Print on Demand - What a crock of S****!!!

quintond

I am so over Print on Demand services now that I am ready to ... ummmm ... actually I don't know what I am ready to.

My original shipping date fluctuated between the 12th and 15th March. This was okay because it gave me enough time to actually get everything ready ... this morning I wake up to find my date has been pushed out to the 21st March which probably means I will not have my items in time for ICON by the Sea. I am hoping that by some miracle it can arrive in time ... but right now I am not convinced it will ... 3 weeks ... 3 flipping weeks.

What grinds my carrot more is a second job I submitted has already been delivered to my New York address and is on its way to me ... this was ordered a week after this current order ... and the support at TGC just quotes the same old crap about shipping dates fluctuating.

So, does anyone know of any printers here in S.A. or more reliable printers in the U.S. that can print the following types of items:

• Box - full colour and big enough to hold the components.
  
• Poker Sized Cards - full colour and double sided.
  
• Tokens or Chits - full colour and double sided.
  
• Rule Book - full colour and double sided.
  

The dice will be sourced from a third party.

If I can get it printed locally here in S.A., I can sell the game from my website and my cost will be greatly reduced which I can then pass on to the customers.

If I can get it printed in the U.S., it will still be cheaper than a Print on Demand service and once again the savings will be passed on to the customers.

I have contacted numerous printers in S.A. through email and they either never get back to me or take a week or two to respond to an email ... I am still waiting for a quote on a smaller box. It is almost like S.A. companies don't like email or don't know how to use it.

It is difficult for me to phone printers at work and therefore I have to rely on email as my preferred contact medium.

Please ... any help will be greatly appreciated ... surely somebody in S.A. has printed their own board game with similar components ... 8-}

Thanks

Tuism

Errrr

That doesn't sound like a POD problem, that sounds like a shipping to SA problem. Like you said yourself, the other order sent to the US address had arrived already.

quintond said:

If I can get it printed locally here in S.A., I can sell the game from my website and my cost will be greatly reduced which I can then pass on to the customers.

If you're planning to sell local only, sure this will probably be the case. But just like my point below, the only thing that'll get cost per unit down are numbers. Are you ready to take the risk of making 1000+ units? Or even 500 units? And warehousing? Logistics?

If I can get it printed in the U.S., it will still be cheaper than a Print on Demand service and once again the savings will be passed on to the customers.

The problem with any print run are NUMBERS. If you're venturing out of POD, you have to make sure you have volumes to actually bring prices per unit down, and then if you don't sell/ship everything in one go, you'll have to have warehousing and other logistics. Are you anywhere near ready for dealing AND paying for that in a foreign land?

I have contacted numerous printers in S.A. through email and they either never get back to me or take a week or two to respond to an email ... I am still waiting for a quote on a smaller box. It is almost like S.A. companies don't like email or don't know how to use it.

Yeah I dunno about this one, maybe it's the timing, maybe your job specs are too small to be taken seriously compared to their bread and butter. Maybe they plain don't understand the specs (boardgames are super complicated compared to magazines and standees).

It is difficult for me to phone printers at work and therefore I have to rely on email as my preferred contact medium.

Phoning does work better. Can't you try and call during the day?

Please ... any help will be greatly appreciated ... surely somebody in S.A. has printed their own board game with similar components ... 8-}

Printed their own boardgames? Maybe. With similar components? That's a huge ask. And the games printed locally I'm pretty sure are what I call CNA games... Battle of the Sexes, 30 Seconds, etc. I doubt anyone immediately here has had those experiences.

The successful boardgame projects I can remember locally are Ancient Terrible Things (they did it through a KS fulfilment publisher Games Salute), the recent Sultan's Library (not sure where they're getting manufacturing done, it's not done yet), and both were Kickstartered (so they know exactly how many to print ahead of time and have been funded ahead of time, ie no long term warehousing risk, no uncertain numbers risk). Look them up if you're interested.

Good luck :)

quintond

Tuism said:

That doesn't sound like a POD problem, that sounds like a shipping to SA problem. Like you said yourself, the other order sent to the US address had arrived already.

