The best way to get a quotation is to contact your local sales office for Elegacne Printing and book binding, Co., and discuss your needs with our staff. The production of a book is a complex matter, and if you are not familiar with all the elements, it is possible for us to incorrectly quote your desired product.

The staff will need to know the following:

1. Publication Title

2. Quantities

3. Size and orientation -- a book that binds on the long edge is called vertical or portrait format, while a book that binds on the short edge is called horizontal or landscape format.

4. Binding style -- hard cover, soft cover or flexibound, sewn or notchbound, wire-o bound, saddle stitched, etc.

5. Text paper, endsheet paper (if needed), case materials (cloth, imitation cloth, or paper wrapped), cover stock, dust jacket stock. All of these can be quite different from your local materials. We are able to import special items if the order is large enough, but often specially imported papers cause an excessive price increase. Please see the paper charts for our most readily available stock weights.

6. The number of colors being printed for each element of the project.

7. Color origination information giving the number of images per page (4C, duotone, halftone, line art illustrations, and screen tints). The number of text-only pages. If possible the name of the design program (QuarkXpress, PageMaker, etc.,) being used to create the files we will use to output your film after doing the color separations.

8. Shipping details for your product. For the most part, clients ask us to ship either "FOB: Hong Kong" and manage the shipping from the Port of Hong Kong to their final destination themselves, or will ask us to ship goods "CIF: Port of ____". Examples of this would be cargo shipped to the ports of New York, Seattle, Long Beach or Boston in the USA, or Tokyo, Shanghai, Amsterdam or Sidney for other countries. CIF means we deal with the cost of the carriage and insurance for the shipment to a specific port of entry, and the client then clears the cargo at that port, and has it shipped from the port to their location. We maintain a list of customs brokers used by our clients who deal with both clearing the goods at the port and taking the cargo to the final destination in our sales offices. The staff will be happy to pass along this listing to you if you should need it. In some cases we can assist by dealing with the customs or inland freight arrangements for a client. We do not recommend this however, since it must be done long distance from our main office in Hong Kong, and we feel it is better that the client have a working relationship with the parties handling their cargo for maximum efficiency.

9. Schedule. Our basic schedule for a book is approximately 16 weeks from our receipt of your artwork in the plant to goods reaching the port for American clients. For clients in Asia and Europe the schedule varies slightly based on shipping times from Hong Kong. If you know when you need your product, or when you will have artwork available, our staff can work out a tentative schedule for production with you.

10. Special needs you may have should be included in the request to the sales office. These would include requirements for advance copies of the product to be shipped via air courier, the need for extra dust jackets or covers shipped with the bulk. Any requirements that you may have that will have an implication in the final costs for your project. We want to show you every cost in advance, and not have any sort of surprises at the end of your project.