Re: Binding costs

[Suzette Seveny <sseveny -at- PETVALU -dot- COM>]

My rule of thumb has been that the type of documentation determines the
binding.  If it will be referred to often, either a binder or cerloxing
works best because it lays flat.  Cerloxing is actually not very expensive,
and can usually be done inhouse.

For more reference/technical types of documentation that are only referred
to occasionally, some type of thermal or cloth binding, similar to the
Docutech type, works well.  Again, not that expensive.

Suzette Leeming

-----Original Message-----
From:   Damien Braniff [SMTP:Damien_Braniff -at- PAC -dot- CO -dot- UK]
Sent:   Wednesday, June 03, 1998 7:55 AM
To:     TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
Subject:        Binding costs

Currently we supply the lit (reasonably largish manuals, 200+ pages) in an
A4 binder with dividers for each of the sections.  It's been a bit of a
historical thing and been built up over the years.  Each section can "stand
alone" and has it's own contents page where appropriate.  There is no
overall contents apart from section titles and no index (doesn't make it
very friendly).

What I'm looking at is making each section a chapter and have an overall
contents and add an index (as discussed before on the list - all in Word!).
What has now been suggested is to either move to an A5 binder to make it
more manageable (though harder to read) or to go the whole hog and have it
bound as a book.  My main reservation is that we've had 3 releases/updates
in the last 18 months and I feel we'd need to sell a lot to make it worth
while going to a bound book.

Has anyone had experience of going down this road?  Pros/cons?

TIA

Damien Braniff
Technical Author
PAC International