Brad does really well at college

We have just received Brad's report card from his first block apprenticeship training towards becoming a tradesman printer. It was no surprise to us that he received an outstanding assessment. He was rated as having an excellent attitude and this was only the start of the story. He also received Honours standards in the subjects of Underpinning Knowledge and Practical Applications.

Brad is the youngest member of our production team and is our first ever apprentice printer. In the work environment Brad operates our two colour/perfecting printing press and is under the supervision of both Jason and Paul who are our state & national recognised award winning tradesman printers. Brad has been challenged by them to be commercially productive and produce the highest standard of work from very early in his training and he has responded well to their challenge.

We searched long and hard to find just the right person when selecting an apprentice printer and we were generally disappointed in the people who were sent to attend interviews. Brad came in the front door unsolicited. He had already decided he wanted to be a tradesman printer and was determined to achieve his goal. Brad comes from a family where other members have worked in the printing industry. His positive attitude was just what we were looking for and we are pleased his training is working out so well.

Don't tell him but we are very proud of his progress and achievements to date.

Learn more visit www.qprint.com.au or email us on enquiries@qprint.com.au

Benchmarking

Last week six members of the Queensland Printing staff sat down for several hours with Scott Breust, who is a senior State Development Officer with the (Queensland) Department of State Development, to go through the Manufacturing Microscope benchmarking tool. This allows us to benchmark our business against 2000 other progressive printers from around Australia and the world. This process measures the performance and practices of our business, then compares the results with other participants within our market. The data obtained from these benchmarks provides us with a great insight into our relative strengths and weaknesses and will allow us to be at the forefront of continuous improvement within the Australian printing industry.

It was interesting to see that none of the 2000 printers worldwide were considered to operate their businesses within world's best practice compared to manufacturers generally. Our results were very encouraging. We were on the top end of the graph and less than 10% away from world's best practice. Our goal will now be that last 9%.

We are now looking at some new print production technology and looking to work with a Queensland based company QMI on a manufacturer's evaluation process called Value Stream Mapping.

Over the last four years our business has gone from strength to strength by working on the business rather than in the business. Our goal of being the best has helped us provide better service and services to our clients as well as drastically increase our productivity whilst improving our quality and reducing our costs.
Learn more visit www.qprint.com.au or email us on enquiries@qprint.com.au

Have you thought about writing a book?

Sadly very, very few aspiring authors and particulary those with books that publishing houses perceive have limited potential, or only a niche market to sell to, will be able to get a contract from a publishing house. Publishing houses in Australia have become incredibly economically conservative and seldom take a risk on an unproven author. Publishers may reject hundreds of books for every manuscript they show interest in. Seldom are mainstream publishing houses the answer for aspiring authors.

Up until some relatively recent breakthroughs in technology and niche quality book printers like ourselves the unknown author was faced with only a few daunting options:

Doing it yourself by yourself including ISBN, copyright, barcode, editing, layout, designing a cover, finding a printer; arranging storage, arranging marketing, publicity and distribution; creating a website, arranging electronic payment, receiving orders, packaging and postage, invoicing, collecting accounts etc. etc. or give up.

We can now offer Australian self publishers a number of printing options and all the help you need with design, distribution and some innovative selling ideas.

It has been almost 20 years since we helped our first author/self publisher and it was quite a task back then. It wasn't until the arrival of the personal computer that self publishing really became viable. Now with more powerful computers, better software, the internet, email, direct to plate and digital printing technologies self publishing is a much faster process and far cheaper.

As you can see on our home page - you can now print your book for an investment of under $1500. (Conditions Apply) Send me an email asking anything at don@qprint.com.au you might like to know about printing your book. www.qprint.com.au

What digtal printing can mean for self publishers

On our home page you may have noticed our offer of being able to publish your own book for under $1500 (Conditions Apply).

Up until the arrival of digital technology book runs probably weren't really viable until a minimum run of 500 books which meant a probable investment of over $5000. With our recent investment into a high quality HP Indigo digital printer we can now do print runs as low as one book. Books on family history or on a town or region's history, that had only limited appeal outside the family or region were either too expensive to produce or had to be done using substandard technologies eg. photocopying and/or substandard binding methods eg. stapling.

It is now an exciting new world for people who wish to print a book. Never before has it been so possible to print your own book. Send me an email, give Anne or I a phone call or drop in if you are in the neighbourhood. This is really exciting stuff. Visit our website at www.qprint.com.au

As A Self Publisher

You stay in control of your book’s copyright, content, appearance and selling price. This is not the case if you go through a publisher.You own & retain 100% of the copyright of your book. By self publishing you keep your options open. You can take your book to a publisher after you have proven its potential which puts you in a much stronger bargaining position. Even better still publishers may approach you when they notice your impact in the market. Other possibilities like movie rights, translation rights, serialization in newspapers are still open and yours to control and retain the income that might come from these sales. ‘Selling’ the rights to a publisher early removes control and a significant percentage of the income from all these options. "Your book, your way." You decide on the text, images, layout, cover design, size and retail price. You retain control over marketing and the marketing message. Whilst we, as experienced printers for self publishers, can help and guide you through the (self) publishing journey and whilst we can even help you with marketing, public relations, publicity and distribution ideas you always have the final say.Self publishing is usually about passion and by self publishing you keep your flame burning brightly.
Find our more options by visiting us at www.qprint.com.au
or emailing us at enquiries@qprint.com.au

You can’t judge a book by its cover

We are often asked by potential self publishers how important is the cover design to the success of my book. It seems to me a terrible thing to have to say to an authors but in certain circumstances the cover is critical to the sales of a book.

If your book is going to be sold through book shops, retail outlets or even on a multi listing format website it needs to stand out in the crowd. It needs to be noticed. Unless the cover grabs the potential buyer your contents will not be discovered.

