Printing services in the UK for airport charts?
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Has anyone used a PDF printing service for BMS documents in the UK? Experiences and pricing? I’m looking at alternatives for printing the charts out. The best in terms of pricing so far looks to be http://www.print-my-pdf.com.
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Has anyone used a PDF printing service for BMS documents in the UK? Experiences and pricing? I’m looking at alternatives for printing the charts out. The best in terms of pricing so far looks to be http://www.print-my-pdf.com.
Hi,
I’ve had quite a few manuals printed for BMS (4.32 & 4.33) and DCS World. I use Doxdirect. The printing is second to none and you can choose various options from binding to colour cover sheets and acetate protective covers and paper quality.
For example I have recently had printed the BMS 4.33 Training Manual, Checklist (Normal), and the -34 manual.
.All in black and white (my choice I’m tight fisted). All were bound with black spirals and had acetate covers. The Training manual had a colour front cover as well. Total cost was around £25 delivered. Delivery took one week.
You can upload PDF or fill in quote form with number of pages, size, etc and they’ll quote you a price on the website.
I tried a couple before and found these guys to do best job/price.
I’m not affiliated with them in anyway, just a happy customer.Worther_1
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try local printing shops… mine did the MCH vol.5 for 20 € (305 pages all BW with binding similar to Worther_1)
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Thanks, Worther_1. I looked at dox again, and the quote was a lot lower than it had been when I looked at their pricing initially.
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Just in case you guys missed it, that service is already available - worlwide supplying:
https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?23315-BMS-4-33-Documentation -
@Red:
Just in case you guys missed it, that service is already available - worlwide supplying:
https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?23315-BMS-4-33-DocumentationI forgot to mention Lulu, I ordered my DCS A10C manual from there and the quality was great, only downside for me when I looked at the BMS files was lack of B/W option to keep cost down, also I believe they were ‘book bound’, I prefer spiral bound especially for the excellent new Training Manual!
Worther_1
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I understand
One thing must be clear though.
You’re all free to do whatever you want with your own manualsBut you do not offer your solution to other ppl in this forum. The reason we decided to do ourselves was to control it on our own.
I understand you guys may want other solution, and that’s quite all right.
But we reserve the right to publish the manuals in our own way through a unique system which is readily available here already. -
@Red:
You’re all free to do whatever you want with your own manuals
But you do not offer your solution to other ppl in this forum.
I don’t understand this. People are free to print out their own manuals or have it printed by some other company, but they are not allowed to talk about it or share it to other people in this forum?
As I said previously, for the price of the manuals from Lulu, I could buy a full set of toner for my color laser printer. Maybe 2 or 3 sets for just a B&W laser printer. I highly doubt one run of all the manuals will use up all the toner… so even if I say three runs for one set of toner, that is still cheaper. Would I not be able to print out a set of manuals, have Staples ring-bind it for me, and “sell” it to fellow simmers for just a little over cost of materials? Granted it won’t be as awesome as a professionaly-done, softbound-with-cover product like that from Lulu, but sometimes people don’t have £120+ to spend on printed material.
Having a cheaper option simply means more people will buy it, and I think the more people that has the printed manual, the better.
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in the 4.32 days ppl almost started to offer the dash-1 on Lulu without actually asking me, the author of the document.
We don’t want this to happen again.I didn’t say you were not allowed to talk about it.
I said:But you do not offer your solution to other ppl in this forum
i said you can’t offer it here because it is redondant and the authors of the manuals want to keep control on how the manuals are distributed to the community, which is through lulu at this time.
The reason why we want to control it is that we want the manual to be free and remain free.
With Lulu we can perfectly control that. We can’t control it when any other individual offers his own service.
Remember BMS is free, the manual as well - it is the author wishes and you guys at the receiving end should respect that decision.
What the user pays is the printing service provided by the third party printing company - but in these online publishing companies, it is very easy for the guy creating the project to add an amount for his own on the final price.We do not want other ppl to offer this service for the following reason:
1. We don’t want other ppl to earn money on our back - I understand it’s highly unlikely, but we have seen such issues on this very forum before. So i wanted things to be perfectly clear from the beginning.
2. When you buy a book you don’t contact the author saying you prefer a bw or spiral bound version of his work. You are taking what the author offered you.
3. respect the author decision; he might have a different perspective than yours (update, tracking versions, quality etc etc)that’s all we ask
Having a cheaper option simply means more people will buy it, and I think the more people that has the printed manual, the better.
the manuals are free mate. you can’t go cheaper than free.
