RE: The cost of producing printed documentation

[KMcLauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com]

Renee asked:

> The Business Development department at the company where I 
> work has been trying
> to find information about how much money is spent on printed 
> manual production.
> They have been unsuccessful in locating this information and 
> asked me to pose
> questions to the list. Perhaps some of you may know whether 
> this type of
> information exists and can point me in the right direction.

Somebody needs to qualify the problem a bit more, before 
asking the questions, and suddenly it'll become quite 
apparent who has the answers. They (Biz Dev) probably could 
have asked your local purchasing department, if they'd framed 
their questions usefully.
 
> Here are their questions:
>    What does it cost a company to produce a standard user 
> manual for a given
>    product (complex/simple) (time/cost)?

Not the right question.
Given that a document -- or equivalent online help -- needs 
to be delivered at all, then they need to differentiate 
the paper-specific costs from the entire process. A writer 
(or a group) and possibly an editor and maybe an illustrator, 
and some other people all have to perform a number of tasks 
that are going to be the same (or very similar) whether the 
final output is paper or photons.

>    What does it cost a company that specializes in the 
> production of manuals to
>    produce a user manual for a given product (complex/simple) 
> (time/cost)?

How big a manual? How complex? What format? How "glossy" and "chic"?

>    What is the dollar size of the international, annual 
> market/industry for the
>    following components of the user manual industry:
>       writing of manuals
>       printing of manuals
>       translating manuals to other languages

Again, are they hoping to contrast these figures against 
not doing *any* documentation -- i.e. a back-end cost of 
zero dollars -- or against the comparable costs for producing 
a non-paper form of documentation?

As long as the focus is on breaking out the costs of printed 
documentation, versus electronic documentation, then only 
the printing/handling/shipping costs are relevant.

You still have to pay somebody to learn the product and write 
the PDF/Help/web-pages/video-script/..., with whatever illustrations 
and other aids might be required, and you still have to pay 
for translation to just as many languages, if you need to produce 
documentation in *some* format. Consider those costs a constant 
and remove them from consideration.

What's left -- in the case of printed docs -- is just physical 
production costs.
Decide on your quantities and on the other physical attributes 
I mentioned earlier (size, shape, use of color, paper quality,
binding, inserts (quick reference cards? CDs?), and go ask a 
printing company. They'll be able to provide answers. 
It's what they do.

Or, have I misunderstood what's wanted? 

/kevin

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