So what’s up with the “high numbers of low count jobs” market niche? Is the production process nowadays not optimized for doing such jobs at a low cost?
Until you understand how completely and utterly wrong that is, I can’t think of anything anyone can say to you that will make you understand anything related to economics.
those who are unfamiliar with basic principles of microeconomics in regards to the zeroing out of economic profits in highly competitive industries Perfect competition - Wikipedia and instead are highly familiar with cultural Marxism lies should go waste thread space in the pit. I don’t throw … stuff in your threads, so do me a favor of not throwing it in mine.
ETA: Gary “Wombat” Robson, you are the moderator here. Why do you tolerate the open pitting of a reasoned discussion I am holding here with those who are actually interested in having such a discussion with me?
It’s no different than any other manufacturing process. As mentioned before, jobs have setup costs. The way you offset (NPI) that cost is volume.
“Low cost” is relative. There are “hobbyist” printers that run equipment out of their garage. If you can find them, you can get relatively low pricing for short run work, if you do it on their terms (i.e. fit the format of their equipment and their schedule.)
If you find that you can only sell your product for “production cost plus small markup”, then that is what the market will bear. As long as you continue to post factually incorrect information in this forum, people are going to correct you.
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Because you haven’t responded to my email and you have PMs turned off.
You have started a seemingly unending stream of threads in GQ, and when people try to give you reasoned answers, you argue with them rather vehemently. Your fellow Dopers are complaining to the staff about your behavior, and I’ve been trying to contact you quietly off-board instead of issuing a public warning, but I’m growing impatient.
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I have now enabled PM. I will point out that you are the first moderator in my experience so far at SDMB who has openly joined in pitting me in my own thread rather than curtailing such impolite activities by other posters. E.g. see this example http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13850911&postcount=8
Another thing to notice is that RaftPeople seems to be openly stalking me, going from thread to thread adding non-constructive comments. I suspect that John Mace is doing the same thing, or at least starting to do so.
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I have not “pitted” you, code_grey. I said, “I strongly recommend that you do at least some modicum of research before asking piles of highly-detailed questions and then arguing with the answers.” I neglected to say it with moderator hat on, but the recommendation still stands.
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If you can provide evidence to support those accusations, I will act on them.
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a market which “bears” a price far above one that is predicted by “efficient market” situation is not an “efficient” market by definition. Which means that I can proceed discussing the question of whether small job on-demand print industry is an efficient market one or else why is it not so. Needless to say, I expect my interlocutors to be people interested in having such a discussion rather than interested in stalking me with aggro for no reason.
Nobody - except you - said anything about “efficient”, but neither does an efficient market entail “production cost plus small markup” - if you can even really quantify “production cost”.
As an example, I’m a self-employed software engineer. I like to think of myself as a pretty experienced and well-rounded software engineer. How much do you think I should ask for a day’s work, and how does that relate to “production cost”?
I am self-employed programmer too 
Nevertheless, that’s not the topic of this thread. We are discussing what apparently is a highly automated, capital-intensive industry. It is unclear so far from this thread what role if any do technicians even have and how much a factor is their salary. It seems, so far from the explanations given, that the cost is entirely a matter of cost of materials and of costs of running machines. Such costs are not hard to quantify, and they will add up to a “production cost”.
I will also note that I have not yet gotten an answer to the question asked in post http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13857717&postcount=7 as to whether adjustments are needed to finishing equipment between jobs. A comment quoted in my post http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13860142&postcount=21 may suggest that the answer is “yes”. If that is the case, perhaps that is an area for improvement of either the finishing process technology itself or else of the job planning process (e.g. demand that people print books with one of a discrete number of page counts in return for discount).
You’re leaving out the investment in getting the machines in the first place. AFAIK (my family is in the publishing business), aside from paper and other rough materials, this is probably the largest determining factor. Printing machinery is far from cheap. You’ve stated that 1M$ seems small fry, but most printing shops are relatively small, and the machines do need servicing, qualified workers and replacements in order to keep running the shop.
Do you think these kinds of operations are 100% automated?! They’re not, in case you’re wondering; for very obvious reasons once you’ve seen a few printing jobs. Visit a printer some day and you’ll see.
Books are already printed in discrete numbers of pages. It’s impossible to do anything other than multiples of 4. Comes with the binding process. Page size is also very important, since that (and the total number of pages) is influenced by the size of the “master” paper coming in, the cutting process and the physical limitations of the machinery. You’re simply not going to find an easy way of reducing costs this way; printing/binding is not a new business.
