I wish our copies were this amount.  Here in Texas they are 1.00 pp and our copy costs exceed the retrieval fees we get many times.  How would you like to put out money in excess of what you are getting back?  That is why things should not be the same from state to state and in our state it really does matter what we put out before we get - like David said - with our copy fees so high we should charge more pp - and we used to - don't know why that changed.  When I do large jobs such as cell tower searches and/or highway expansion projects - my out of pocket run anywhere from 300.00 to 500.00.  The thing that gets me is on these large type projects some of the companies tell you we need to know if costs are going to exceed 100.00.  Hummmmmm let's see - you need at least one Plat 6.00, one company requires tax cert - 10.00, a commercial deed - 6-9, a commercial d/t - 40.00; leases - oh probably 40.00 more, how about some modifications, ucc, etc - add 40.00 more - oh and then you need copies of 60 year back of deeds - I can't seem to understand why they ask a question like that - I say, yes, everytime your costs will exceed 100.00 - rarely does it not.  Now I know it might just depend on what state you are in.  Heck 500 copies would only cost you 50.00.  As you can see, sometimes we feel as we never are paid for work cuz as payments come in, major money goes out in costs.  That is why, we should charge more pp to cover the money we front OR ask for a flat amount of upfront costs for large projects.