$60 already? Sounds a bit high or like you're not purchasing your paper in bulk or not using book rate at the post office.
I purchase paper by the case. If I purchased it by a small pack, it would cost a couple bucks for 50 sheets or somewhere around seven bucks for a ream. However, I pay about seventeen bucks for a case which is ten reams of 20 lb. paper. That's generally enough paper to print out a manuscript about ten times. Cost for one manuscript would be about $1.70.
Ink is the next expense. If I purchase ink cartridges individually, those can cost $25 to $30 bucks and that's frequently just barely enough to print out one manuscript. I usually buy a refill kit and use that to extend the cartridge life. My last kit cost $50, but it's already given over thirty refills and still has enough in the bottles to give me another 20 to 30 refills. Cost to print a manuscript drops to about $1.00.
Postage is the area where you can only select among rates and I go for book rate. There's no need to get a signed receipt since that generally aggravates the agent or publisher receiving the package. Likewise, there's no real rush to get it to them unless you know they're going to die within the next few days in which case the question is why are you sending to them? Using book rate, I can generally get the cost down to about $5.00 per manuscript. Of course, distance to publishers varies, so you many see that cost go up or down a dollar. Still, assuming $5.00, that brings the total cost for a manuscript to approximately $8.00.
So, assuming you're not using all these shortcuts to save money, you may want do some shopping to cut your long term costs. Of course, this means spending as much as you've spent already, but you save in the long run and that means fewer expenditures and less per expenditure per manuscript.
