For Booklets & Books
Page count, cover stock, inner stock, binding — booklet quotes have more moving parts than anything else you print. MaxPax reads all of them and prices from your sheet.
5 free quotes · No credit card
Hi, We'd like a quote on 300 A5 booklets for our graduation ceremony. 24 inner pages on 130gsm silk, 250gsm gloss cover, saddle-stitched. Full colour throughout. We'd need them delivered two weeks before the event. Thanks, Daniel
And the reply that goes out
MaxPax does not invent a new email format. The reply lands in your customer's inbox the way your own replies always have, signed off in your name.
Hi Daniel, Thanks for the enquiry. Here is the quote for 300 A5 saddle-stitched programme booklets, full colour throughout. Quantity: 300 Size: A5 (148 × 210 mm) Inner: 24 pages on 130gsm silk Cover: 250gsm gloss Binding: Saddle-stitched Colour: Full colour throughout Total: $894.00 Turnaround is 8 business days from approved artwork. To hit your delivery date, the file would need to be locked by end of next week. If you'd like a printed proof first, we can do one for $48. Cheers, Sarah
Your template, your signature, your turnaround language. MaxPax fills in the priced bit.
Restraint, by design
Some booklet enquiries are scoping conversations. MaxPax knows the difference between a quote and a question.
Hi, We're putting together a membership handbook for the club and want to get a rough idea of cost so we can budget. It'll be A5, somewhere between 40 and 80 pages I'd guess. We'd like it to feel like a proper book but we don't have a huge budget. Probably 250 copies, maybe more if we can include the regional chapters. What do you reckon? Sara
MaxPax reads this as a budgeting question, not a quote. The page count is a range, the quantity is uncertain, the binding is not nominated, and "feel like a proper book" could be saddle-stitched, perfect-bound, or wire-o. The email lands in your review queue with a note: "Quote not sent. Page-count and quantity ranges, binding not nominated." You reply when you can talk Sara through the binding options and what each one does to her budget.
Why MaxPax
Generic print quoting software assumes every print job looks the same. It doesn't. MaxPax uses your own pricing sheet as the source of truth — so it quotes booklets the way your shop already does.
01
Inner pages, cover stock, binding — each moves price independently and most email enquiries mention them out of order. MaxPax reads them in any order and maps each to the right input on your sheet.
02
If you don't reply the day they email, they move on. Booklet buyers usually have three suppliers on a spreadsheet — whoever replies first stays on it.
03
A wrong page-count assumption compounds across the whole run. Pulling inputs straight from the email into your sheet removes the transcription step where most mistakes happen.
What your customer sees
You are on the press. You have not seen the enquiry arrive. Here is what shows up on Daniel's end.
One paragraph in plain English. The kind of email your shop gets every day.
Same address as the enquiry. Your signature. The spec read back correctly. The total itemised. The turnaround named. About a minute, start to finish. Daniel has not had time to open a second tab.
"Looks great, please proceed." That reply lands in your inbox. The next thing you do is start the job, not work out a price.
You see all of this in your sent folder later, exactly as if you had typed each reply yourself.
Setting it up
Fifteen minutes the first time. Once.
| Field | Type | Cell | Required | Options |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quantity | Number | B2 | Yes | — |
| Size | Select | B3 | Yes | A4, A5, A6, Square 148mm, Square 210mm |
| Inner pages | Number | B4 | Yes | Must be a multiple of 4 |
| Inner stock | Select | B5 | Yes | 100gsm bond, 115gsm gloss, 130gsm silk, 150gsm gloss |
| Cover stock | Select | B6 | Yes | Same as inner, 200gsm gloss, 250gsm gloss, 300gsm matt |
| Binding | Select | B7 | Yes | Saddle-stitched, Perfect-bound, Wire-o, PUR |
| Colour | Select | B8 | Yes | Full colour throughout, Colour cover & B&W inner, B&W throughout |
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
A plain-English blurb describing what this product is. MaxPax uses it to route incoming emails to the right product, even when the customer uses different words for the same thing.
OUTPUT
The single cell on your sheet that holds the final price. MaxPax writes the inputs above into your sheet, lets it calculate, and reads this cell back.
Why this works
MaxPax does not decide whether a 40-page booklet should be saddle-stitched or wire-o. It does not assume the per-copy cost of switching from 130gsm silk inner to 150gsm gloss, the surcharge for a soft-touch cover, or the discount you have always given the school that runs your kids' yearbooks. Your sheet does all of that, and it always has.
What MaxPax does is mechanical and narrow. It reads the enquiry. It writes the page count, quantity, size, inner stock, cover stock, and binding into the input cells you nominated on your sheet. It waits for the sheet to recalculate. It reads the output cell. That number, whatever it is, is what goes into the reply. The AI never invents a binding, never rounds the page count, never picks a stock the customer did not name. The math is yours.
This matters in graduation season when twenty programmes hit the queue in a fortnight. Or when you trial a Tuesday-discount perfect-bind run and want every booklet quoted on it. Or when cover stock prices change in June and you want every quote from Monday to use the new rate. You open the sheet, change the formula, save. The next quote runs on the new number. No ticket to us. No new version of MaxPax. No waiting. The sheet you keep is the sheet that runs your shop.