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Subject:Re: The Benefits of Printing In-House From:"Dick Margulis" <margulis -at- mail -dot- fiam -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>, "John David Hickey" <dave -at- toonboom -dot- com> Date:Fri, 1 Oct 1999 13:09:51 -0400
John Hickey asks:
Does anyone have any recommendations or information about what is required
for inhouse printing of a manual?
Uncle Dick replies:
What is required is knowledge, experience, and equipment that your company cannot justify owning for part-time production.
It is certainly possible to put images on paper inhouse (i.e., use your high-speed, high-quality copying equipment instead of paying a printer to prepare offset plates and run the job on a press. This assumes you can handle a large enough sheet size to accommodate two pages on a side.
With some guidance from a professional printer or printing consultant, you should be able to master the niceties of imposition, paper handling, etc.
At that point you should consider sending out the flat printed sheets to a bindery for finishing.
However, unless you are printing VERY short runs of these 150-page manuals, I find it hard to believe that you will actually save money.
I think your efforts would be better spent doing some serious shopping for a commercial printer who is set up to do this kind of work economically.
