Where in NYC can I get a presentation book or photo book bound for cheap and ASAP?
December 15, 2010 6:22 PM   Subscribe

Where in NYC can I get photo books printed cheap and ASAP? Or any other quick ways of getting a nice-looking, bound book?

I'm a student who has to make a powerpoint presentation with her group tomorrow as well as submit a hard copy book of all our work done. The book is mostly comprised of our powerpoint slides (that has many many digital photos in it) , but also must include some Word documents. Our presentation is at 2pm so I must have 4-5 copies of this book in hand by then.

I got the bright idea of putting it all in a photo book, like the kind you can create at the pharmacy with a USB or CD of your pictures. Only thing is, I'm not finding many options to get the book printed within hours. Submitting these books later is not an option, because its really going to mess up our grade plus the judges (yes there are judges there that we have to wow!) need a book to look at. I really had no idea that it would take that long and anyways I literally just came up with the idea.

I was going to just make color photo copies at Kinko's, hole-punch everything and put it in a cheapo binder, buy plastic photo sleeves (the kinds that you would put in an old-school photo album that holds maybe 6 per side), develop our pictures and put the pictures in the sleeves. But that just doesn't seem nice enough.

I tried the following places:
CVS- I wanted to get the 8.5X11 double sided book starting at $19.99 but it is not available in my local store, nor any other stores within 20 miles.
Duane Reade- They also have 8.5X11 express photo book, but my local store-99 John St, does not offer it and the woman I spoke to on the phone said that she does not know which other stores offer the express 1-hr service. I tried calling 95 Wall Street since its a 24hr location but the photo department was closed and the guy had no idea if it was offered in their store or any other.
Target Atlantic Terminal- 2 sided, 20-page book for $29.99, but it can only fit 20 pages.
Walgreens- As far as I can tell from their website, I can only get it sent to me via mail. No good.

We have 28 slides so far (its still being edited though throughout the night so it could end up being more than that), about 40+ pictures, and at least 3 Word documents. That's 75+ pages (unless more than one or two pictures can be crammed in per page). So its looking pretty pricey at this point.

Where can I get photo books printed cheap and ASAP? Is doing the binder-with-plastic-sleeves-thing my only option at this point? Any other alternatives for binding these presentations that will look just as impressive and professional as these photo books? I can stay up all night to get this done and am willing to traverse to the outer boroughs with the exception of Staten Island, although I would prefer local options just due to time constraints. Open to local mom-and-pop, non-chain shops as long as they can get it done and well ASAP.

I apologize for the length but I really just want to do a GREAT job on this project so please help me out!
posted by lovelygirl to Grab Bag (6 answers total)
 
Kinkos seems to offer binding services- go there and get it bound with something a step up from wire or those plastic comb things?
posted by MadamM at 6:41 PM on December 15, 2010




Best answer: Seconding Kinko's. They have a few different options and can turn it around same day if you drop it off in the AM.

The best thing to do would be to print out the photos and supporting material you want in the book and just bring it in to them. Though you could always hand them a thumb drive of all the files and give them the discretion to get it all in there. But if you have specific needs I would do the former.
posted by Sara C. at 8:45 PM on December 15, 2010


Are you envisioning getting regular prints made of your pictures and sticking them onto the pages? Why not just have the photo images printed onto 8.5x11 photo paper (multiple per page if you like) and have Kinko's bind all your various documents together? I would suggest coil binding if you want it to lay flat when opened. The store may have stiff cover material for the front and back.

If you do want to stay with traditional prints, there's no reason Kinko's can't bind blank pages for you to stick pictures onto; this just seems unnecessarily laborious and awkward.
posted by lakeroon at 8:52 PM on December 15, 2010


Response by poster: I was hoping they could take my USB and print the pictures (and slides) from there onto photo paper. Oh I wasn't going to glue each physical print to the page, youre right that it would take forever! I don't have access to a color printer at home or at school, so I just have to print at Kinkos. Thanks everyone for the feedback so far!
posted by lovelygirl at 10:22 PM on December 15, 2010


Response by poster: Thanks for the answers! I did end up going with Kinko's and it looked great. Did well in the class too :)
posted by lovelygirl at 3:09 PM on April 1, 2011


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