Prices Up, Prices Down.. It's YOUR Choice!

At this time, folks would do very well to examine the listings of vendors. You'll spot one in Minnesota whose prices for CD manuals begins at $20 for anything no other vendor is offering, and very often goes to $30-$35. That vendor has made the statement that he intends to "get prices back to reasonable (his word, not ours) levels". Folks, when you buy from that vendor, you're supporting the concept of "milk the market (that's YOU he's talking about!) for every penny". That vendor is attempting to drive all honest scanned manual vendors from the eBay marketplace, and if "the buyer community" allows him to do that, scanned manual prices will start at $30-35. Don't take our word for it, analyze the listings! Also interesting: look at his claimed resolutions compared to his stated file sizes.. sometimes they do add up, but other times he's counting on the fact that most folks don't do this for a living.. especially obnoxious is his cute little trick of obtaining free (and quite redundant) military manuals from the LOGSA site (manuals which your tax dollars paid for, by the way) and adding them to increase his "volume count". The military manuals add nothing to the value you receive, as of course the useable information in them is all in the full commercial manuals. This is yet another marketing ploy designed to induce you to take a deal that's not as good as others offer. When you see "6 VOLUMES" in a title, then in the description find out that some of the "VOLUMES" are free LOGSA cal, option, etceteras military publications, you should see it for what it is.. hype from an expert "marketer" who obviously doesn't honestly believe his product is competitive on it's own merits. Please help us clean up the scanned manuals trade (by "us" I don't mean just Jill and I, I mean all the honest vendors).

Now, with that out of the way, here's some discussion of "marketing" tactics. If you've been on eBay long, you know how unreliable feedback can be as a performance indicator, so I'd advise you to look for the following:

Useless, frivolous or common "features" are often touted proudly and loudly as the be-all, end-all of scanned manuals, but if you fall for any of those marketing ploys, please do ask yourself later if you've actually used that "wonderful feature" if it's actually "new", and if it's actually exclusive to the vendor bragging about it if it is something useful. The answer will most often be no, and you'd have been much better served by additional documentation that gives you choices of how you want to do your work. Truly ignorant phrases like "no more guessing where you are!" or "digitally remastered!" are the usual signature of a vendor trying to convince you by marketing that his (hopefully) average product is above average.

Beware of vendors who emphasize file size and/or page counts. The original manual is the original manual.. it had so many pages, and the addition of blank pages and a vendor's advertising is certainly of no benefit to you, yet that is one of the primary ways marketers try to cheat you. A scanned manual at x resolution will be that manual at that resolution, and making a fatter file is of no benefit to you either. It is, in fact, detrimental. Yet, it will take a certain minimum size to store data scanned at a particular resolution, and a vendor who claims "truly reproduction grade" for 100+ page documents that claim 600 dpi greyscale photos in a 14 MB PDF shouldn't be fooling anyone but himself.

Folks who obtain and resell the work of others are usually afraid of the same thing being done to them, and will go far beyond any reasonable effort to "protect their investment" (usually, there is none!) The "Minnesota Marketer" (the guy that got run out of New Hampshire and was forced to change his eBay name from his ham call) has been known to deface every page of a document with his company name!! Gee... is that what "digitally remastered" means? If that was clearly stated in the description, fine, but if not, send the PDF to us and we'll remove the extraneous material, any shareware begs, remove the file locking, and return the file to you editable. But please, please help warn other buyers against that seller. Remember, the only reason a seller neglects to mention defacing every page of a document he describes as "truly reproduction grade" and/or "digitally remastered" is that he knows buyers would not want to buy a technical document if they knew such things "comprised it"<---- (get the hint?).

Watch for deceptive "marketing" phrases like "FULLY PRINTABLE!" being in the "features" or "specifications" column. The "Minnesota Marketer" (again?!) uses that one.. what it means to say is that he has locked the PDF against any and every change or procedure possible in Adobe Acrobat other than printing. When you see "FULLY PRINTABLE!" in a description you know you're being treated as though you were a fool by a "marketer".. Please don't fall for it!

While some of us bend over backwards to give you the best deal we possibly can, others expend their resources in creating the appearance of a good deal, while actually taking more from you and giving you less. Some folks do seem to fall for it, and I guess that shouldn't be much of a surprise, since some folks also seem to respond positively to the use of giant bright colored fonts, "guarantees of lowest price" and such silliness.

You might look for a vendor who doesn't claim that everything they provide is the absolute best that can be obtained. Such statements make no sense and are patently absurd. You're much more likely to receive a maximally useable product from someone who provides honest descriptions of the virtues and faults of their wares. Vague phrases like "later printing", "reproduction grade", and plain old "better" are bad enough, but when someone starts telling you he's "DIGITALLY REMASTERED" a manual your BS-O-METER should PEG! Sure, it's cute, but are you really willing to accept cute advertising lingo in lieu of honesty and true quality?

If you've read all this, you're obviously interested in the honesty vs. marketing question, and we appreciate that. It's very difficult to fight marketers, since by their very definition they "color" and "slant" the issues while non-salesperson types like Jill and I just tell it like it is and therefore have to actually provide a good product and not just the appearance of one. Like spammers, marketers will continue to exist and to thrive as long as there are folks who can be fooled, and as long as the concept of retaliatory feedback is workable. The more people who would prefer not to be taken advantage of even when it's only a small amount at stake, the easier it will be for us and other honest vendors to survive.