Low-run printing

[Faith Weber <weber -at- EASI -dot- ENET -dot- DEC -dot- COM>]

Well, since Kim successfully started a thread on binding, here's
another question for you folks.

Do any of you do *really* short print runs, e.g. of 100 or fewer copies?
If so, I'm curious to know:

 - What kind of binding you use

 - Whether you ship individual documents or sets, and if you ship
   sets, how you kit them (slipcase, just a shipping box, etc.)

 - Whether you do your own shipping and inventory control, or another
   department in your company does it, or your printer does it

 - What, if any, other binding/shipment/inventory options you've
   looked into

We do short runs like the above, and use wire-o binding with a
die-cut cover (the title of the manual shows through the window, so
we can use the same covers for all titles). We want to start using
concealed wire-o, so we'd have spines for title labels, and
ideally we'd also like to use a standard slipcase for each product's
manuals. I'm expecting the slipcase idea to be too expensive, but the
spines are mandatory. I'd *love* to have the printer deal with
shipping, as well, so we don't have to, but I haven't gotten any clear
cost estimates yet.

As far as we know, our quantities would have to go up a bit to
justify perfect binding.

Thanks,

Faith Weber
EA Systems Inc.
weber -at- easi -dot- enet -dot- dec -dot- com