I have already found your printing price guides useful for rough estimating but have been wondering how accurate they are. How do you put them together? What criteria do you use to decide on a price? John Stewart, SKFM

Glad you find them useful. When we first started thinking about Bob's Print Guide we quickly realised that some kind of pricing information would be an important element. Your question goes to the heart of what we are trying to do. Accuracy? Well let's be clear - it would be a very bad idea to base a quotation to a client on these pricelists. That's not what they are for. Anyone who has ever bought print will know how much variation there is in the market. It is quite possible that a job quoted by a selection of printers can vary by up to 50% from highest to lowest. The lists are based on real-world prices provided by our colleagues in the business. The majority of our contacts are in London and the Home Counties but at present we also have one in Newcastle and two in Birmingham. They are old colleagues and associates who have simply agreed to send us copies of the quotations they get when buying print. From these actual prices we 'fill in the gaps'. Our only criteria is that the prices are 'real'. To that end we are always looking for new contacts in order to increase the sample size. The prices are regularly reviewed to achieve a steady increase in accuracy. With our price guides we want to enable a print buyer to provide a ball-park figure for a range of work, in different specifications, without having to get their printer involved. They can get the information to their client or boss in minutes rather than the days it can sometimes take when getting written quotations. A great many print jobs which are estimated change completely in specification or are simply aborted once the price is known. Just because they are speculative doesn't mean you can avoid giving a price when asked. That's where Bob's Print Guide can help. Bob

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