The price of a print job comes down to two costs fighting each other: a one-time setup to get the job on press, and a small cost for each copy after that. Understand those two and you understand most of printing — why a hundred postcards can feel expensive, why five hundred barely costs more, and why two shops can quote the same job very differently.
The first copy is expensive; the rest are cheap
Before a single good copy comes off the press, someone has to set the job up — make plates or prep the file, load the stock, and run test sheets until the color is right. That work costs the same whether you're printing a hundred or a thousand. Every copy after that is just paper and a few seconds of press time.
So the price isn't quantity times a per-piece rate. It's that fixed setup, spread across however many you print. On a small run the setup dominates, which is why it feels expensive per piece. On a bigger run it spreads thin and the per-piece price drops. That's not a discount for being nice — it's the math.
Which press it runs on changes everything
A digital press has almost no setup but costs more per piece — it's built for short runs. An offset press has real setup (plates, make-ready) but a very low per-piece cost — it's built for long runs. The same job can be cheap or expensive depending only on which press it belongs on.
Here's the part worth knowing: a shop with only one kind of press will quote your job as if it belongs on the press they own, whether it does or not. We run both, so we put your job on whichever one actually makes it cheapest.
Paper, size, and finishing
Three levers move the rest of the price. Paper is a real one — a heavier or coated stock costs more, and often you don't need the premium. Size matters because of how many copies fit on a press sheet: a size that nests cleanly wastes less paper and costs less, which is why a 6x9 postcard runs cheaper than a 5x7. And finishing — every fold, score, cut, or bind is its own step with its own setup. Sometimes a small change to the design removes a whole step and a chunk of the cost.
Why two shops quote differently
Same job, different numbers, usually for one of a few reasons: they're running it on a different press, one of them farms it out to a trade printer and adds a margin, or they simply carry a different markup. A higher quote isn't automatically gouging — sometimes it's the shop that isn't quietly skipping a step. The trouble is you usually can't tell which from the outside.
Because we run our own presses, we can show you where each dollar goes and quote the cheapest honest way to make your job. Price it on our site and the number updates as you change the options, or send us the details and we'll walk you through the breakdown.