No it is not a shipping issue at all. Basically my job has been number 10 in the queue for almost 3 days now and this is a fundamental flaw with the POD style of operation.

If you pay double the price, you can push your print job to the front of the queue ... and I suspect this is what has happened to me.

I have monitored previous jobs and they normally fluctuate 2 or 3 days around their initially estimated job ... mine has fluctuated 7 days out of that estimation and I can get no answers from the support team.

Shipping to S.A. is easy, it goes to my Aramax address and within 3 to 4 working days I have the item delivered to me here in Durban. They use USPS for their internal shipping so it takes up to 3 days to go from one side of the U.S. to the other. The problem is not there ... the problem is the queue system.


Anyway ... I know that getting a printer now won't help me for ICON ... I have accepted that and I can only hope the items will arrive in time.

The problem with phoning during the day is that I will have to take a day off work to do it ... as I have no phone on my desk and the boss sits in the open plan office and frowns on personal calls being made. I could try and go down to my car during lunch hour ... but there is only so much that you can achieve during that period and when I tried that before ... they asked me to email me my specifications ... and silence since them.

I am more then willing to print 500 or 1000 units ... if that is what it will take. All I want to try and figure out is the following:

• Can a local printer help me ... yes or no.
  
• Do I have to go overseas ... probably yes.
  

I guess I am just ranting ... my apologies to everyone. It is just frustrating, sitting here beholden to another company and unable to actually doing anything about it at this late stage.

Oh well ... I will persevere and push on ... 8-}

critic

I'm gonna sound like a bit of a crook, but up your bid/offer by $1 if you can, that could flag the order for queue refresh on their system or something like that. No harm in trying, right?

quintond

@critic: LOL ... wish I could. The only way you can get ahead of the queue is by paying double the price when you place the order. As soon as your order hits 100 in the queue ... you are no longer able to cancel or make changes.

So basically I am unable to cancel my order and re-order to go to the top of the queue ... hence my frustration of being held to ransom by them now.

quintond

The components I need printed are not exactly complicated:

• Poker Deck -- 305gsm black-core matt card stock double-sided printing in full colour.
  
• Circle Chit/Token -- 60pt chipboard covered with heavy matt finish paper double-sided printing in full colour.
  
• Rule Book -- 148gsm paper folded and stapled in the middle double-sided printing in full colour.
  

I thought by keeping the components simple (i.e. no fancy shapes or complicated dials), it would be easier to source local printers.

Tuism

Oh, you didn't mention the queue thing. Okay sure I gotcha, I didn't know that was a thing.

And as for component simplicity... Yeah sure I hear you, but it really depends on specialised stuff. Poker Decks, if made as a big sheet, is a specialised die that's pretty big. Of made individually... Well, that's just nuts. Same goes for tokens and chits, if the printer makes them normally, they'll have the stuff for it, otherwise it's making big sheet dies. Custom dies can cost a lot per square... Coverage? Size? Something.

Do you have warehousing and logistics sorted too? But yeah I guess understand manufacturing first. I suspect it'll be not easy without specialists.

In any case... Good luck with it hey.

karl182

I have asked my friend who works for an ad company to find out about the printers they use.
i have sent him the details on what you need and will let you know as soon as I hear something.

Karl

quintond

Thanks @Tuism
Shot @karl182

karl182

He says they use The Ink Spot in Johannesburg.
Maybe you can contact them and find out if they can do what you need.
(011) 614-3124
print@inkspot.co.za

quintond

@karl182: Thanks.

So it looks my constant nagging has paid off, this morning I woke up to see that my package has been shipped. So now just have to hope it arrives here in time.

karl182

Pleasure!
Awesome, I am glad it's on it's way!

mattbenic

We had a local company come and demo a boardgame to us that may well have been locally printed. But as @tuism noted before it may well have been ordered in bulk. Maybe contact them and see if you can find out who printed their stuff:

http://www.vantagepoint.co.za/