🚀 go-pugleaf

>This touches on a good point.  Printers tend to be skeptical of "amateurs"
>who don't know what they're doing, and usually with good reason.  Printing
>involves a lot of detail, and one of the best things you can do to prepare
>yourself for publishing something yourself is to learn as much as you can
>about graphic arts and print production *before* you start.

Definitely. When I decided to switch OtherRealms to offset, I got
preliminary quotes from a number of printers, then when I chose one, 
I sat down with him and said "tell me exactly how you want this to look."

He did. I followed it. In the time I did offset, we only had one problem [he
used the wrong paper weight, and he ate the price difference] and that was
because he misread the job order. We never had a job that didn't go right
onto plates without a glitch and never needed rework.

Books are nice, but the printer is expert. Every shop handles things a
little differently, and the single best place to get the right information
is from the person who's going to be doing the job. Don't expect him to
teach you from scratch, but *do* use his expertise to help you figure out
how to get things ready. They should be *very* happy to show you a sample
job and spend 20 or 30 minutes going over how they want things, because
it'll save them hours (and you money and hassle and frustration) later. If
they aren't willing, you probably want another shop, especially as a
beginner.

>If you just hand them a pile of loose Lino output and say "Here--make a
>book out these", you'll end up being a "stupid customer story" :-).

The more work you do, the less the pre-press will cost.  Unless you do 100%
of the layout on-line (unlikely and probably not a good idea, especially if
you've got photos or other things that require good reproduction), you'll
want a waxer and to learn how to use it. Do your own paste-up, set up the
boards, get as much done as you can and you'll find things go very smoothly
with many fewers surprises.

-- 

Chuq Von Rospach   <+>   chuq@apple.com   <+>   [This is myself speaking]

When it comes to matters ourside your specialties, you are consistently and
brilliantly stupid [....] with respect to matters you haven't studied and
have had no experience basing your opinions on casual gossip [....] and
plain misinformation -- unsuspected because you haven't attempted to verify it.
	-- Robert Heinlein to J.W. Campbell, Jr. 1941