Sourcing Book and Brochure Litho Runs by Sending RFQs Direct to Trade Presses

Long-run litho is where print procurement gets serious. Once you're past a few thousand copies of a perfect-bound book, a saddle-stitched brochure, or a big corporate report, the difference between a good quote and a bad one stops being pennies and starts being hundreds — sometimes thousands — of pounds.

And yet most buyers still source these jobs the same way they did fifteen years ago: three phone calls to printers they already know, one nervy email to a broker, and a fingers-crossed hope that at least one comes back sharp. There's a better way, and it starts with taking your RFQ straight to the trade presses that actually own the kit.

Why long-run litho deserves a proper RFQ process

Litho makes economic sense once volume justifies the makeready. But makeready cost, plate cost, paper cost and press time all vary massively between suppliers depending on what's currently on their schedule, what stock they've got sitting in the warehouse, and whether your job gangs neatly with something else in the queue.

That means two trade printers quoting the same 10,000-copy, 96pp perfect-bound book on 90gsm uncoated can legitimately land £1,200 apart — not because one is ripping you off, but because one is genuinely a better fit for the work that week. You'll never surface that variance from three phone calls.

What a good long-run litho RFQ actually contains

Before you post anything, get your spec tight. Trade presses quote fast when the brief is clean and slowly (or not at all) when it isn't. A workable RFQ for book, brochure or catalogue work should include:

• Format and extent — trimmed size, page count, cover vs text separation
• Stock — GSM, finish (silk, matt, uncoated), brand if it matters, plus cover stock separately
• Colour — 4/4 CMYK, any Pantone specials, plus any special inks (metallic, fluoro)
• Finishing — perfect bind, PUR, saddle stitch, section sewn, case bound; lamination; spot UV; foiling
• Quantity and run-on price — always ask for a run-on per 500 or 1,000 so you can flex
• Delivery — single address, split delivery, pallet vs box, kerbside vs inside
• Deadline — press-ready date and required delivery date, separately

Missing any of these and you'll get quotes back full of assumptions, which means you're not comparing like with like.

Going direct to trade presses instead of through a broker

Brokers earn their margin — sometimes 15-25% on a long run — by knowing which press to route which job to. That knowledge is real. But if you're a print manager, agency producer or in-house procurement lead handling this regularly, there's no reason you can't build the same routing intelligence yourself, especially when the marketplace does the legwork of surfacing the right suppliers.

Posting a single RFQ on ZeozGig for £1 and letting multiple trade presses respond directly means:

1. You see the real trade price, not a marked-up broker price
2. You get technical answers from the people actually running the press, not from a middleman relaying them
3. You keep 100% of any margin between your client quote and the printed cost
4. You build a shortlist of trade presses you can go back to for repeat work

And if nobody responds within your window, the posting fee is refunded automatically. There's genuinely no downside to floating the job.

Where direct-to-press really pays off

Some categories of long-run litho suit direct sourcing more than others:

• Book work — novels, non-fiction, educational titles where the spec is standard and the price is all about press efficiency
• Corporate brochures and annual reports — mid-run, high-spec, where a specialist press with good colour management wins
• Catalogues — heat-set web work at real volume, where you want a press that actually runs web litho every day
• Directories and manuals — bulk mono or 2-colour on cheap stock, where you want a press geared for volume, not premium
• Packaging cartons — where die-cutting and finishing capability matter as much as the print itself

Each of these attracts a different subset of trade printers, and a public RFQ pulls the right ones toward you rather than forcing you to guess who's set up for what.

Comparing quotes without getting fooled by the headline number

When the quotes come back, resist the urge to just sort by price. On a long run, the cheapest number often hides something — a lighter stock than you specified, a longer lead time, kerbside-only delivery, or no proofing included.

Build a simple comparison grid with columns for headline price, stock actually quoted, finishing included, delivery terms, lead time and proofing. Nine times out of ten the second-cheapest quote is actually the best value once you normalise the spec.

This is also where the direct-chat side of a marketplace earns its keep. Rather than emailing back and forth for two days to clarify a spec, you open a direct connection for a fixed £5, jump on a quick voice call for 50p, and confirm the details in ten minutes. No commission on the eventual job — just the small fixed cost of the conversation.

Building a repeatable trade-press shortlist

Every long-run RFQ you post is also a research exercise. The presses that quote sharply, communicate cleanly and deliver on time go onto your shortlist for next time. Within three or four jobs you'll have a working panel of five or six trade presses covering different formats, run lengths and finishing capabilities — the same intelligence a broker charges you a percentage for, built up by you, for the cost of a few RFQ postings.

Post your next long-run RFQ and see who bites

If you've got a book, brochure, catalogue or large-format litho job on your desk right now, spend a minute writing a clean spec and post it as an RFQ on ZeozGig. It costs £1, you'll get quotes back from trade presses who actually want the work, and if nobody bites, you get your quid back. No commission, no contracts, no monthly fee — just direct access to the presses that can actually print your job.