Experience of the U.S. Government Printing Office and others has shown that electronic composition of computer processed data is more economical than printing from camera copy produced by the line printers of digital computers. But electronic composition of data not already being processed by computer is not necessarily economical. This analysis examines pages from books and catalogs that are broadly representative of the work encountered by printers to determine the impacts on composition costs arising from computer processing. The study uses "break-even" analysis to determine when the costs of electronic composition become equal to composition by two conventional methods of hot metal composition and one method of photocomposition. Two equations were drawn to permit cost comparison. The results are charted here. In general, the scale of production required to achieve a break-even situation over conventional processes for one time typesetting applications is quite high, generally higher than the typical composing firm encounters. At the present stage of development it is clear that the computer process is far more costly than the output composer. (Several pages may be light.) (JK)