Publishing on Demand

                      Notes from the Typebucket

                    ½1994 by Michael 'Papa' Hebert


After a year of trying a few tacks in breaking into the DTP field I
thought I'd share a few thoughts. I have had my 4 mByte Atari
1040STe's for about 3 years. Early in the first year I purchased
Pagestream 2.1 and soon discovered that I had a fascination with, if
not necessarily an aptitude for, desktop publishing. Pagestream was
soon supplemented by Wordflair II which I never really quite got the
hang of. For letter writing I used the "freebie" Write On from ST
Format magazine. For my early DTP attempts I used Pagestream. I soon
tired of the slow output and acquired Calamus 1.09. That proved to be
an almost insurmountable program until one of my 1040STe's went belly.
The only thing I could afford to replace it with at the time was an
old 520ST that had been upgraded to 1mByte. Pagestream just didn't
want to run in only 1mByte but Calamus 1.09 would. I quickly learned
to navigate the forest of icons (it's really not that difficult - just
different) and Calamus became my DTP package of choice.

My first attempt at breaking into DTP was marketing a small pamphlet
that I had created for my sewing machine service business. It had
proven itself a good, inexpensive revenue builder and I felt that
other sewing machine dealers and repairmen would find it valuable. I
sent out 500 sample pamphlets with a font selection chart. I offered
to customize the pamphlet for each end user and gave them the option
of buying preprinted copies or a camera ready master. The results of
my roughly $500 investment in paper, ink cartridges for the Deskjet
500 and postage was zero, zilch, nada! And this was a highly targeted
marketing effort!

While all this was going on I kept looking for a word processor that
would give me the ease of use of Write On but without its limitations.
When AtariWorks was released I purchased one of the first copies to
reach Hawaii. The promise of superb font quality and an integrated
word processor/database/spreadsheet was more than I could pass by.
Within a few weeks I had discovered that AtariWorks was more than just
a nice, easy to use word processor. It had the potential for doing
some real DTP work. I played around with it a bit more and decided to
share some of my efforts. I started uploading AtariWorks templates,
tips on doing things that were'nt in the manual, a few graphics and so
on. To my surprise there seemed to be a real hunger out there in Atari
land for this kind of thing. That provided an impetus that soon became
an obsession to upload something new every week. The idea of doing a
book started rattling around inside my mind. I had never attempted a
book before but I had rewritten a few technical manuals (converting
Japanese English to American English). I had even had an article
published in a trade magazine once upon a time. I decided to try it
for a lark.

As circumstances would have it the day to day stresses of running two
small, struggling businesses took its toll. I had a Transitory
Ischemic Attack which is similar in many respects to a minor stroke.
After four days in the hospital I was sent home with instructions to
get plenty of rest. I spent the first day home doing nothing. The next
day I just had to get back to my Atari and within two more days found
myself well on the way to writing "Papa's Grafik Guide to AtariWorks
Word Processor".

Now, if you remember the title to this tome it's supposed to be about
"Publishing on Demand". Just what the heck is that? That's just the
new fangled way of saying, "I don't have the money to get my book
printed so I'll just run off copies at the quick print." That's the
position I was in when I finished "Papa's Grafik Guide ..." I called
the local instant print shops for quotes on printing 100 copies of my
book. The average quote was $400 not including collating, punching and
binding.  That was more capital than I had immediately available for
this little venture. I started taking a close look at what I had on
hand. There was my HP4L "Baby" Laserjet that had supplanted the
Deskjet 500. Over in the corner was my Canon PC6 copier and on my desk
was an ad from Office Depot featuring a case of Xerox 4200 paper for
$35.00. I realized that I already had the resources and just needed to
develop a method. 

A few trials on the Canon showed that it would give me as good a print
as I could get from any instant printer. It wasn't as good as the
laser output but pretty darn close. I decided to throw any remaining
caution I had to the winds. A quick trip to Office Depot and I was
equipped with an Ibico Kombi comb binding machine and a box of combs.
Over the next few days I cranked out about a dozen copies on the
Canon. This obviously was going to work but it was also going to be a
LOT OF WORK. Now that I had a few copies of the book I rushed a finish
on the cover and wrote an "About the Book" page to briefly describe my
equipment and method of publication. I gave a copy to my wife, kept
one for myself and gave one to Bob Beatty of Neutronics who instantly
ordered 6 more. I ran off another couple dozen, filled Bob's order,
sent off review copies to ST Informer, Current Notes and several
dealers.  I posted a press release on GEnie. The remaining copies I
sent out to various individuals who had shown support for AtariWorks
on GEnie in the RT and in the Library. Little did I know at the time
just who some of these fine folks were. Al Fasoldt and John
Gniewkowski double teamed with reviews in GEnielamp followed the next
month by Richard Brown.