I used to have a small, specialty print shop. If I thought I could charge X for a service, even though that was 200% markup, I sometimes did. If the competition was strong and I couldn’t, I either charged less or didn’t bid for the job at all. That’s got nothing to do with the fact that it was a print shop; it’s simple economics.
And if someone said, “I need this job done overnight and I don’t care what it costs,” do you really think I added a mere 20% to my material costs? Fuck no. I charged a fortune and the customer was deliriously happy when it was done on time. That’s simple economics, too.
So the answer to your question, “What does cost of book folding and book binding depend on?” is: the same thing as everything else, the market.
Exactly, and that’s why I brought up my job as a software engineer; if someone needs a solution right now, I’d be stupid to charge my regular, get it done when you’ve got some time, rate. If you want me to drop stuff to get to you first, you’re willing to pay me extra.
Superfluous Parentheses, I am happy to get answers from a pro in the field, or at least from somebody who knows the pros. Thank you for answering.
Let’s go back to the issue of adjustments to the finishing process between jobs. I would like to focus on that because, AFAIU, the printer does not need any adjustment. The printer will keep spitting out pages just like my printer at home, as long as page size and page quality is the same throughout. So the adjustments presumably will all happen on the finishing stage.
Well, so suppose an adjustment is needed for going from job “200 pages per book” to job “124 pages per book”. So I have asked upthread - why don’t we offer deep discounts to people who will give us jobs with one of a predetermined page counts. Let’s say I have a single finishing stage production line. From 8 am to 10 am I will run it finishing all jobs with exactly 100 pages. Then 10am-12pm for jobs with 140 pages. And so on. And, being the discount printer, I will not take small jobs from people who ask for precisely 128 pages at all. I will send such people over to Lulu to be gouged.
Would you agree with my claim here that this approach would allow me to minimize number of adjustments to the finishing stage and hence increase machine time utilization and decrease labor effort involved? If not, can you explain why that is not the case?
ETA: or would you argue that while yes, that would be a bit more efficient, in practice the adjustments are so fast and cheap that it just makes no real difference one way or the other?
A printing press won’t print individual pages. It’ll print multiple pages on a large sheet which then need to be cut and bound and re-cut. So you need adjustments for the input sheet size, the cutting stage and the re-cutting stage at the very least unless all your printing is done on the exact same size.
Because there won’t be enough takers to make it worth while. Some jobs will just need 12 pages of 30 x 20 cm with a larger folded cover (for example) and others will need 300 pages of A3 size with a specially printed hard cover. Of course you can exclude one or the other, but in reality, you’ll end up switching sizes, amounts and covers for each job. Just look at your book shelve and the leaflets you’ve got laying around, and then ask yourself which size you should pick as a printer going for your suggested strategy. And also keep in mind that paper is heavy so distribution adds costs too.
Which will be exactly one job in reality. If you’re lucky. There’s also no need to do “all 100 page” runs at all.
The reason Lulu works is that it does very cheap quality printing in very low numbers, and - I expect - because the resulting books are very light so are cheap to ship.
I would do neither, since you’ve not given me any reason to believe that it should be cheaper, and every reason to believe you’d go out of business very quickly if you’d set up your shop like that
I am discussing laser printer and not “printing press” in this thread. Are you saying that the industrial laser printer also prints multiple pages at the same time, just like a printing press, and so output of that printer also needs to be cut?
If so, why not just use another model of the printer that will in fact just print a page at a time, for the specific task of working with small count jobs that I am discussing here?
Some laser printers do print multiple pages at once. In a case I am familiar with, a laser press prints 11x17" jobs for the same price per sheet as 8.5x11, due to the metering. So printing 2-up is much more cost effective than 1-up, even if it has to be cut later.
There are many such decisions that have to be made for each job, and many factors involved.
Given that I have avoided most of your threads, purposefully, I don’t think that constitutes stalking.
But I certainly have been quick to point out flaws in your logic or flaws in your responses to other posters that have provided well thought out posts - mostly due to your hostile responses to myself and others in the first few threads where we interacted. Despite that hostility, I think I have refrained from insulting, or any general poor behavior, mostly I have just, accurately, pointed out flaws in your logic.
Yes. Bound books need to be cut. Basically, binding works by sewing sets of folded pages together. This results in an uneven outer edge, which is then cut to make all the pages the same “size” (and also means you’ve got even more restrictions on page numbers). Same goes for stapling, if you’ve only got a few pages.
It’s not the amount of jobs/books that’s important; it’s the total number of pages (page per book * number of books). The amount of books is mostly only important for the cover, which is almost always printed and processed separately.