Re: Booklets or anything saddle-stitched

["Gina Jones" <gina -dot- techwriter -at- gmail -dot- com>]

I think 8.5 X 5.5 is your best option. However, I would recommend that they
upgrade the printer on the factory floor to a more high-end that handles
stapling, including saddle-stitching. Then, the guy on the floor would only
need to grab the print-outs and fold.

The high-end printer can be leased and you could switch to black and white
from color to off-set the cost. Of course, the "pretty" cover would need to
be simple and gray-scale....


Thanks,

Gina Jones
Technical Communications Consultant
(404) 271-1382


On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 1:30 PM, McLauchlan, Kevin <
Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> wrote:

> Here's your situation. How do you approach it?
>
> All your major docs for your company's combined hardware-and-software
> products are no longer printed. You make PDFs or WebHelp. Customers need
> _something_ printed to tell them where to start, when they first open
> the box. Some time ago, for this purpose, you created a picture-heavy
> QuickStart Guide sheet. Well, actually it was three sheets,
> double-sided, corner-stapled and tossed in the box where it would be the
> first thing found by a customer. The QSG was done on a color laser
> printer on the factory floor. For the unionized factory workers, the
> required Work Instruction (made by some guy who coordinates getting
> product from Development and QA into production) was quite simple. Open
> the file in Adobe Reader, select Print, select two-sided long-edge,
> click [Print], grab printout, line up the pages, staple the upper-left
> corner, toss in box, close box, affix shipping label.....
>
> Somebody thinks stapled set of pages looks way too "homemade".  They
> want to shrink the format to half the size (so a few more pages) and
> fold and staple as a booklet, with a pretty cover.
>
> You need to produce a document:
>
>
>
> a) that you won't print, but
>
> b) that might be printed by a factory worker or
>
> c) that might be printed by a printing services company (as product
> sales volume increases)
>
> d) that should most likely use standard-size paper (US-letter or A4)
> folded in half and nested
>
> e) that should require no cutting (at least not for factory-floor
> workers).
>
> And it should be just one version; otherwise the people who are forced
> to double up the number of Bills of Materials will be annoyed.
>
> For small-volume, as-needed, the factory worker will be doing the doc on
> a laser printer, so the layout must work to make the pages come together
> properly - all right-side-up and properly paginated when nested and
> stapled.
>
> For larger volumes, an employee of a third-party printing services
> company would have access to automatic imposition software that would
> accept a standard sequentially paged book file (PDF) and take care of
> creating the signatures for whatever paper size they preferred.
>
>
>
> Is that roughly the situation today?  I haven't dealt with printed books
> or booklets since the 1990s, so I'm a little out of touch.
>
> My simplest solution is to just pretend that printing will always be
> professionally done, and supply a straight-ahead book file of 8.5 x 5.5
> pages, sequentially numbered, and wash my hands of the whole thing. I
> could suggest that the operations people acquire a copy of ClickBook or
> similar software and print from that. The guy who writes Work
> Instructions would need to install the program in the factory, and learn
> it well enough to write a bullet-proof WI around it.
>
>
>
> Am I over-thinking, or thinking in the wrong directions?
>
>
>
>  - Kevin
>
>
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