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RE: Company that creates hardcopies (book format)?
Subject:RE: Company that creates hardcopies (book format)? From:"David Locke" <dlocke -at- texas -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 6 Nov 2003 08:02:44 -0600
In determining what kind of printer you need, you also need to know if you
will be making several print runs. Offset jobs means that you will have to
store a large number of manuals until you can ship them. With digital jobs,
you have different run lengths with longer runs coming at cheaper price
breaks.
I haven't did a print run in several years. We used DocuTech vendors, but we
had to have the covers run as an Offset job. Likewise, with our box. In
later box design efforts, we just selected a standard-sized manufactured box
from the print broker's catalog. Then the sleeve was printed and constructed
at a much lower cost than a box, particularly a non-standard sized box. Some
DocuTech vendors will store you covers on their premises. Some can drop ship
the entire package and contents.
With the DocuTech, you just send them your pdf. They rip it and print it.
With Offset jobs you need to have printer ready work. Do not accept any work
from your graphics arts person. The pre-production person will not take any
responsibility for things like version control. The pre-production people
have enough work to do, so they will not cope with successive corrections.
Avoid this by insisting on printer-ready work. If you ever have to send
film, say for an ad that will appear in a magazine, creating the film is the
graphics-arts person's job not yours. Again, it comes down to printer-ready
work. Don't take these responsibilities on yourself. Paying to have work
redone, because it was the wrong version, or the film was shot at the wrong
size is a problem best avoided.
Once you get your books, someone will have to think about storing the
manuals, boxing the orders, and shipping.
RoboHelp for FrameMaker is a NEW online publishing tool for FrameMaker that
lets you easily single-source content to online Help, intranet, and Web.
The interface is designed for FrameMaker users, so there is little or no
learning curve and no macro language required! Call 800-718-4407 for
competitive pricing or download a trial at: http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l4
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