Archives: Business Depot/Staples

Tarot1234:
Hello. I'm creating my first zine and I was wondering, in order not to get ripped off, how much is the average price that copy shops charge for 5 double- sided copies? I've heard .65 several times.

Sean Guillory:
It depends on how many copies of the zine you want to make. Staples charges .03 for double sided over 100 copies. So for a 5 sheet zine, that's .15 a copy. But the average is somewhere between .02 a side to .05.
       [...and from another post...]For a 30 page zine you'll be able to copy about 100 copies for $50 if you go to one of the big office supply stores like Staples. Here in CA copies at Staples are $.02 per side (if your zine is digest sized) at 30 pages, actually it has to be 28 or 32 pages since they have to be divisible by 4. At 32 pages that's $.32 per full copy and $32 for 100. Not a bad if you only need 100 to 200 copies of your zine.

Ninjalicious:
Don't get too excited about Kinko's unless you're pretty confident in your scamming abilities. The prices at Business Depot/Staples are far, far better. Kinko's had a 20% off "customer appreciation day" recently and the prices were *still* cheaper at Business Depot. I pay around $350 for 1000 copies of seven double sided pages.

Battlestar Sarcastica:
Boycott Staples...as in the office superstore chain place. i won't bore you all with the details, but basically my friend and i went in there to have our zine copied. we were going to do the self-serve thing, but we wanted an employee to be there so we wouldn't make stupid copying mistakes and have to pay for them. the manager of the place refused to let someone supervise our copying. he then stated that he did not want our business because of the content of the zine (just yer basic political satire thing, sort of like profane existence. i guess). so, um...there's the story. if anyone cares.

Cyflux:
Sounds like my own Staples experience. For the third issue of my zine, I went to the office on 6th Ave. in NYC. I got back 300 sets of poorly-copied, barely-readable pages. When I went back in to complain, they rudely told me "that's what you gave us, there's only so much we could do." I finally got a refund from the manager, took the boards to Village Copier in midtown, and voila! decent copies. I wouldn't even buy a roll of tape from Staples anymore.

Sean Guillory:
All these stories about Staples are the total opposite than my experience. I've never been questioned about content and my copies always come back perfect. Especially for .02 a copy I can't beat it. As for the political censorship thing I do a anarchist/commie rag called Mailbomb. They never asked me any questions. I don't know maybe this is a new Staples policy or just individual asshole managers.

Battlestar Sarcastica:
*shrug* i can't understand it either. we did the first issue at staples (with an employee supervising the whole thing, which is why we asked for one again) last spring with no problems whatsoever. so i don't get it. we wound up going to office max. that wasn't bad. time-consuming, but not too bad.

Sera:
I would boycott staples if I could afford too... unfortunately they are the cheapest printers in NY.

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