If you want it black or white you take that PDF and you copy it at home or at the local hobby shop, for your own use.
and you can even spiral bound it for a few extra euros. Nothing prevent you to do that.
there is no point paying an online service for a bw copy that you can make on your own printer. that’s the reason why I decided not to do bw lulu manuals.
because it’s very easy to do on your own.Again, nobody is saying you can’t do it. do as you please as long as it’s for your own use.
It is a question of respect of other’s ppl work - i believe an author should at least be able to decide how he wants to distribute his work, not the reader
Thank you -
Just to clarify, I’m sorry if I broke some kind of rule, I wasn’t offering anything but advice on where I got my manuals printed for my personal use. I just wanted to share my experience so help others.
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Just to clarify, I’m sorry if I broke some kind of rule, I wasn’t offering anything but advice on where I got my manuals printed for my personal use. I just wanted to share my experience so help others.
That’s perfectly alright if I understand Red Dog correctly. I’ve also ordered my own special breed of spiral’d paperwork and will show it around when it arrives
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I think what RD and maybe even the BMS dev group wants is that the manual is only OFFICIALLY available in printed form via Lulu. While you are free to UNOFFICIALLY print out your own manual at home or at a printer shop (and the BMS devs have been kind enough to provide us with the pdfs!), they don’t like discussions regarding where and how much it cost to print.
At least that’s what I gathered from RD. I’m sure he’ll correct me if I’m wrong.
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There is no ambiguity in what i said before:
One thing must be clear though.
You’re all free to do whatever you want with your own manualsBut you do not offer your solution to other ppl in this forum. The reason we decided to do ourselves was to control it on our own.
I understand you guys may want other solution, and that’s quite all right.
But we reserve the right to publish the manuals in our own way through a unique system which is readily available here already.You are free to print your own manuals in any way you like.
you do not offer your printing solution to anyone else. Because doing so you control our work in our place and that is not accepted as we can’t ensure that whoever decides to do so can’t add a fee for himself his work and/or his trouble going through the initiative.Our work is free and must remain so.
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I seem to have inadvertantly opened a can of worms, which was, of course, not my intention.
This morning I received the navigation manual from dox. It’s spiral bound, with a clear acetate cover and plain white card back cover, in black and white and on 90gsm A5 paper. The cost was £9.35. The quality is good, though some of the smaller writing on the charts can be a little hard to read. But overall it’s perfectly legible.
If I had ordered the same thing from Lulu it would have been in colour, bound as a paperback and cost £29.53.
Not only could I not have justified the cost, but the binding isn’t as practical as spiral binding.
Don’t get me wrong, the Lulu versions look fabulous. But in terms of cost and practicality going through dox for me, and I’m sure for many others, was much the better option.
As far as cost is concerned and the desire to avoid others making a profit out of the manuals is Lulu not making a profit? If we printed them out ourselves would HP not be making a profit from the ink cartridges?
I don’t mean to step on anyones toes, and I can respect the desire to have these things printed at a higher level of quality, but as someone pointed out earlier, isn’t it more important that as many people as possible get access to the printed manuals?
By the way, as a token of peace I’m quite willing to share the Haribo’s that came with the manual.
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As far as cost is concerned and the desire to avoid others making a profit out of the manuals is Lulu not making a profit? If we printed them out ourselves would HP not be making a profit from the ink cartridges?
that’s the point, the printing guy will make a profit as they are all commercial company and that is normal. Just the same as dox whom you asked printing for you also made a profit.
It’s the same thing as Lulu.
With 4.32 this community screamed for Lulu, with 4.33 we decided to go lulu from the start and you guys still complain.
I am sorry, we can’t please all poeple and we have no time to manage multiple ways to print the manuals. If you’re not happy with the way it’s done now, feel free to do it on your own way, managing the project on your own, but for your own use, not for distribution.Once again what we want to avoid is that we don’t want a member of this community who has nothing to do with writing the manuals in the first palce to also make a profit when says he uses dox (or any other printing services) but add a few euro for his own trouble and then sell to this community here.
Hence our request to respect our décisions - imho it shouldn’t be hard to understand. You guys get everything for free. you could at least respect the fact that we want to control the way it’s done, no?
I don’t mean to step on anyones toes, and I can respect the desire to have these things printed at a higher level of quality, but as someone pointed out earlier, isn’t it more important that as many people as possible get access to the printed manuals?
Everyone has access to manuals for free. so your point is pretty void as anyone is free to print them the way they want - but for their own use only.
