This Sunday will be the second time in a row that customers have requested their wedding announcements be published in color for an extra $100. I can't believe people are willing to pay that much just to have their pictures published in color!
A week ago yesterday, a lady came in to place an announcement for her son and new daughter-in-law's wedding. She had her form filled out and her credit card ready when she arrived. She chose a 3.87 x 7 inch photo size, which publishes for $135 by itself in black and white. She also chose the basic announcement (for $6) plus several add-ons (for $15 each) and slicks (copies of the actual announcement on high-gloss white paper that doesn't yellow). Her total cost was almost $300! And she acted like it was no big deal!
When I started looking at the announcement information and typed it up, I realized why it wasn't a big deal for her to plop down 300 big ones: her husband, her son, her new daughter-in-law and several of the people in the wedding party are in the medical field, most as doctors of some form or another. (By the way, she called today and said she and her family had never received so many compliments! She said it was beautiful and we'd done a very good job. I was so happy!)
A man came in today with his check already made out. He wanted our next-largest size of 3.87 x 4 inches, which usually publishes for $85 in black and white, $185 since he wanted it in color. He and his wife just wanted the basic announcement, though, for six bucks. But they're getting slicks, too, so their total was barely over $200, but still!
Why is it so expensive to run an announcement in color? I'm glad you asked! When we run a page in color, we use four negatives to run on the presses instead of just one: Black, cyan, yellow and maroon (I think).
We're going to try to lower the price for running color photos to just $50 in the new year to encourage people to choose color photos more often, even though it's more work for us. Hey, we could use a revenue boost! We're not a non-profit organization, afterall.
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4 comments:
I think the red color is magenta.
The only reason I know is cause Rob works at a paper, too.
Thank you! You're right! This darn blonde hair gets in the way of my brain functions.
CMYK: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black.
I don't know how your press is setup, but usually it's not all that expensive to run color. If the page you're printing the announcement on is already in a color unit, all you're really paying for is the ink.
Yes, I'm a newspaper nerd.
The pages we print in our section are only set up for black and white, normally. The only time we ever print anything in color is when we get a request for a color photo. Then, we might print more items in color, but only on that one page. We have three pages at our disposal, and they are all set up for only black and white. We also have to have someone in another department photoshop the color photos we get in because we don't have the right equipment in our office.
I know more people would be interested in printing color photos if it was cheaper, because we get questions about it almost every day. I'll bet that after we reduce the cost, more people will request color publication and our pages will be set up a bit differently.
BTW, I'm a newspaper nerd, too. Maybe that's one of the reasons I get along with you so well! :) I just had a brain fart and couldn't remember the name of the red negative. I thought, "I know it starts with 'ma...' something..." Maroon just popped into my head for some reason.
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