Changes in the price of my newspaper.

This post should have been done a while ago but have done it now. From my focus group i found that my plan of making a newspaper which is printed on glossy paper, to the size of a normal local newspaper and in colour would be VERY expensive to produce, therefore raising the price of my production costs.

I know i said in my post about the definite ideas that i am going to do for my newspaper was to use glossy paper, after i did my research with my focus group i found that this wasn't such a good idea.

Mistake! I believe that i should have done my definitive ideas post AFTER i had done my focus group research!

So i have decided to make a few changes:

I am still going to make my newspaper on traditional local newspaper sized paper, however only on slightly glossy paper so that it is a new take and makes the entire newspaper look more up-market. You can get paper like this, so it isnt as glossy as magazines but has a slight sheen to it. This is so my newspaper doesnt get mistaken as a magazine but still looks a bit more up market. I also think that the glossier the paper, the longer the magazine will last - therefore would be more suitable for a WEEKLY newspaper.

I have also decided to not use so much colour on my newspaper (i will decide for definite when i actually come to make it) as it will make the production costs very high and very slow.

I will also raise the price of my newspaper to £1.10. Even though this is'nt a dramatic rise in the price it would still make a difference if i was to put this newspaper on the market.

P.s. with my layout plans etc, the places where it says £1, now means £1.10!

Why £1.10?

The main reason for this price is because of how much it will cost me to produce the newspaper if it was going to be put on the market - meaning the paper and ink. I have done a bit more research into the cost of other newspapers but im linking it to the paper and ink costs.

My target audience may percieve this as reasonable because my newspaper is weekly, the information such as the family events lasts longer than a week and also, from my first two pages i can tell that it would be a informative newspaper if it were to be made full.

I have done some research into the cost per page to make a newspaper - total printing costs divided by the number of pages. It was quite difficult to find out how much printing some exisiting newspapers are so i decided to look at printing companies who print newspapers in order to find out.

I found a printing company who print some fairly well known free music magazines in my local area such as Outline and Maddog: http://www.quotemeprint.com/newspapers/online_quote.

I was then able to click on a link which took me to a really good page which gave me a quote as to what it would cost for me to print my newspaper!

The first quote i did i based on the existing local newspaper 'Evening News' to get a rough idea of what it costs for them to print. However, i have kept in mind that this newspaper probably get money off due to the amount of printing they need so i am guessing that the final figure of what comes up is the maximum of what it could cost to print. From this i can then find out how much it costs to print just one page of that newspaper.

I found that the problem i had with this was that i wasnt able to be very specific about what i wanted (ie, size format i was given three options), thankfully the Evening News and my newspaper plans do come under one of these. 

I didnt know what 'paper stock' meant so i searched it and found out that it means the thickness of the paper. The Evening News and my newspaper is the thinest of the two choices. I was only able to quote 64 pages and there was a minimum printing of 1000 copies.

In this print screen (left) you can see that after i typed in the quanity of pages and copies a quote comes up of £1,684 from this company in the case of the Evening News. I didnt type in the real quanity of what the Evening News needs to be printed daily as i am only using this to work out the costs for them to print each page.

I found out that this is the final cost of what it is to print 1000 copies of a 64 page newspaper in the format of the Evening News.

I then used my calculator to work out the maximum cost for the Evening News for a page and came to the conclusion that it costs them around: 0.02p  to print one page of one copy. To make it easier it costs them around £26 for one page on 1000 copies.

Now i will look at the cost it would be approximatley to print one page of my newspaper:

I said when finding out the cost of the Evening News that it is in full colour, however i found out from my focus group that this would be very expensive to produce so have decided to not be just black and white or full colour - therefore i will be 'part-colour'. I have already declared how i can find this figure out, so i have just worked it out quickly the cost of one page of my newspaper:

£357 divided by 1000 divided by 4 = 0.08p

I couldnt really figure out why printing my newspaper would cost 0.06p more to print than the Evening News until i guessed that it was probably down to the quanity. The printing company may make the cost lower to print if you order a higher quanity. However, i think to print one page this is quite cheap. I wouldnt be using this company to print my newspaper (need someone more local and have got some info o this later in the post) but i was able to find out how much it does cost a newspaper to print roughly.

How i could get my newspaper printed:

I have been thinking that the size of the paper i am planning to print on isnt realistic to be printed at school, therefore i would have to find a printing company for them to do so. I have a close relative who owns a printing company in my local area. I have just e-mailed him on a social networking site to see if he prints on tabloid size paper, so hopefully he will be getting back to me with the good news that he does. if he doesnt, then i will have to search some printers that do. I will also be able to get quotes. In a future post i will write about how i will get my poster printed.

                                                           

                                                                 
Weight of paper

I did say in my definiate ideas post that i want to make my newspaper paper have a sheen to it but not overly glossy. I have late found out that this 'sheen' pape that i was talking about doesnt actually exist therefore i went on the look out for something of a similar definition.

This links to the weight of paper due to its thickness and the finsihes applied to it i.e sheen, glossy. Magazines have an increased weight beause they are glossy, and newspaper pages are quite light because the paper is so thin and have no finishes applied to them (also explains why ink can come off them when you turn the pages!). The lighter the weight of the paper the cheaper the newspaper.

I have found a website which tells me the weight of newspapers:  http://www.dimensionsguide.com/. This website gives dimensions, sizes and weights about the most ridulous things. I found a section which talks about the weights of differents papers and how the thickness of the paper effects the weight:

Overall from this research i found that newspapers look the way they do for a reason - it works - it sells newspapers - people want to buy them. The cost of making something greatly effects what it is sold for, therefore the cost of making something can effect how many people want to buyit. I hopefully get a good message back from my printing relative soon to see if he does print of tabloid sized paper!