With my prototypes out of the way I can now jot down an approximate value of how much it'll cost to produce the final product.
Mass Produced
Paper Costs
I found that the ink shows up really well on cartridge paper, which came as a surprise to me as I expected to spend a lot more money on the professionally-produced papers that I had purchased from GFSmith. I had even gone to Staples to see how my designs printed on their matt papers, but it seems that the cartridge worked best.
This heavily reduces the costs to obtain the paper stock as I could just buy it as a sketchpad as that uses the same paper.
I looked up at Ken Bromley Art Supplies to see how much cartridge paper would cost. If I get the "Snowdon Cartridge Paper" it would cost £6.95 for 20 sheets size of 15" x 11". I probably only need half of that amount, so I could probably cut each sheet in half so in reality it'll be 40 A4 sheets. Each book would need 9 sheets of A4, and so I could get around 4 books.
However, if I get a sketchpad such as the "Daler Rowney 130gsm Smooth Cartridge Paper" it costs £7.23 for 30 sheets of A3, and therefore if halved then it'll be 60 sheets of A4. Then I could produce around 6 books with that.
I will estimate that there will be around 200 or more people, and so I would need 33 sketchpads which will cost 33 x £7.23 = £238.59. This may sound like quite a lot but it's actually quite cheap for paper.
Printing
To print on cartridge paper through an inkjet print would cost around £0.04 per page, so if I am producing 200 books then I would need to print around 1,800 sheets of paper so printing would cost £72 which is, once again, extremely cheap.
So the total so far to mass-produce this book would be £72 + £238.59 = £310.59. This doesn't include the costs of obtaining thread and the bookbinding cloth.
One-off Production
To have it printed on it's own didn't cost as much as expected because, as I have mentioned before, I didn't have to purchase anymore professionally-produced paper by GFSmith. The printing would cost £0.04 x 9 = £0.36 and then I didn't have to purchase new paper because of the fact I had just used the paper from my sketchpad.
If I did have to purchase a sketchpad then it would be a bit more expensive but not too much. If I use Ken Bromley Art Supplies' estimate, I would spend £7.23 for 30 sheets of A3 and then I could divide that amount as I will be using no more than 5 sheets of A3. £7.23 divided by 30 is £0.241 per sheet, so £0.241 x 5 is £1.205 for the paper.
Therefore, the printing and paper stock would cost me £0.36 + £1.21 = £1.57
To get all of the other materials:
Awl - £2.98
Bookbinding cloth - £4.24 per metre
Thread - £1.45
Wax - £2.25
Binder clips - £1.00
Black card - £3.60
Paint marker pen - £3.60
However, this is how much it costs for everything e.g. for a whole pack of binder clips and 3 metres of bookbinding cloth, so I can't really use these values to say how much it was using only part of it. On the other hand I did have to buy the whole pack just so that I could use one so in total the materials above cost £19.12
So overall I have spent £20.69 to produce this book, and it's mainly because of the materials.
UPDATE - 16.05.14
Unfortunately I might be unable to print on cartridge due to the reason that all of the printers I had access to had either ran out of ink or was unable to process my document. I have written a previous post on my reasons and why I had to change plans.
I had managed to get all of my pages printed in the end, but my other option was to print via Staples which produced a higher quality and didn't have all of the problems I faced with the cartridge paper.
The cost of the materials are the same as above (£19.12) but the printing and paper stock had been changed. I haven't been able to separate the two and just based my calculations from what I have learnt when I phoned up the store.
There is a flat rate of £3 to use their printers, and then an additional for each page so in total it's £3 + (£0.70 x 9) = £9.30
Therefore to make this book using a better printer and paper stock would be £28.42
However like I have mentioned above, this isn't really an accurate amount because of the way I had calculated my materials. To make a more accurate account I only calculate the materials I actually used.
Awl - £2.98
Bookbinding cloth - £4.25 divided by 5 (as I only used under 20cm) = £0.85
Thread - approx. £0.45
Wax - approx £0.25
Black card - £0.72
Paint marker pen - £3.60
A more accurate total would thus be £9.30 + (£2.98 + £0.85 + £0.45 + £0.25 + £0.72 + £3.60) = £15.15
This isn't actually a bad price because there is a possibility that it might've cost a bit less to use the wax and thread as I only use a small portion of them, although prices for the awl and card would be fixed.
All in all, if this book were to sell, I would have to sell it for more than £15.00 in order to gain profit from what I made. This will also include the labour fees as well so it's more likely that I would sell it for around £20. This is actually quite expensive for a book but as it's hand done it's quite acceptable.
To conclude, even though this book would be expensive to sell if the binding was done by hand it would be a lot cheaper when mass-produced as it's more likely that I would use Blurb for this.
UPDATE - 16.05.14
Unfortunately I might be unable to print on cartridge due to the reason that all of the printers I had access to had either ran out of ink or was unable to process my document. I have written a previous post on my reasons and why I had to change plans.
I had managed to get all of my pages printed in the end, but my other option was to print via Staples which produced a higher quality and didn't have all of the problems I faced with the cartridge paper.
The cost of the materials are the same as above (£19.12) but the printing and paper stock had been changed. I haven't been able to separate the two and just based my calculations from what I have learnt when I phoned up the store.
There is a flat rate of £3 to use their printers, and then an additional for each page so in total it's £3 + (£0.70 x 9) = £9.30
Therefore to make this book using a better printer and paper stock would be £28.42
However like I have mentioned above, this isn't really an accurate amount because of the way I had calculated my materials. To make a more accurate account I only calculate the materials I actually used.
Awl - £2.98
Bookbinding cloth - £4.25 divided by 5 (as I only used under 20cm) = £0.85
Thread - approx. £0.45
Wax - approx £0.25
Black card - £0.72
Paint marker pen - £3.60
A more accurate total would thus be £9.30 + (£2.98 + £0.85 + £0.45 + £0.25 + £0.72 + £3.60) = £15.15
This isn't actually a bad price because there is a possibility that it might've cost a bit less to use the wax and thread as I only use a small portion of them, although prices for the awl and card would be fixed.
All in all, if this book were to sell, I would have to sell it for more than £15.00 in order to gain profit from what I made. This will also include the labour fees as well so it's more likely that I would sell it for around £20. This is actually quite expensive for a book but as it's hand done it's quite acceptable.
To conclude, even though this book would be expensive to sell if the binding was done by hand it would be a lot cheaper when mass-produced as it's more likely that I would use Blurb for this.
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