There are many components to cover design and these don’t stop with layout or printing. Covers can also be embossed, foiled eg. metalic gold or silver, uv varnished, as well as covered with a celloglaze (similar to laminating) that gives the cover a gloss and protects it against scuffing & marking.

There are a number of factors that influence how much the potential buyer perceives a book is worth. Some of these factors are about perceptions of the content but others include the binding method (hard or case bound books are worth more than soft cover or paperbacks), the number of pages or thickness of the book and last but not least, how the cover looks.

Our in house graphic artists have designed hundreds of covers. They also understand the practical aspects of cover design like spine width and positioning of barcode.

We are happy to help you design a great looking cover for your book.

Email us on enquiries@qprint.com.au or visit our website at www.qprint.com.au

Self-publishing journey starts in Long Tan

Lieutenant Colonel Charles Mollison has achieved a lot since he led his men home from Vietnam in 1967, but the men and memories from the 12-months spent there still inspire him today. Part of that inspiration has been channelled into a book, Long Tan and beyond: Alpha Company 6 RAR in Vietnam 1996-67.
Charles spent four-and-a-half years writing the memoir, which he describes as a labour of love. He also took charge of the end product by self-publishing.
Charles admits the self-publishing journey has been a steep learning curve. He’s had to learn how to market and promote the book, and become skilled at posting and packaging.

“Printing the book was easy. I was fortunate to find a local company who specialised in book printing. The people at Queensland Complete Printing gave me great advice on what to do and what not to do,” he said.
“Self-publishing gave me the freedom to choose the paper quality, cover design and the overall look and feel of the book, and I’ve had a lot of positive feedback on it,” he said.
Recently, Charles enlisted the help of a distributor, a decision which saw the book’s sales double to more than 8,500 copies sold.
Charles regularly gets phone calls from people who are thinking about self-publishing and want a few guidelines. His advice is to have a firm idea of how you want the book to look.
“In the very early stages you need to think about how you want the book marketed because that governs the quality of the production and the price,” Charles said. “You also need a very clear idea of who your market is and how big it is.”
Recent changes in digital printing technology means self-publishers no longer need to print a thousand copies to make it economical. Queensland Complete Printing recently installed a digital printer that allows printing of just one book, or ten, or whatever quantity is required at a fraction of the pre-digital cost.
For those budding writers out here, Charles highly recommends self-publishing, and for those interested in reading an authentic account of young Australians involved in one of modern history’s most controversial conflicts, this writer highly recommends ‘Long Tan and beyond’.
Find out more email us on enquiries@qprint.com.au or visit our website at www.qprint.com.au

Excellence in Printing...Again!

At Friday night’s Queensland Printing Industries Craftsmanship Awards, held at the Sofitel in Brisbane, Queensland Complete Printing Services (QPrint) demonstrated yet again that the highest levels of printing expertise can be found right here on the Sunshine Coast. Taking a standout total of 9 Awards, including the two most prestigious awards for the night, saw QPrint continue to establish themselves amongst the printing elite in Queensland. A right usually reserved for large print houses located in Brisbane. For the Third consecutive year, QPrint has won the outstanding Queensland State Government’s Business Excellence and Innovation award, whilst again winning the most prestigious award of the night, Judges’ Choice. The Business Excellence and Innovation award recognises contributions made by the company to the industry overall, whilst the Judges’ choice award recognises the best printing work submitted in Queensland. The remainder of the total saw 3 gold, 1 silver and 3 bronze. Find out more at www.qprint.com.au or email us on enquiries@qprint.com.au

When asked about the Business Excellence and Innovation award Director Anne Blacklaw said “It’s an honour to receive this award. We’ve previously won this award in the category for businesses with ten employees or less, twice! This year we were competing with businesses that employ up to thirty people.” “These awards aren’t about me,” said Anne. “The awards are about our staff. Without the staff ? their team spirit and their high standards, we’d be nowhere. Near enough is never good enough for them ? they aim for perfection every time.” Both the Judges’ Choice award and gold medal for book printing were awarded for a book titled ‘Kids of Tasmania’ which a special leather bound version was presented to Prince Fredrick & Princess Mary of Denmark. Innovations at Queensland Printing within the past twelve months include the addition of the Indigo HP digital printing facility, enabling personalized printing of anything from posters to books within minutes. The added benefit of this service is the ability to do small print runs, allowing authors to test their market before investing large sums of money into their project.

Taking Marketing to New Levels

Queensland Complete Printing Services and two of its long term clients, High Tech Health www.hightechhealth.com.au and Biolytix www.biolytix.com, are about to embark on a program of testing the boundaries of personalisation. Using our HP Indigo digital press, XMPie personalisation software & InDesign software we will explore the boundaries of modern personalisation. Our goal is to significantly increase the response rate and sales generated from their newsletters and other printed material. This is a really exciting piece of research & development. As we learn what we can do by marrying High Tech's database to their message we should be able to achieve some outstanding results that will reaffirm High Tech as market leaders.

This research project will be overseen by final year Information Technology student Cameron Parry. Cameron is doing the Industry Placement component of his Information Technology degree from Griffith University with us.

This project is a great example of engaging in cooperation to achieve a significant result. From what we learn we can help many clients take on the brave new world of marketing.
Learn more visit www.qprint.com.au or email us on enquiries@qprint.com.au

Customer sends thanks

Family Challenge recently thanked Queensland Printing for its ongoing service to its organization. Family Challenge presented Queensland Printing with these flowers thanking them for constant great service & delivery whenever it was required.
For more information go to Queensland Printing website or email us on enquiries@qprint.com.au
or you may like to look at Family Challenge website