Re: Manual update (was Torque settings)

["Dave Swingle" <dswingle@xxxx>]

--- In dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxx, "Walter" <Whalt@xxxx> wrote:
> When is someone going to write a new service manual that takes all
> this into consideration?

Time out for an economics lesson. 

Answer - Whenever someone decides that the rewards (i.e. sales of service manuals to owners or servicers of a very limited production car with even fewer do-it-yourself owners) outweighs the marginal cost of creating it, + the time and effort of the creator, +the cost of dismantling a car for testing and photographic purposes. If you've ever looked at the efforts involved in a technical document of this level, you'd see why the Chilton/ Bentley/ Haynes books only cover very popular cars. They have to sell thousands of copies to cover the costs and turn a profit. What is the real market for an updated DMC manual? There are now about 1200 people on this list, maybe half of which own cars, maybe half of those work on their own. 300 books at $75 each does not go very far in terms of publication costs not to mention someone earning a living.

OR - whenever someone decides to do it as a non-profit labor of love. And still take the investment risk.

Would you pay $100/200/500 for an updated manual? And keep in mind that if the manual is expensive, people bootleg-copy it making it even less attractive as a business proposition. 

In the mean time, we have the list's collective wisdom.

Dave Swingle (not an econ professor - really, but I used to be a tech writer)