A printer is a professional who can help you create color or black-and-white printed materials in a variety of paper designs, weights and finishing.

Your choice of printer could very well vary with each printing job you order. Seasoned buyers of printing services often use multiple printers regularly. For each printing job they order, these buyers try to "fit" the print job to the printer so that they get the best quality and cost as possible.

That's because printers can specialize in many niches. For example, business form printers specialize in continuous-form materials such as invoices and purchase orders. Other printers focus on books, newspaper inserts or glossy post cards. Printers can incorporate different printing methods as well, such as the popular offset lithography and gravure printing, while others use techniques like flexographic press and screen printing.

Giving all your jobs to one printer often means paying more than you need to or settling for lower quality. Some printers may accept a job they don't have the equipment to do themselves, only to outsource it to someone who can.

Always put your large projects out to bid
Because different printers use different types of equipment, they are not well suited to handle every print job. If you're planning on a brochure that will use four or six colors, the price quotes you get are likely to vary depending upon the printer's capability.

You may find fewer discrepancies for simpler color jobs like business cards and letterhead that you have done regularly, and find it less worth your while to ask for bids for those.

Ask if the printer will run a given job in-house
It will be more cost effective to find the appropriate printer for a job than to have a printer serve as a middleman and send the job to another company.

Ask about scheduling
Some printers do not rigidly schedule each press, allowing you to jump in with a small job and get it done very quickly. Other printers schedule very carefully, requiring long lead times before a job can be finished. Some printers incorporate ganging into their scheduling process as well.

Check references
A critical area to investigate is service. There are many areas where a printing job can go wrong. An effective liaison will help manage the process smoothly, provide information as needed, and trouble shoot when necessary.

Build a relationship
Remember, though, that even if you regularly use different printers, choosing printers is about building relationships. You want a partner who will make recommendations about paper sizes or ink that can save you time or money, someone who will guarantee the quality of your print job, and who will sometimes go the extra mile because of your relationship to deliver on time.