Advice For Someone Using A Professional Printer For The First Time

I don't know of a good basic FAQ for printing, but I can try to address some of your issues.

What is a "large quantity", IanB? Tens, hundreds, thousands? In my experience this is probably the most critical issue, since it pretty much determines the printing method used (and thus the cost). Anything under about a thousand copies will these days likely be printed "digitally", which essentially means run off on a colour laser printer. In my experience, as long as you are not fanatical about colour accuracy, this method is very forgiving of the way the source file is set up, and most houses will take standard PDFs. It is much more expensive on a per-unit basis than offset printing, but there is also little/no "set up" cost, which means that for short runs it is often far more affordable in terms of total cost.

Once you get to big runs, where you need offset printing (presses that use metal plates for different colour inks), things change a fair bit, as you have to deal with colour separations and possibly spot (Pantone) colours as well. The setup costs for this kind of printing can be very substantial (making metal plates is expensive), but once set up, the cost per unit is far less than digital printing. If this is your first time out, I'd suggest either avoiding going this route, or finding a very understanding print shop that is willing to hold your hand through the production process.

As for bleeds, that refers to when objects on your document go all the way to the edge of a page. The problem with using bleeds is that they require the printer to print the page on a larger physical piece of paper, with the bleeding objects slightly over the desired edge, and then trim that paper down to size, cut so that the bleeding section is cut through (to avoid a white unprinted edge). But because the cutting is not always absolutely accurate, you need to leave space between the edge of the page and any material that absolutely has to be on it (e.g., text), so that the trimming will only cut away some of the bleed, but not the critical material.

Bleeds make setting up (and printing) your document much more complicated, and you will be much better off if you can avoid bleeds for your first experience doing professional printing. If not, I'd again suggest that you shop around for a print house that says they'll be willing to walk you through the process of how to format your document to do this.

I'm sure others here that are more experienced in the printing process can point you to more comprehensive resources, or give you more detailed advice.