable but mostly quite good, relatively fast (I never pay for rush service), but they often use crappy boxes that don't hold up if you don't catch UPS on their first delivery attempt, and even then the boxes still don't always hold up when you are having heavy booklets shipped. This leads to damaged booklets. I have had them partially redo/partially refund some orders with success. I've never counted how many booklets they actually give you with a booklet order but I find that for things like flyers you often get extras. For an order of 500 flyers, I seem to usually get about 535-550 flyers. Sometimes the number of extras is even greater. I often use these flyers as booklet covers for interior pages I print myself and these extras are a great bonus if you are hoping to up the print run of a project by just a little beyond the set numbers of things you can order from them.

I'd be curious to know who else people use. What's good? Who does consistently bad work? What's cheap and crappy but still fun to use? What's expensive and worth it? Who does weird stuff like unusual formats, special inks, etc. but still lets you upload a file simply and easily? Who requires that go through a more cumbersome upload process but still delivers the goods and is awesome?

Also, if there are people that have terrible terrible politics (like the ULINE of printing or something), it would be good to know that too.

[poiesthesis]

I'm pretty new to any printing that doesn't happen on my little black and white laser, or start its life with the burning of a screen, so I'll listen in on this thread as more of an observer. Though I was curious about a pattern I ran into while trying to find online printers for a run of books.

When I was going in blind, the search results were dominated by the print-on-demand heavyweights. Lulu, Blurb, and Ingram Spark, etc. As near as I can tell though, these all marry the printing process with distribution and publishing (targeting self-publishers), in some cases even retaining their own distribution rights to whatever you print through them. Unfortunately as far as the print run goes, I'm kind of right in their target audience (digital printing, ~100 copies), so their prices are coming in cheaper than I can find much elsewhere. I've printed a test book through Blurb (type sizes, line weights, spine allowance, color matching, etc.) and ordered this one through Lulu: Dear Lulu—but I'm reluctant to print through anyone POD until I figure out if we can just print through them and handle distribution ourselves.

I've been reaching out to local printers to get quotes, and that's probably the route I'll end up going (it's looking like I might get the innards printed somewhere, DIY the covers, and get the whole thing bound at a bindery). Thanks for those two names, I got a quote from DocuCopy, and they're hanging out as a comfortable plan B.

As far as adding someone to the list: a few years ago I needed to make just a few copies of something (farewell book of letters for a departing mentor from their students), and found a printer called Edition One. They're way on the far end of the fancy-fancy spectrum, but their whole thing is doing short, edition runs, with lots of customization options built into their standard pricing (linen covers, foil stamping, vellum inserts, french flaps, screenprinting, etc.). I can't vouch for them directly (they were way out of my budget—I ended up hand printing and binding), but I hadn't really found any other company like that, so I thought I'd toss it out there in case it fits the bill for anyone else here.

I'll be following this thread to see what other people chime in with.

[marcfischer]

poiesthesis,

Thanks so much for all of this. Edition One's website is extra handy for trying to get a sense of pricing for fancier options.

Temporary Services / Half Letter Press / Public Collectors have been using a bindery in Chicago called Union Bindery / Instant Collating, who are great for staple-binding (they also do perfect and comb-binding) when we are providing our own pages that we don't want to assemble ourselves. Their pricing makes the most sense for runs of about 500 copies but they will do smaller runs (it just winds up being a good bit more expensive per publication because of the set up costs). This is their contact info: http://www.icsubb.com/. I know people send them jobs from out of town.

[paulshortt]

Hi All,

I've found Uprinting and Got Print to be more reliable then other online digital printers. Uprinting will also do a 8.5 x 5.5 book in Landscape format, which most of the other online printers don’t do. I’ve also used both for flyers in the past and found them to be reliable.

As Marc mentioned, usually with these printers they will reprint if the error is theirs or give you a credit. I’ve found that this has helped offset costs.

I would avoid Overnight Prints. Their quality has consistently gone down hill.

I’ve learned the hard way about making sure your photos are CMYK, and I would suggest spending more on the cover or paper quality, over having a higher number of prints. When I do use these printers now, I typically do low print runs of 100-200.

Paul

[marcfischer]

Paul,
Thanks for the info about https://www.uprinting.com/. Their prices are competitive with Gotprint.com and they do a number of formats that Gotprint doesn't do. If you had to pick one or the other, who do you think does better work?

My big annoyance with Gotprint is when they use cheap shipping boxes that result in booklets with dinged corners. Does Uprinting splurge for stronger boxes? With Gotprint, it's mainly an issue for heavy boxes of booklets, not flyers which always seem to arrive in good shape.

[paulshortt]

Hi Marc,

Sadly, the shipping is probably about the same quality as Got Print. I've had a few books with color printing that have scratches from moving around in the box (I got a credit for them, and I just used those as the books I give away). I'm having the cover of both my two new books printed at Uprinting soon, but I'm choosing the 10pt. Brochure option for those, but like you said, the flyers usually arrive without dinged corners. Quality wise, I think they are about the same.

My sense is that all of these digital printers see their products as promotional items, that are ephemeral/future trash.

[marcfischer]

Tonight I was reminded of this printer who a number of people use for photo booklets. They offer a lot of non-standard options and seem to be good for smaller runs like 100 copies.

https://smartpress.com

Has anyone used them? The stuff I've seen looks pretty nice.

[Nathan Pearce]

Hey Marc,
I have used Smartpress often. Several of the publications you have from me have been printed by them.
I'm always impressed by the quality and the prices are good.

My publications typically include a lot of my photographs, some color but mostly black & white.
Photos can be tricky to print, but I have been very happy, even with more difficult to print images.

[marcfischer]

Thanks @Nathan Pearce

I'll have to review my significant collection of your stuff again. I have an all photo-based Public Collectors booklet in the works and this is a good reminder that they might be a nice option.

[marcfischer]

There's an exciting development with Gotprint.com. My biggest complaint with them has always been that they use crappy shipping boxes and there's a real chance that if you are having heavy boxes of booklets shipped to you, at least some of them are going to get dinged on the corners by UPS, even if you are home for the first delivery attempt. I've had them partially redo a job and I've gotten a partial refund on a job because of excessive corner damage.

Just recently I had them print 1,000 6"X9" 40 page booklets and I was extra nervous because the last time they ran this job was when the most booklets arrived damaged. To my delight, they stopped using UPS and everything was delivered in a much smaller truck by a company called Parcex. I was there for the first delivery attempt and helped the driver with everything because I was so happy that the 5 boxes appeared to be pristine and hadn't been knocked around. Also, you can track your delivery online with Parcex and the tracking keeps updating throughout the day and was really precise. The time changed a few times but I was ultimately able to plan my day around it.

I just had Gotprint run a smaller job (just 500 cardstock flyers for a booklet cover) and once again the delivery was handled by Parcex. The driver was running later than originally planned and I couldn't be home so I called to talk to someone about leaving the package in a covered area in the back of my house. In talking to the dispatch person, I learned that Gotprint actually OWNS Parcex! I'm not sure if they are using them for every delivery or just ones in certain regions (I'm in Chicago) but in both cases since they began working with Parcex, my stuff has arrived undamaged. This makes me feel much better about using them and recommending them to others.