Log books and small print runs.

7

[70521]

Well-Known Member
Joined
31 Aug 2011
Messages
22,412
Visit site
I posted in another thread that I was not happy with the log books that are on sale and had designed my own.

After much looking at what I liked and did not like I then sat down with the word processor and set to work, doing all sorts of fancy things with tables. I finally came up with a layout that satisfied my needs. A bit of Internet searching and I found a printer who would do single copies, print, cover and bind, uploaded the file and held my breath.

48 hours later the log book arrived this morning and I am thrilled - It is nothing fancy, but does what I need it to do. I've gone for A3 landscape as I struggle the tiny boxes in A4 log books! At 90 pages, each day is a double page with set recordable stuff on one page and the other page for notes and waypoints it should cover a season and I can reprint when I need. All at less than half the price of a shop bought log book.
 
I'm sorry but I'm not in the market for a log book.

The idea of saving money does appeal, I too had a Scottish education.

I sympathise with your investment in time and imagine there might be some who would value access to what you have achieved. I note that others have also invested time into the development of electronic devices and, a bit like log books, electronic devices don't really excite me (I can buy 'off the shelf' what I need).

I wonder if there might be a vehicle available to you, and others, that might allow you to monetise what you have achieved (if this was of interest to you).

I thus raise the question in case someone has a simple and inexpensive answer.

I suspect its all about 'exposure' or marketing, about which YBW (I believe) might express some qualms. Maybe entrepreneurs and YBW could work together to their mutual benefit...... :)

Jonathan
 
sandy, that's really interesting. I've like a logbook. I've never found a format that worked for me, so have played with various "loose leaf" options that can be kept in a ring binder and wondered about doing as you have done if I arrive at a style/detail etc I like.

neeves suggestion that you could sell them probably involves more hassle than it is worth if you are just buying from your existing printing guy and organising shipping but there are some self publishing companies around, the only one I've dealt with is Lulu, who will take your design and offer it online. You set the price and they sent you the profit. Not sure if they do A3. Unless what you have is revolutionary it probably won't change your sailing budget with those earnings but even one or two sales a year might give you a nice feeling!
 
I have been printing my own log books since around 1996 and still have them all. The design is done in Powerpoint and has developed a little over the years. When my employer provided (unknowingly) photocopy services I printed off the internal pages, which have columns for the usual observations on the left and remarks on the right. For the past nearly 20 years I print them off at home, which takes very little ink.

Front page is usually a photo from the previous year on card, with clear plastic covers, the whole lot bound in a plastic ring binder.
 
Apart from a Reeds log book bought for my first boat all the rest of my log books have been hard bound, light ruled, A4 books from office supply shops. I may rule columns for recording during offshore passages, especially with crew to remind them, or just lay the data out as I feel fit. Nice and flexible and a short shelf of them covers almost 50 years of sailing.
 
If Lulu will act on your behalf then it sounds like an idea.

I was actually thinking of this:

Online shopping for boat products

It seems to benefit YBW, or they would not do it. It seems to keep it all 'in house'. I cannot think anyone will make a fortune - but its that nice feeling inside. I really don't see the harm in the 'developer' generating a return, presumably YBW can take some cream off the top and maybe it provides something to allow YBW to flourish - if others do something similar.

Jonathan
 
It's worth bearing in mind that for most types of printing, the vast majority of the cost is in setting up; the cost per copy thereafter is pennies. Of course, in these days when many print shops can print directly from PDF, even the setting up costs aren't vast.

A different scale of things, and definitely not in a commercial environment, my former employer published maps. We had two routes for printing them - we could print them in-house on a large-format (60" wide) roll-fed inkjet printer, or we could send them to a printing house with a large-format printer. There are very few of the latter in the UK; the kit is the size of a large coach and requires a VERY stable concrete base as the alignments are to micrometres. The former had no set-up costs, but the material per-copy costs were high (£1-£2 per copy). The latter had large setup costs, but the per-copy prices were low - usually quoted as cost per thousand, not that we ever printed as many as a thousand; we used to joke that the operators blew gently on the "Go" button to do our runs; these presses in operation are incredibly quick - several copies per second at full chat! We reckoned the crossover point at which it became cheaper to go to commercial printing was about 200-250 copies.

Moral of the story - if the OP had wished to go commercial with his design of logbook, it wouldn't have cost him a vast amount more than his single copy did. A book does have other costs that put the per copy price up - binding and board covers - but pretty much all of that is done by machinery, so again, the costs are mainly for materials. The only thing that gets expensive is manual finishing, such as glueing a fold-out map into the endpapers.
 
ylop said:
sandy, that's really interesting. I've like a logbook. I've never found a format that worked for me, so have played with various "loose leaf" options that can be kept in a ring binder and wondered about doing as you have done if I arrive at a style/detail etc I like.
Click to expand...

None of the commercially available logbooks, including the RYA’s, seem to take any account of modern navigation techniques and weather aids. They seem to follow a format more suited to the 19th century. Nowadays, we just don’t need to record every twist and turn of the boat, and every change in the weather and wind. What’s far more important is a regular plot of lat and long with time and a record of engine hours/fuel consumed. Maybe also, battery SOC.

The current crop dedicate an extravagant amount of paper to every trip for no good reason. I’d be first in line to buy a new logbook that actually serves my needs.
 
Here are the guts of the log. Page one is a page of information about home contacts and the boat. I am a old fashioned navigator and like to write things down. I did an experiment on a long passage doing everything electronically and peering through the fog it struck me that if the chartplotter fails I had zero information written down! A most uneasy feeling.

I went for the A3 format as it gives space to write in a seaway and always use UTC onboard as it saves faffing about with tide calculations. People with modern boats that have no navigation table might struggle with that size.

even.pngodd.png
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top