From: Joseph Magann
To: ask_tim@oreilly.com
Subject: The Paper used in your books
Tim,
As a longtime consistent buyer of your books (I have about a 100) for reference and study, I have only one complaint. Why can't you use a paper that won't bleed through to the other side of the sheet when I use a highlighter to mark items? This bleed-through makes it extremely difficult to mark passages I want to refer to later.
In the alternative, can you suggest another method of high-lighting?
You have a line of books that are consistently excellent across the entire spectrum of subjects. And that includes the travel books. Keep it up! (but preferably with no-bleed paper)
Thank you,
Joseph Magann
Sue Willing, our print coordinator, writes:
Hi Joseph:
We've gotten a number of queries and complaints over the last few years about the problem of highlighter bleedthrough on our books' paper stock. Some people wondered if we were using a cheap sheet to save money; others were just looking for a solution.
Our books are printed on a high quality, recycled paper stock. Due to the manufacturing process of recycled paper, the fibers are shorter and softer. This means that ink spreads and is absorbed more fully than on a virgin sheet. The ink from standard highlighters sinks into the paper causing bleedthrough.
However, an enterprising customer put us on to a solution a few years ago. Avery Denison puts out a highlighter called "Hi-Liter GlideStik." It's wax-based, and sits on top of the page instead of soaking through. No bleedthrough! This product, or something similar to it, should be available at your local office supply store.
--Sue Willing
Tim adds:
It's often tough to come up with the perfect solution when you have competing priorities. We believe that it's important to do the right thing for the environment by using recycled paper, but we also want our books to meet the needs of our customers. So do feel free to tell us if you think we've made the wrong choice here, even after you know the reason.
The one thing that we want to be sure you know is that we don't do this to save money! We actually do a number of things that no other publisher does that cost us money in manufacturing, because we think they are the right thing to do.
The high-bulk papers used by many of our competitors (do you notice how their books are often twice the thickness of ours for the same page count) are actually cheaper than the papers we use. They are chosen specifically for their bulk by publishers whose strategy is to occupy as much shelf-space per book as possible. It's amazing how gimmicks like that work on some people.
A good example of another extra cost item in our manufacturing is the lay-flat binding we use (except on books that are too large for the process.) This increases the cost of each book by about 15%, but we think it's worth it, because it's a lot easier to keep the book lying open on the desk without breaking its spine.
