How to write a printing quote request that gets a real answer in 24 hours.

A printing factory can only price what it can see. When an inquiry leaves out the size, the page count or the delivery port, the reply has to start with questions, and the exchange that could have taken one round takes four. The fastest quote requests are not longer than the slow ones — they are simply complete. Below is the anatomy of a complete one, taken from a real email we received recently from an interior design studio in Australia, anonymized with their permission-free distance: no names, no company, nothing that points back to them. What remains is the structure, and the structure is what gets you quoted in 24 hours instead of next week.

The anatomy of a model RFQ, line by line

The email asked for 100 copies of an A3 landscape hardcover portfolio book in linen. Watch what each line does for the person pricing it.

• "A3 landscape, 420mm wide × 297mm high. Please confirm you can produce this size." Exact dimensions in millimetres, plus a direct feasibility question. A3 landscape is wide enough that binding and cover production need checking — the buyer flagged the one thing that could break the quote before anyone wasted time on it.
• "A warm white linen hardcover, with our name in light champagne-gold foil, raised. Please confirm feasibility on linen and clearly identify any alternative finishing method." Two finishing specs, and then the sentence that separates good buyers from hopeful ones: if this doesn't work, tell me what does. Foil on linen behaves differently than foil on coated paper, and a buyer who invites the honest answer gets a buildable quote instead of a flattering one. This buyer's finish was simple enough to describe in a sentence. Anything bigger or more complex — large-area or layered foil, foil combined with embossing, unconventional materials, a layout that breaks the usual grid — deserves an attached sample photo or design mockup instead. Finish vocabulary is slippery even between two people sharing a language; a picture is exact.
• "Please quote 157gsm and indicate the additional cost of 200gsm if suitable." A named paper weight with a priced alternative. The estimator can run both without asking anything.
• "Separate prices for 80, 100 and 120 internal pages. If your production requires a different page multiple, please specify the nearest suitable count." Three page counts — and an awareness that presses work in signatures. This buyer already knows the answer might be 96 or 128 rather than 100, and said so, which saved a round of email.
• "Delivery: Gold Coast, Australia; exact address to follow." A city and a port are enough for a freight estimate. "Address to follow" is honest and costs nothing.
• "Please confirm whether you can accept 100 copies. If this is below your minimum, state your minimum order and any short-run option." The MOQ question, asked straight. Every factory has a minimum; naming it early is in the buyer's interest, not just ours.
• "Please itemise: unit and total cost, foil tooling, samples and proofs, packaging, shipping, taxes and duties. Estimated total in AUD, sea and air freight options." The itemization request — the single most important line in the email. A total price is a number; an itemized quote is a document you can compare, negotiate and learn from.
• "Lead times, payment terms, quote validity, and the cost of swatches and a physical sample before production. No artwork is attached at this stage." Timeline, terms, samples — and a boundary. "No artwork attached" tells us not to wait for files before quoting.

That email took perhaps fifteen minutes to write. It was quoted in full within a day, with no clarifying questions needed. The information in it is not exotic — it is simply all there.

Ask for quantity tiers, and let the curve show you the sweet spot

One thing this buyer could have done — and we wish more buyers would — is ask for prices at several quantities in the same email: for example 500, 1,000, 2,000 and 5,000 copies. It costs you one extra line and it changes what you learn.

Offset printing has a fixed entry cost — plates, make-ready, binding setup — that is the same whether you print 500 books or 5,000. Spread over 500 copies that fixed cost is a visible slice of the unit price; spread over 5,000 it nearly vanishes. So the unit price always falls as quantity rises, but it does not fall in a straight line. It drops steeply at first and then flattens. Somewhere on that curve is a knee, and the knee is where your book should be printed.

With a tiered quote in hand you can see the knee yourself: if 2,000 copies costs 30% less per book than 1,000, but 5,000 saves only another 4%, the smart quantity is probably 2,000 — unless you can actually sell 5,000. You are no longer asking "what does my book cost?" but "what does my book cost here?", which is the question that decides print runs. Two or four tiers are enough; more than four turns the quote into a spreadsheet exercise. And if your ideal quantity is below the factory's offset minimum, a good factory will say so and price a digital short run alongside — the crossover between offset and digital is exactly this arithmetic.

The template

Steal this structure and fill in your own brackets:

• Product and purpose, in one sentence (portfolio book for client presentations).
• Finished size in mm, with any unusual dimension flagged.
• Cover material and finishes, with "or advise the alternative" invited. For large-area, layered or mixed finishes — foil, embossing, unusual stock, non-standard layouts — attach a sample photo or design mockup.
• Interior paper: weight and coating, plus one priced alternative.
• Page count, in 2–3 options, acknowledging signature multiples.
• Quantity: 2–4 tiers (e.g. 500 / 1,000 / 2,000 / 5,000) — or your exact number plus "and your MOQ if higher".
• Delivery city and country; exact address later.
• Request: itemized quote (unit/total, tooling, samples, packing, freight, duties), your preferred currency, sea and air options, lead time, payment terms, validity.
• Boundary: "no artwork attached at this stage" — or a link to files if you have them.

The six mistakes we see most

• No size, or size in vague terms. "A4-ish" is not a size. The trim decides the press sheet layout, and the layout decides the price.
• Asking for "best price" with no quantity. There is no price without a quantity. Give tiers if you are undecided — that is what they are for.
• Not mentioning the destination. A book is heavy. Freight can rival production cost, and "China to where?" changes the answer by thousands of dollars.
• Burying the hard question. If your format is unusual — A3 landscape, sprayed edges, a 1,000-page count — say it in the first three lines, not the last line.
• Describing a complex finish in words alone. "Some gold decoration" can mean a 10mm logo or a full-cover foil spread, and the two price nothing alike. If your design involves large-area, layered or mixed finishing — foil, embossing, debossing, specialty materials, a non-standard layout — send a sample photo, a mockup or a reference to a book you like. A factory can price a picture; it can only guess at an adjective.
• Asking for a total only. Without line items you cannot compare two factories, and you cannot see what moves when the spec changes. Where the money goes in a printing quote is worth ten minutes before you write.

What happens after you press send

A complete RFQ goes to the estimator the same day. Paper is priced from the mill list, the format is imposed on a press sheet, finishing and freight are added, and the answer comes back itemized — at our factory within 24 hours, Monday to Saturday. Proofing adds 3–5 days and production typically 15–25 once you approve, which is why the calendar starts behaving the moment the specs are fixed. If you are still comparing suppliers afterwards, the next read is how to compare printing quotes — and if you are still deciding whether China makes sense for your run at all, when printing in China pays off and when it honestly does not is the honest version.