Once again, we want to control the publication of our manuals for obvious reasons such as the manuals remaining free of charge, but also future manual update management.
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I’m not sure how £30 per manual qualifies as being “free of charge”, to be honest. A third of that price is quite a bit closer to that idea.
But, it’s your bat and ball, and as I have no desire to be banned I shall shut up forthwith.
Oh, and I’m sure I speak for all when I say I’m grateful for all the hard work that goes into putting the documentation together.
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I was confused by RD’s reply at first but here’s what I understand from his statements:
1. You are free to order the OFFICIAL manuals from Lulu at the price Lulu asks for.
2. You are free to have the manuals printed out at home or at a local printing shop for YOUR OWN use.
3. You are NOT ALLOWED to offer printing services, whether it is yourself or another company.The basic reason here is that the BMS devs provide us the PDFs for free. If you order from Lulu, Lulu makes money. If you order from Staples, Staples makes money. If you order from dox, dox makes money. If you print it out yourself on your HP printer, HP makes money. The BMS devs are okay with that. However, if -Ice comes in and says “hey guys, my local printer can print this out for us for £10,” BMS devs are NOT okay with that because then, -Ice has “taken control” of the work (not a very good way to describe it, but yeah) and at this point, BMS devs cannot really be sure if the cost is £10 or if it is just £8 and -Ice gets £2 for every manual printed out.
Although there are ways to deal with this issue, I think the BMS devs cannot devote the time and effort needed to assess and decide on each particular case so they just made a blanket statement in this regard.
I think that explains it clearly enough.
I would like to pose a few clarification questions to RD though:
a. Are we allowed to post pictures and state where we had our manuals printed? For instance, “this is my manual, I had it printed out from Staples for £XX.YY amount” or “here’s my ring-bound manual which I printed out myself. It cost me $XX.YY in ink/toner and it cost another $AA.BB to have it ring bound at my local Kinkos”
b. Are we allowed to discuss “home solutions” for binding?Do note that for points “a” and “b,” these are all for personal use and is not offering any “printing/binding services” to the community.
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I’m not sure how £30 per manual qualifies as being “free of charge”, to be honest
You are not objective. Any other printing solution as I already pointed a dozen time is not free of charge either.
Why is it so hard for you people to understand? Lulu was chosen because of this community request with 4.32.
Granted I didn’t make a market study before having the 4.33 manuals there. I went with what I thought was best.I’m sorry you don’t like it, but you are still a minority.
Let’s put it this way.
Let’s allow anyone here to take the manuals we took a year to write. Put them on any and all online printing solution available at large to the community.
Since the printing solution will be cheaper, let’s have these ppl putting our manuals online add a few euros for their own trouble managing the project.
After all we decided to offer all this to you. But these ppl may or may not have the same philosophy as us.And in 3-4 weeks when we update our own work. What are these ppl going to do? Update their own project? Will they still be around?
The community will still print outdated manuals nobody has any control on.
And the community will come here, turn to us and once again complain?Look further than your nose ppl.
Oh, and I’m sure I speak for all when I say I’m grateful for all the hard work that goes into putting the documentation together.
Thanks for the gratitude
I’m seriously thinking about stopping all this manual work to spare me the frustration you (the community at large) impose on me about this.You are never happy and after the thousands hours we spent on the manuals I know realise it was a loss of time and providing only frustrations.
Thank you people -
hi Red Dog,
I think that throughout the forum there is a lot of clear expression of appreciation for the manuals. I am sure that the vast majority of BMS users implicetely or explicetely (not sure these are English words) are more than impressed by the details, quality and overall form of the manuals and the huge amount of work you have put in them. Please do not feel/get offended or frustrated by a very small number of posters who are just trying to **** up things (and are simply trolling by keeping to push the subject). -
Red Dog, I think you are missing the point here. There is no question that the manuals are simply awesome! Nobody will debate that.
However, people will have different preferences with regards to bindings (perfect-bound vs. spiral/spring bound) and people will also have different budgets with which to print these manuals out. For some, Lulu is simply expensive. For others with money to spare, Lulu is affordable. However, none of this is a complaint against the QUALITY of the manuals, it is simply a discussion and comparison of cheaper-than-Lulu printing options.
Granted that you cannot please everybody, I feel that giving only one option was not the best way to go either.
I do understand that you feel under pressure regarding this issue –- please don’t be. We appreciate your work and again, there is no question regarding the quality of it. It is only the printing options that are being scrutinized here.
