Welcome to the Publication Planner

The Publication Planner instantly delivers the approximate costs of producing a publication, whether it's a 96 page glossy magazine with 100,000 print run or an 8 page newsletter going to a couple of thousand people. The Publication Planner covers design, print, editorial, photography and mailing - and it allows you to decide which of these elements you want to do yourself, and which you'd like to outsource.

The Publication Planner lets you play around with various costs - the number of pages, the source of the copy and pictures, the design style, the print run - allowing you to see how you can get the most out of your publishing budget. And you can do all this at your own pace and in your own time; you can cost up some publications, leave them parked in your account on the Publication Planner, and go away to think about it some more. When you come back and log back into the Planner, all your previously-planned publications will still be sitting there, waiting for you to pick them up and play some more.

Heard enough? To jump straight in, just CLICK HERE to open the Publication Planner in a new window.

Who will benefit from using the Publication Planner?

Well, this really breaks down into two main categories:

• People who are publishing already; and
• People who don't publish at the moment, but are thinking about doing so

Naturally, this includes you - or you wouldn't be wandering around a contract publisher's website! Let's take it back to basics, and ask the vital question...

Why publish in the first place?

To which the answer is - because a strong stable of publications, carefully planned and well executed, will help your business or organisation:

• Make your members or customers feel more attached to you. In consultants' terminology, they will "engage more closely with your brand", which when translated into simple language means that they will be more inclined to renew their membership or buy more of your products and services, and will be less inclined to desert you. It's much (much) harder to win a new customer or recruit a new member than to keep an existing one.
• Make more money from your existing customers. You know, the old "cross-sell" and "up-sell". Publications are an excellent means of persuading your members or customers to increase their existing spend with you, or to let them know about other stuff you offer that they don't seem to have cottoned onto yet.
• Communicate effectively with your stakeholders. Sorry, a bit of MBA-speak crept in there... reverting to proper English, this means that people and organisations who are important to your business are more likely to feel good about continuing to work with you or support you if they have a clear idea of what you're up to, what your aims are, and how you're planning to get there. Publications are one of the best ways of communicating that message. "Stakeholders" for commercial organisations could include your shareholders, your suppliers, your staff, your bankers, the investment community... and for membership organisations are likely to comprise trustees, partner organisations and policy makers as well as your staff.
• Win new customers, or recruit new members. Virtually all marketing activities involve publishing - whether it's a direct mailshot, a new website or a new brochure, it's all publishing.

And that's why you need to publish. Unless you have more new business than you know what to do with, publishing is an effective means of winning new business and keeping existing business. Which leads on to the next question...

Are you publishing effectively?

A simple question, and one that you can answer by considering the following:

• Are your publications achieving the four aims listed above?
• Are your publications produced on time and to budget?
• Are you completely happy with the look and feel of your publications?
• Have you benchmarked the prices you're paying for design, editorial and print as being thoroughly competitive in the marketplace?

If the answer to all of the above questions is "yes", then (with great respect) what on earth are you doing hanging around this website? Congratulations, your publishing is working a treat - it ain't broken, so don't fix it!

If the answer to any of the above questions is "no" or "well... sort of" then perhaps we might be able to help. If you're working with an in-house team, then it may be that they're overworked, or out of their depth, or too expensive in terms of overhead, or just not particularly good at publishing (or, alarmingly, all of the above). If you're working with an outsourced contractor already, then they may be charging too much, or have too much work on (with your project somewhere near the bottom of the pecking order), or again they may simply not be that sharp.

Use the Publication Planner to find out approximately what it would cost to get Cambridge Publishers Ltd to work on some or all aspects of your publishing activities. Then take a look around the rest of this website to find out the kind of organisation we are, the experience and skills we have, and (probably most importantly) what our customers, past and present, have to say about the benefits of working with us.

When you're completely satisfied that a) we know what we're doing and b) we have the requisite background and experience to produce what you need and c) our prices seem to be in the right ballpark - then, and only then, we recommend that you speak to us. Contact Mark Rosselli on 01223 477411.

We look forward to hearing from you.