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9   Printing, Binding, and Distributing Manuals

Methods of Printing

Virtually all revisable manuals are printed in one of four ways:

  • photocopying
  • offset printing
  • digital printing
  • distributed printing

The decision on which printing method to use will depend on the number of copies you want (for example, offset printing is not cost-effective unless you’re ordering more than a thousand copies), whether your manual includes photographs (in which case, don’t photocopy it), and what equipment local printers have available (in smaller regional centres, many printers don’t offer digital printing yet).

Photocopying

Photocopying is the cheapest method of reproducing small numbers of manuals. Turn-around time is also very short. And if the photocopier is new and well maintained, print quality will probably be excellent.

Unfortunately, most photocopiers do not reproduce well photographs or other graphics that use dot screens (such as the picture of the photocopier to the left), so if you are going to use dot screens, it’s best to use either offset or digital printing. Photographs will reproduce successfully if you use a relatively small number of lines per inch for the dot screen. We recommend that dot screens be between 55 and 75 lines per inch to reproduce well on a photocopier.

When you get the printed manuals, check one copy thoroughly for any printing errors, such as pages out of order. If one copy is correct, chances are they all are. However, because each copy is printed separately, there may be isolated printing errors, such as pages printed crooked. Unfortunately, to eliminate this possibility, you must check every page of every manual—a tedious and time-consuming chore.

Offset Printing

Offset printing is a high-quality, inexpensive method of printing large numbers of copies, in colour as well as black and white. For big jobs, it can be dramatically cheaper than photocopying because an offset duplicator can print up to 9,000 impressions (pages) per hour—far faster than photocopying. However, it’s usually only cost-effective if you need more than 1,000 copies of your manual.

Offset printing is not cost-effective for small runs because a plate for each page must be made using a photographic process, and the plate installed in the printer. These plates can be made of plastic (lower quality, lower cost) or metal (higher quality, higher cost). This results in considerable setup costs, which increase as the number of pages increases.

Another problem is that all copies of each page are printed at the same time. So once the printing is finished, the pages must be collated together to form the finished manuals. Collating costs also increase as the number of original pages increases. Most printers will collate the pages together with the divider tabs and insert them into your binder so you get manuals that are ready to distribute. Or you can save money and do the collating yourself.

Offset duplicators print photographs and other dot screens well. For best results, make sure your screens are 85 to100 lines per inch if you’re using plastic plates, or 100 to 175 lines if you’re using metal plates.

Digital Printing

Digital printing is an inexpensive, high-quality alternative to photocopying or offset printing. It costs about the same as photocopying, but provides higher resolution output and fast turn-around. It is generally cost-effective for between 10 and 1,000 copies.

Just save your manual files by clicking print to file on your print dialogue box (Microsoft Word) and emailing them to the printer. Every copy of the manual will be printed directly from the digital files at 600 dots per inch (dpi). This method is often described as demand printing because setup time and charges are low, so only the copies you need right away are printed. Unlike offset printing, there’s no need to print additional copies just in case you need them later. You can print only the copies you need, when you need them.

Ask for a proof copy once the printer has the files installed and is ready to print. Check the proof thoroughly, particularly line and page breaks and the thickness of graphic lines. If you’ve saved the document properly, there should be no font substitutions and all lines and pages will break exactly as they do on your laser printer. Also, check anything with a screened background if you prepared the manual using an older 300 dpi laser printer. Screens printed at 600 dpi usually appear lighter than when printed at 300 dpi.

If you have paper copies of forms, photographs, or other graphics that need to be scanned and inserted into the manual and you only need a print manual, send them along with the manual files and show the printer where they go. Your printer can scan and insert them for you.

For online manuals, you must scan and insert forms, photographs, and other graphics into your word processor files yourself. The digital files prepared by the printer cannot be converted back into files that you could then use to prepare the online manual.

Distributed Printing

Organizations are increasingly making their manuals available online and letting users print off sections on their own printer. Two strategies are common—letting users print the manual section by section using their browser’s print feature, or allowing users to download copies of the source files (such as Microsoft Word files).

Printing from the browser is a good way for users to get a hard copy of a section or two of an online manual, but it’s not good if you expect that many users will systematically try to print the entire manual. The copies will not have all the header and footer information you would find on a print manual, and much of the page layout and formatting will be determined by the browser. It’s also an expensive way to print manuals, particularly if you factor in staff time; however, because these costs seldom appear as a cost item on a budget, it remains a hidden cost, and therefore easier for many managers to accept.

Allowing users to download your word processor files and print their own manuals is a good way to provide print copies to those who need them, particularly if they are geographically dispersed, or if you are not sure who will want a copy. However, this is only possible if everyone is using the same version of the word processor you are using. An important question is whether to give them a locked or unlocked version. If it’s unlocked, they can change what you’ve written. While this allows them to customize the manual for their own use, they will also be able to rewrite policies without your approval—possibly creating other problems.

Another strategy for distributed printing is to use Adobe Acrobat to create a portable document format (.PDF) file and let people download a copy. The big advantage is they do not need to have the same software that was used to create the manual to view it. As long as they’ve downloaded the free Adobe Acrobat viewer, they’ll be able to browse through an exact facsimile of the document and print sections.

Of course, with all forms of distributed printing, you don’t need to provide binders or divider tabs. While this saves you money, it makes manuals more difficult to use. Another disadvantage is you don’t know who has printed copies, so you can’t notify them of important changes. One solution to this last problem is to get users to register with you when they download a copy.