Printing Your Manual

This has been another one of those no-brainers for me—finding something that works so well and sticking with it.

I printed the first manual I wrote using my own high-speed laser printer thinking I could save some of my profits. Because of a few high resolution graphics (in black and white), each manual would take about thirteen minutes to print…and then I still had to take them to the neighborhood printer for hole punching, binding and shrink wrapping.

I found a printing company whose price for printing alone was a little less than my cost for paper and toner—about 4 cents a page. And, I didn’t have to cart them off to be bound and wrapped.

Here’s how it works. I type my manuals in Microsoft WORDTM and send the file on a CD to my printing company. You can send electronically but the file is huge and you run the risk of a transfer error.

The printing company converts my file to PDF and prints from that file on high speech Xerox DocutechTM equipment.

The same printer binds and shrink wraps the manuals and delivers them to my office. First printing of any manual is about a seven day turnaround—after that it’s about 3-4 days.

I still print my own covers and supply them to the printer, leveraging my investment in my high-quality color laser printer. I can print covers for 25-35 cents each compared with my printing company’s charge of $1.50 each. Because printing my own covers requires about thirty seconds of my time to hit the “print” button on my computer (and let them print while I do something else), it’s a no-brainer to pocket the savings. (I use WORDTM to design my covers as well.)

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