John Hammond wrote:
>I have to agree that paper manuals are expensive but I don't
>think the automakers make much of a profit on them. Otherwise,
>why would most of them farm the business out? The cost of
>printing a relatively small number of paper manuals is a huge
>factor.
Not sure if I am buying that argument. The material has to be prepared
anyway to
supply to the service departments, so if the mfg just wanted to break
even, they
would just charge the printing costs. However, look at the price one
pays for
manuals; it is more than just printing.
The manual for my old Corrado was $120 list and they are about $90 on eBay.
Paul Haney is a Lotus guy and a writer of motorsport books that have
small print
runs and are soft-cover books, similar to the Corrado manual and he
sells them for $25.
The mfgs farm the work out because they are car builders, not print
shops. Folks
like Helm and Bentley get so much of the work because they have demonstrated
that they can do it.
On the other hand, maybe Lotus manuals are that expensive to print.
They use that
nice, heavy, coated paper.
BTW, I can only get an online manual for my VW R32. And I mean
"online". One
subscribes to get access to the manual for a specific amount of time
through the
Bentley web site. Of course, you can print it from there (or print to
PDF, like I did).
alan
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