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How to cut cost in book printing

How to cut cost is a common concern of all presswork operators who shall be proficient in the knowledge of plate-making and printing technology, printing cost standard, paper specification and function, and production capacity of printing house. In order to reduce cost, they shall rationally arrange the selection of technologies and paper materials according to the capacity of printing house during practical printing work. Every book needs an overall design made by the designer who shall accomplish his work with considerations of content, property, amount of pictures and words, and readers. Cost is an important element in competition. We now take a look at how to reduce cost in the light of pre-printing design.

1．Paper Format

Inappropriate selection of paper format would increase rim charge and decrease the applicable area of paper. Books with lots of short rows, such as poetry, adopts 32-mo，whose fore-edge and gutter have much margin. Using long narrow 36-mo could reduce paper consumption. If the format is too small, folding number and glazed material consumption would be high. In order to make printing easier and cut cost, it is recommended not to use irregular format.

2. Paper Material

Paper material accounts a lot in the book cost, usually more than 40%. Select paper material rationally is an important way to reduce cost. For normal books, such as file collection, learning stuff, art and literature books, the paper-cover-binding only needs to use 52g/m2(called 52g hereinafter) intaglio paper, while the rich binding could use 60g or 70g offset paper. Music and children’s books in black and white could use 60g paper, and in multi-color could use 80g offset paper. Textbook usually adopts 49~60g relief paper; tool book in paper-cover uses 52g relief paper, while in rich binding uses 40g bible paper. General technical standard book could use 80~120g offset paper. Pictures and album of paintings usually use 80~120g offset paper or 100~128g copper plate paper according to the fineness, selected offset paper or copper plate paper of the sheet size and gram weight. New-year picture and poster usually use 50~80g single-sided offset paper. Strip uses 52~50g relief paper. High-grade fine-art mini-picture uses 256g cellophane. Magazines usually use 52~80g paper, while black and white ones adopt 60g writing paper or offset paper, and color ones adopt 80g duplex paper. Cover, interleaf and flyleaf of books and magazines: cover of books less than 200 pages usually uses 100~150g paper, above 200 pages usually uses 120~180g paper; interleaf uses 80g~150g paper; flyleaf uses 80~150g paper according to the thickness of books. For the same kind of paper, heavier weight means higher cost. Weight increase of text paper would lead to thickness increase of spine. Sometimes, weight and format of cover paper shall be adjusted, which would influence many aspects and finally increase cost of paper. Rational selection of paper material does not mean do shoddy work. Using normal paper to print fine screen plate would cause the page fuzz and lead to invalidity. Normal readings can use newsprint paper, but books need to be preserved for a long time must not use newsprint paper, for it is easy to weather.