Newspaper printing

May 15, 2007 3:14 AM

Who is the cheapest small-run newspaper printer in the UK?

OK, so I want to print a newspaper - 20 pages, tabloid-size, 2,000 copies, don't care in the least about colour or ink/paper quality or anything like that. The only thing I really need is a decently fast turnaround time (few days at the most) and reasonably quick delivery to London. Know anyone good? The cheapest quote I've got so far is about £500.

posted by reklaw to media & arts (4 comments total)

£500 is a pretty damn good quote for that! Any cheaper and you'll be getting a nice drawing of your newspaper made by a six year old, on taped-together bits of loo roll.
posted by bonaldi at 6:25 AM on May 15, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Thought that might be the case...
posted by reklaw at 7:38 AM on May 15, 2007

ring around some more printers at 5-5.30pm, or v. early in the morning, and offer cash for a cheaper price.

newsprint is typically printed using a web process (see picture). you could get lucky and someone at the printers you ring may run off your paper at night, pocketing the cash for themselves.

remember that these kind of printers will be working at around 8% margin, and most of the price is for the 40,000
sheets you require (assuming you mean 20pp)

alternatively, a lot of community magazines or papers are printed by local outreach / employement projects, they'd welcome that sort of work.

bonaldi's idea has a certain charm though...
posted by snailer at 3:18 PM on May 15, 2007

Newsfax in E15. They print the Herald Tribune and Daily Awaz but handled a student newspaper just fine.

Warning: "real" printers are necessarily extremely ruthless about press scheduling. If you miss your slot you'll have to start all over again. On the plus side they used to take film we used a local bureau to generate for about a tenner per page (if a printer generates their own film it'll probably cost you more than doing it yourself). That said, they probably just generate plates right off PDFs these days.
posted by genghis at 4:26 PM on May 16, 2007