CHOOSING AND USING PAPER (II)

Printers usually warehouse quantities of paper for the kinds of work they perform most often. This is so that they will have paper on hand and ready to print whenever a job comes in. How much they warehouse depends on paper prices and the tightness of the paper market.

In any case, unless the job calls for something special, it's almost always cheaper to use a printer's house stocks than to ask the printer to order a specific paper. The printer's price markup on orders for "custom" papers could range from 15 percent to 40 percent.

Customers sometimes elect to do the buying themselves, but this calls for a printer's understanding not only of how a given paper will perform, but how much of it will be needed to cover production requirements and production contingencies such as waste and spoilage.

Since relatively few buyers have this degree of expertise, no one should place an order for paper without having reviewed the specifications with the printer who is going to be called upon to print it.

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