Writing a manual or a tech pub is hard work. No one would deny that. The wording, the illustrations, the pictures--their main focus is to make something complex seem more understandable. Sometimes, they have to do this for a noobie crowd that doesn't even have a rudimentary understanding of the basic mechanical or electrical concepts.



But writing it isn't always the biggest hurdle. After all, it takes more time than anything. The more expensive part (and sometimes the harder part) is getting it on paper. Sure, you could just publish it as a PDF. As a matter of fact, most technical publications are available in PDF format. But when real people have to read them and use them in real life, it's often much easier to do so when they can hold a physical copy.

If you're self-publishing, the choices are pretty limited. Print and publish it yourself, or use a vanity publisher like www.lulu.com. I've used LULU for several projects, and I'm pretty happy with them. But if you need quite a few copies of your tech pub and you really have a tight budget, it's going to be cheaper to print it yourself.

Generally, you can cut the printing costs to pennies per page by buying a refurbished printer from ebay. I always liked the HP 5si for this. You can either print them all one sided and then flip them over in the tray to print the other side, or you can buy one with a duplexer and print it all in one shot. Make sure to use refilled cartridges to get the most for your money. For HP printers (especially the older ones), the refilled cartridges generally are safe and you get high quality if you don't use the ultra-cheap refills.

Once you've printed the publication, you have to find a way to bind it. Comb binding is usually the cheapest way per-piece. The binders cost just pennies. But before you can do that, you have to have the proper hole punchers AND the comb-binding machine.

The best alternative is thermal binding. The folders or spines themselves are a bit more expensive, but you won't need to use a hole puncher, and the equipment is much cheaper. Besides, thermal binding will make your publication much sturdier and it will look more professional.

The Unibind system makes it easy to edit your project if you find errors in mid-production. Let's say you find an illustration that's incorrect, but you've already bound 60 books. Simply put them back into the thermal binding machine, wait for the green light to go on, and switch the bad page for the good one.

Unibind folders have a sturdy steel strip in the spine to keep it from breaking. The Unibind covers have creases in them to minimize the wear and tear that naturally occurs when a thermal bound book is opened and closed over and over again. On top of that, the glue in Unibind systems is more reliable than other thermal binding systems.

To get a complete thermal binding system, visit www.thermalbinding.us, and find out why Unibind is the exclusive product offered from one of the top thermal binding dealers online.