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Date:         Tue, 15 Dec 1992 15:46:21 -0500
Reply-To:     "Roger Myers 'MYERS@AB.WVNET.EDU'" <MYERS@AB.WVNET.EDU>
From:         "Roger Myers 'MYERS@AB.WVNET.EDU'" <MYERS@AB.WVNET.EDU>
Subject:      TAN: Who owns the masters?

I know this is a bit off the topic from PageMaker but I thought some of you
might know more about how print shops and DTP shops are run in other parts of
the country.

Drema runs a small DTP shop from our home here in Philippi.  She earns some
of her profits from DTP work designing brochures, flyers, etc. but also
a great deal from printing the jobs for clients or having a local print shop
print them.  (She gets a discount from the print shop)

Drema has lost several jobs in the past due to clients taking home masters to
proofread and then canceling the printing portion of the job when they
find that the master can either be run off satisfactorily on their own
photo copier or cheeper at another print shop.  Also, she finds that many
clients want her to give them the masters after the job has been printed and
she is worried that some of them will use these masters to print at other shops
or locally on photo copiers.  She wants to either not let them have the
masters or do something to render them useless for copying but perhaps they
have a right to them?  One client wants the 30 or so screened photos so
they can use them in newspaper articles while another client wants her 3
scanned photographs so she can let a binder who is binding the booklets
she had us print use them just in case he needs extra pages.  She had us
print exactly 50 copies of the booklet and the binder will get the folding,
stitching, and binding job.  She wants 50 bound copies and should have had us
run off extras to account for waistage but didn't.  She wants to be able
to run off any small number of needed pages on her photo copier.  If she had
let Drema do the entire job she would have printed pages as needed to
be sure that 50 bound copies were delivered.

If a client has a DTP shop design and print business cards for them are they
entitled to the master page with 12 business cards layed out on it?  If
so they might be smart to ask for it and print
and cut their own in the future.

There are also clients who are very upset if Drema charges them for scanning a
photograph when we have charged them some time in the past for scanning the
same photograph.

If a client wants their scanned photographs, plates, master pages, etc. can
Drema charge them a fee for each master page wanted or simply refuse?
Can Drema simply give them the master pages and/or scanned/screened photographs
with a diagnal line drawn through them?

The problem is that often Drema gives the client an estimate based upon
getting the entire design and printing job so when the client later changes
his/her mind and only wants the design work but wants the master pages
they feel that Drema has contracted to do the design portion for the low
price she quoted them when in fact Drema was counting on making some
additional profits from the printing of it.

One client got Drema to give her a quote on typesetting a 120 page book,
printing 500 copies, and having it hard bound.  Drema searched around and got
quotes on printing the pages and binding the book where she would get a
discount.  She gave the lady a quote in which she broke down the cost
for each portion of the entire job.  Drema thought that the lady would not
go for the entire printing and binding until she saw that she had a typeset
book.  So she added a little to the binding and printing portion and agreed to
typeset the book for $360.00 ($3.00 per page).  The lady let her typeset the
entire book and then took the master copy Drema gave her to proofread to a
large printshop to have it printed and bound.  She said that Drema's
price was a bit higher then theirs.  So how should Drema protect herself?

I feel that it should work like this.  If the estimate states that it is
an estimate for designing and printing a job then the client should not be
able to hold the DTP shop to the estimate for any portion of it unless
the entire design work and printing is done.  For example if Drema says
that she will design a 2 sided legal sized brochure and print it at $20.00
for designing and $110.00 for printing 500 copies and the client decides to
change the number of copies to 100 or decides to get it printed elsewhere
then Drema should not be held to her $20.00 design price because she partially
was basing it on getting to print 500 copies.  If they only want the job
designed later and want a master Drema should be able to say "Ok, the bill
for that is $40.00".  Would she need to say something about this on the
estimate or could she simply have a charge of $10.00 per side of a page
for master copies?  I feel that if a client wants an estimate just for the
design work on a job that he/she would be entitled to a master copy because
it was understood from the start that he/she was not planning to have the
DTP shop print it.  How do you do estimates?  Especially difficult are those
estimates which people telephone in for.  How do you handle those?  They press
the DTP shop for an estimate on a job and then try to hold it to the estimate
even though there are so many variables like the complexity of the typesetting
work, layout format, paper quality, etc. so that they are often disappointed
when the price charged is not what was estimated.  To make a good estimate
the client needs to bring all matterials available and sit down and explain
exactly what they want the final product to look like.

A client thought she was doing herself a great favor by typing the 50 page
booklet in with a word processor that Drema didn't own.  She then exported
the entire document as DOS text and gave it to Drema on a floppy.  The booklet
contained many charts and several graphs and needed to be layed out 2 pages
per side of a sheet of paper.  It needed headers and page numbers and
spell checked among other things as well as redrawing of graphs and
reallignment of columns on the many tables.  She was rather disgusted that
Drema charged her $120.00 for the entire job when Drema had appearantly
told her several months before that she could do it for around $30.00.  Drema
had given her a quote of $30.00 when she said that it was going to be in
WordPerfect ready to print and only needed a little touching up and run through
the spell checker.

When a client pays you to design and print a brochure, flyer, newsletter, etc.
who own's the rights to the masters and to the computer files?  I know
that there is a print shop near here which charges $10.00 per page for making
plates which they then use for printing but if I were to pay them to make
the plates and print a job then asked for my plates they would refuse
because they know that I can take the plates to another shop and get them
run off.  Also, I have heard that if you are designing something for a
client and they want to take the masters home to proof them you should
draw a diagnal line down each page with an ink pen to prevent them from
running off useful copies of the master pages.  If the client has paid
for something to be typeset then does the client have the right to all the owrk
you did including all screened photographs, master pages, plates, .TIF
files, Word Perfect files, PageMaker files, etc.?  If they demand the
master pages could you just draw diagnal lines through them and let them have
them?  Does a print shop have any right to make it more expensive for
a client to get the same job reprinted somewhere else?
How could you make the computer files readable but useless and not easily
fixed?

Here is a similar question.  Is a print shop under any obligation to keep
master pages, plates, computer files, etc. just in case the client wants
to reprint the job later?  Could the shop simply tell all clients that
all masters, plates, files, etc. will be distroyed after the current run unless
the client pays for storage?  How is all this handled by print shops and
by DTP shops?

                        Roger

INTERNET:  MYERS@AB.WVNET.EDU

Mailing address:  Roger Myers  Route 3 Box 269-D  Philippi, WV  26416

FAX:  (304) 457-6239
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU