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Most new printers available in today’s market are very reasonably priced even the ones from the major manufacturers such as Dell, HP, Canon, and so on can be purchased for a relatively small amount of money.

As usual with all things in our lives there is a catch, with good quality printers the catch is that the original manufacturers cartridge refills may cost more than half as much as the cost of the printer itself.

This is of course the way that the printer manufacturers make their profits, they sell the printer at a very attractive price because they know that the buyer will not think about the cost of a replacement black or colour ink cartridge.

Cartridges can cost anything from £10 up to £40 if you do a considerable amount of printing these costs can spiral out of control and make that cheap printer very expensive to run.

There is however a very viable solution that can cut your costs considerably and make it again viable to use your printer without being overly concerned about its running costs. That solution is to make use of refilled cartridges that are supplied by third-party companies and not the original manufacturer.

Of course the manufacturer prints a warning not only in the instruction manual but actually on a sticker found placed on the top of many new printers which states that you should only use the manufacturer’s original inks.

The reason they want you to use their inks because as we have just stated that is where their profit lies. Making use of third-party ink jet cartridges is a far more cost-effective method of keeping your printer running.

Compatible cartridges as they are known cost considerably less than those produced by the original equipment manufacturer, known as the OEM. The manufacturer will have you believe that theirs are the only cartridges that will actually work in your printer and usually state that other cartridges “may cause damage” to your printer.

Professionally produced compatible inkjet cartridges do not damage printer’s any more than those produced by the OEM, it is true that several years ago the poorly produced replacement inkjet catches did cause clogging and other problems with printers. But such issues have now been resolved and good quality replacement inkjet cartridges are available for every brand of printer on the market.

Making use of refilled cartridges makes good financial sense and does not lower the quality of the printing on paper or even for high-quality photographic prints. They are simply a way to avoid spending a small fortune each year on keeping your printer running.

One of the central narratives in the story of the internet to date has surely been the wealth of opportunities that have been opened up to those who feel they have something they wish to say to the world but have previously lacked any obvious route to relaying it to a wide audience. By self-publishing online, using digital publishing software, significant advantages suddenly become available to the aspirant author, in terms of flexibility and user-friendliness, as well as delivering certain sustainability benefits, as the need to deliver a physical product is negated.

However the central advantage of online publishing is undoubtedly one of accessibility, as geographical boundaries are instantly rendered null and void and the self-published product becomes immediately available to a potential global readership. It becomes possible to communicate and collaborate with like-minded individuals, with the internet of course being a two-way street in terms of the flow of ideas, and the wealth of information available online coming in the varied shape of eBooks and digital magazines and brochures. And when you self-publish via the internet the opportunity for delivering a fully-integrated multimedia product becomes a reality, as photographs, music and podcasts can be appended to any online magazine venture. Digital publishing has been very much a process of democratisation, as the plethora of aspirant authors and editors who have chosen to deliver their material over the web are increasingly joined by leading traditional publishers venturing into this area – it being an area which is absolutely vital if those larger publishing houses are to retain a connection to their audience in the 21st century.

So what precisely are the advantages that stem from the adoption of publisher software? Well, the opportunity to fully engage with the readership is delivered to the self-publisher, as they are given means to record reader habits, and consequently produce content which most closely reflects what items their readership respond to. Similarly email collection options provide route to building a fully-comprehensive database of reader email contact details, and – for those who wish to put a price on their writing – a subscription management system offers secure means of monetizing digital magazine subscriptions. These types of tracking options give the publisher the means to target their advertising more effectively and produce the kind of material that reader habits indicate would be most successful. And of course the costly overheads of providing a physical item are removed, with no outlay being necessary to dip a toe into the world of online publishing, and begin building a readership that could potentially provide a stream of income over time.

To get started in digital publishing all that is required is to utilise, often free, publisher software to upload PDFs or other documents in order to begin delivering search engine-optimised pages that can be added to a website or sent out direct by email. By exploring the burgeoning realm of online magazine or eBook publishing, and gaining readership through online magazine subscription, it becomes not only possible, but relatively simple to bring your voice to a potential audience of millions.