Digital Finishing: Different Paths to Success

Clients can be well educated about the company's postpress capabilities on its Website. Where Seibel feels that his staff provides a lot of value in terms of personal interaction is guiding decisions related to cost-efficiency. This can be non-intuitive in a digital finishing environment.

"Say you're doing 1,000 copies of a Wire-O book. You may have 60-page books, plus covers, so it sounds like the quantity warrants it to be printed offset," Seibel explains. "But that's not necessarily true because, in the digital world, that book is going to be automatically printed, collated and ready to be bound. With offset, you'll run it, multiples up, cut it, and collate it, then you still have the finishing process. When you take into consideration the impact of the manual finishing of the job, it changes the cost structure between offset and digital. Every job is different. That's why there is no price list!"