Those reviews did a real selling job for me and orders began coming
in.  The samples I had sent out to dealers brought an order for 10
copies from Computer Studio. January brought with it a sudden jump in
orders from 1 or 2 a week to 4 and 5 a week. One person mentioned
getting the ordering information from Current Notes magazine. Within a
week I got an EMail from Joe Waters, the publisher of Current Notes,
inviting me to do an extended review of AtariWorks. I agreed of
course.  With my swollen ego what else could I do?! Orders dropped off
last week of January except for a surprise on my answering machine -
Jennifer Troy of Toad Computers ordering 10 copies. Time to get back
to the copier!

I really did promise you that this is about Publishing on Demand and
so it is. You'll just have to put up with my drivel to get to that
part! So ... There I am at the copier, sweating from the sun beating
through the window and the heat of the copier, swearing at the number
of spoiled second side copies (crinkles, you know) and wishing I had
someone to trade feet with! Why can't I do it on the laser? I know
Calamus will load a page into the HP4L and print multiple copies
without sending the page every time. What is the secret?

I had tried some tips from John Eidsvoog (Codehead's Code Head) but
they didn't work. The HP4 series is just a wee bit different than the
older HP's. GEMSpool would print to a disk file - there just had to be
a way to alter that AtariWorks file to instruct the printer to zip out
whatever number of copies I wanted. Well, if you search long enough
and earnestly enough (translated: get real compulsive about it) ye
shall surely find it! There it was in the Compuserve HP Library - a
set of short files on using HP's PCL language and, more importantly, a
couple of little GEM's (that's intended) on inserting Printer Job
Language commands into a file. I went into XBoot, set up Maxidisk and
GEMSpool, printed a page to disk then opened it in XXED. After a few
moments I had the required PJL header and trailer inserted instructing
the printer to whip me up three copies. I crossed my fingers, dragged
the file icon over to the printer icon and ... Lo! that sucker works!
Hah! Grab the checkbook and off to Office Depot for a few boxes of
diskettes. Back in the office I discover that it's going to take more
than a few boxes. Those AtariWorks pages after processing through
Speedo and GEMSpool become 400kBytes to 700+kBytes. One page per disk
times 100 pages is ... Grab the checkbook again and take off running.

Now the problem is solved, right! Laser quality, no more crinkled
pages, no more sore feet. Everything's just peachy. Wrong-O!! It took
me a week to get those pages all processed over to floppies. Now I'm
ready to really crank 'em out, right? No-o-ope! The HP4L starts
jamming on those second side copies. My waste in paper and toner is
cut from about 20% on the Canon to about 10% on the laser but it's
still too much. Some experiments with number of copies in each print
run shows that 24 is about optimum. Second sides have to be loaded
into the paper tray without anything else in there. They need to be
cooled, pressed lightly and "backrolled" to reduce the curl. Ahh, now
we're cooking!  Jams only once in a while and waste copies are cut to
2 or 3%. Why, shucks, now I can work on something else while the
printer does its thing. When its finished I can [Alt-Tab] to Neodesk
(under Geneva, of course!), load the printer, pop another disk in the
drive and drag the file icon onto the printer icon. In a few minutes
I'm back to work again until 6 minutes later when the printer wants to
be fed again.  Ahhh...such are the joys of multitasking!

So, where is we'uns at? Oh, yeah! A method of sorts has developed, my
feet feel better, productivity is up, quality is up and waste is down.
Computer Studio just ordered 10 more copies and the "free" ad should
be in next month's Current Notes. That ought to bring in some orders.
Meanwhile, Ol' Papa is cranking out another two dozen copies between
doing other things that ACTUALLY generate revenue. A sample has been
sent off, gratis, to ST Club in Jolly, Old England - "Hey, you guys
interested in a license to publish?" The graphic guide to AtariWorks
database progresses, albeit slowly. Ideas keep percolatin' through the
old noggin and the compulsion to upload every week has given way to
urging other people to upload something.

Ok, now, I promised you that this was going to be about "Publishing
on Demand". Well, it was! If you missed it go back and read it over!
In the meanwhile . . . keep the faith AND your daytime job!!

'Papa'