Get In Touch With This Guide

We do not take jobs, quotes or messages. This page sets out what we offer instead, and what to bring to a printer.

Brick storefront on a main street with stacked brochures in the display window — An AI-generated picture of a brick shopfront on a New England main street. It illustrates the setting and is not a photograph of any real print shop.

The routes we have

We are an independent guide to the print trade in Massachusetts, and nothing on this site sends a message to anyone. There is no contact form here and no inbox behind one, so our pages are the route. The process helper on Resources works through what a job needs and names the process that usually fits, and Community Faq answers the sceptical questions about choosing who prints. Both let you settle a question before you call a shop, without writing to us.

Settle the size, the quantity and the file before you ask anyone for a price, because the answer you get depends on what you bring.

Eighth Inch Bleed

Empty tree-lined main street with brick shopfronts on a clear morning — An AI-generated street view with no shop name or sign in it, so it points to no real business. It shows the kind of street a local print shop might sit on.

What to bring to a first message to a printer

Have the job type to hand, whether that is a brochure, a banner, business cards, a menu or plans, along with the finished size, the quantity, whether the design will be reprinted, what you have already tried and the state of the artwork. Quantity decides the process. Digital presses cost little to set up but charge the same per copy throughout a run, so short runs suit digital and longer runs suit offset, which is why we would ask a printer to quote both, as the University of Scranton's printing services explains. For artwork that runs to the edge, a university print shop's print-ready checklist asks for 0.125 inch of extra image beyond the trim on every side. Confirm that figure with the printer you use, and say whether your file already has that bleed.