<VV> FOR SALE - "The Corvair Decade"

[Harry Jensen, CORSA Executive Secretary]

Hello--

At 07:05 PM 10/13/2004, Hank Kaczmarek wrote:
>I am certainly no expert in digital printing. I am lucky I understand what
>it is. If the book is reprinted digitally I believe that the cost would be
>around a third of what the last reprint cost, from asking people who
>actually know what they are talking about.

The difficulty is that the Decade was originally produced in the eighties 
using technology at the time. Yes, the Decade would cost less to print 
using currently technology, but it will cost a substantial amount to 
convert it from the film separations it is currently in to the electronic 
digital work flow.

At 11:03 AM 10/19/2004, Frank Burkhard wrote:
>        The beauty of modern printing technology lies in its ability to 
> "print
>on demand".  That is, you can start off printing a small number of copies
>and, when those are sold, you can economically print another small batch 
>and wait
>until those are sold before printing additional batches.  Thus you don't have
>to tie up large sums of money in a big first batch of copies hoping to sell
>them quickly enough to get your initial investment back.  And if you can't 
>sell
>them soon enough, you have considerable money tied up.

While it might be true that "Print on Demand" **can** be cheaper to produce 
books, traditional printing has changed a lot since "Print on Demand" was 
introduced as has all of the printing industry. What has changed 
dramatically is the preparation of the manual (in the case of the Basics 
book) or the magazine (in the case of the Communique).

Most everyone has gone to a PDF work flow, so the choice of whether a book 
is printed "on Demand" or traditionally is solely based on volume of the 
job. The Basics book was printed using the traditional method because of 
the volume we ordered.

And while cash flow is very important to a for-profit businesses, it is 
less important to CORSA at the present time. That is because CORSA has the 
cash reserves to make the purchase and that cash is only earning what ever 
interest rate we can get at the bank. When CORSA buys a bulk order of the 
Basics manual, we trade cash assets for inventory assets.

Frank Burkhard continued:
>  This is probably what happened with the first printing of The Corvair 
> Decade. Hopefully, this time
>things will be much better.

The printing of the Decade has very little in common with the printing of 
the Basics manual. The Decade is not in a digital format, converting it is 
not a trivial project, and it has far greater use of color, both 4-color 
process and spot colors with metallic inks. Comparing the two is very much 
like comparing apples to oranges.

Frank Burkhard continued:
>Nice job with the Basics Manual, Hank.

I'm certainly not trying to minimize the effort Hank did on the Basics 
manual, but if you are going to hand out accolades on that project, you 
should not forget to credit the authors (you were one) and Bob Helt who put 
a lot of effort into it, along with some others. The project was certainly 
a collaborative effort.

--H




|--------------------------------------------------------------
| Harry Jensen  mailto:corsa@corvair.org
| CORSA Executive Secretary
|
| Corvair Society of America (CORSA)
| P.O. Box 607, Lemont, IL 60439, 630.257.6530  fax 630.257.5540
| http://www.corvair.org
|--------------------------------------------------------------