Date   : Mon, 25 Apr 1983 10:44:00 EDT (Monday)
From   : Damouth.Wbst@parc-maxc.arpa
Subject: Re: new group

RE:  "Has arranged t o distribute ZCPR but I do not know what
he intends to  charge for it (the manuals are LARGE and would
have to be distributed on disks since printing a couple hundred
page manuals wuld require that he charge far t oo much)"

You are perpetrating a misconception that is hard on those of us with slow
printers.  Example:   According to an earlier message, the complete ZCPR2
documentation is 420 pages.  I just called a randomly chosen local quick-print
shop, who will offset print and bind 200 copies of a 500-page (250 two-sided
sheets) 8 1/2" x 11" book from camera ready copy for $12.00 per book. 
This price
could be driven lower by higher quantities and/or by finding a hungrier
printer.  The "LARGE" manual is actually less than 1" thick, printed double
sided on good 20# paper.

You would need about six 8" SSSD disks to distribute this same documentation,
at
a cost of about $15.00, not counting duplication charges and label printing. 
Office overheads are probably about the same either way, except for the extra
storage space (10 cubic feet) for the paper version.  Either way, office
overheads
and a small profit would presumably double the costs mentioned above, and a
full commercial profit would add another ~50%.  UPS shipping to the customer
would add a few dollars to the customer's cost, still leaving the printed
version a
bit cheaper.

While this is not fancy "professional" formatting, printing, and binding it is
better than what would result from a "do-it-yourself" printing job by an
average
customer working from a distribution disk.

/Dave