> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ann W. Harrison [mailto:aharrison@...]
> Sent: 25 February 2002 15:35
> To: IBDI@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [IBDI] Re: Just a marketing suggestion for FB1.0 CD
>
>
> At 03:59 PM 2/24/2002 +0000, Artur Anjos wrote:
>
> >But I would like to have Boxes, with CD's, and Manuals....
>
> Here's the problem, briefly. At a previous small company, we
> produced manuals, boxes, & CD's with silk-screened logos. Of
> course, we also needed a shipping box to hold the inner box.
>
> The books, if we ordered 100, cost about $75 / set (three books,
> total about 7cm thickness, spiral bound, black & white, not
> counting covers). The covers (3000 ordered) cost $5 for
> three pair (front and back of each book). The boxes (3000
> ordered, cost $12 each.

Short run digital printing has come down in cost substantially over the last
2-3 years, to the point where it's economical to do runs of just 4 or 5
books. I just helped with a presentaion about it for Oxford University
Press - they've been experimenting with it for bringing old publications
back into print. They just chop the spines off the copy in the archives,
scan all the pages in, then print 5-10 new ones. The word from all involved
seems to be "great". Of course, for newer books, they keep the original
typesetting digitally, and use that.

> The shipping boxes were another
> $2 each and the CD's were another couple of dollars.

Again CDR's are really cheap now - You could try screen printing loads of
them, then puting the latest version of the software on at the time that
they are shipped (Just In Time). You could put a version number on using
some sort of rubber stamp, like http://www.libertystamp.com/NumberStamps.htm
(although you would have to test that this doesn't damage the data! - it
shouldn't if you do it gently. You could also make sure you do it near the
outside of the CD as the data starts at the middle, and the discs won't be
full)

In fact, I think that the short-run cuddly toy may be the most expensive
part of the package, unless you can get your Grandma to knit them :-)

Robert Munro