. If you do not already know what you want in your Cruise book, then we suggest you follow the checklist below . the most important things when planning your Cruise books are.... .  Plan your book early !!!!!  Be clear when your request your estimate.  Number of books, pages and other requested differences  Make sure that we understand each other on the final deadline date for material to reach us  Make sure that we understand your desired delivery date and location.  We need to start 60 days prior, but in a valid emergency    have done a book in less than two weeks  And once again ................ Plan your book early !!!!! We have been doing this a long time and are good at getting it done and doing so correctly.  We will do anything to make your book a success and will bend over backward to meet your needs.  All we want is to make a fair profit and protect our hard earned reputation! _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ supported software that we work with Adobe InDesign CS, CS2, CS3 and CS4 Adobe Acrobat PDF files Adobe PhotoShop & Illustrator Microsoft Publisher 2000 and XP PageMaker 7.2 Microsoft Office (we also use Microsoft Word & MS PowerPoint to create pages from) talk to us if you need to use other software, we can generally work with anything _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ get a written estimate .  Please use our estimate request form that you can reach through the button at the right. The estimate we provide also serves as a contract/work order, that fully describes the book in detail and what services are to be provided as part of the project.  Be sure the number of books to be printed is reflective of your actual needs to request an estimate _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ is your unit part of a Military Expeditionary Unit ? .  Is your unit is part of a MEU?  If yes, have you and the Commander explored the possibility of doing a large book for the entire MEU?  Larger orders of books could result in lesser cost per book.  If interested click on the button on the right to learn more and then request an estimate based on the required books _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ some ideas on how to save when doing your book and available options .  We offer a finders fee for every unit that you bring to us and that ends up printing their book with us.  The finders fee is subtracted from the cost of your book.  Follow the link on the yellow "Click Here" button on the right  Some ships or units have less than 100 personnel.  To help offset the greater cost per copy of doing such a book, think about combining units or ships into one book.  Each book would be reversed, causing both to be on the cover and each facing the other way.  Need help finding such a unit, ask us, we may know of another unit in the same situation  Unfortunately we cannot accept orders under 100 books, but, we have on a few occasions made exceptions and/or special arrangements for smaller ships or units  Think of printing the book with a publisher that will create the entire book in black and white and do a soft cover instead of hardback.  Sorry, we do not offer black and white nor print partial color book printing  We will offer a price for a plain cover book with full color images to be printed on it. If you want a fancy cover of imitation leather, expect to pay a slighter higher price per book, depending on number books ordered.  However, please keep in mind that most printers will do these fancy covers in multitudes of 500 books at a time only.  View the difference between the two on the right.  Other options are available.  Ask and we can include your desired option in your estimate to learn about finders fees Our design Plastified Embossed Debossed Your design Plastified We offer plastified, imitation leather and cloth covers to be used with or without debossed logos or text _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Do you want your book to include a DVD or CD? .  We offer DVD/CD with book orders, to be placed in a paper sleeve at the rear  We ask that you provide the Master DVD/CD  The file can be emailed to us or sent by ftp in the same method as images  We can have no copyright violations on the disk nor can we copy programs  We only fulfill DVD/CD orders as a part of a book order and not separately  We offer the disks with the same graphics as your Cruise book cover  Not ideal for units in a combat theater, rather for ships filming their port visit . We offer DVD's or CD's at $1.00 each as an added feature to any book order _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ reserve the time frame & price by making a deposit early .  We maintain a tight publishing schedule, in many cases, up to a full year in advance. Staying within that schedule allows us to give you the better prices that you expect from us. To reserve the time frame, to lock your quoted price for your book and to allow our firm a smooth and continuous work flow, we require a 25% deposit, based on the full estimate amount.  Once received, we set aside a period of printing, for your book (based on provided dates) and make the necessary arrangements to have the required paper and other materials on hand. We understand military scheduling and will make changes to meet your ever changing schedule or extensions of deployments.  Just communicate with us _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ making payment  For a payment method we prefer using PayPal, which is the securest payment method available on the net for you and us.  PayPal allows you to use all the various credit cards, or pay through an existing account. When paying with a Credit card.  There is no need to open an account. However, personal accounts with PayPal, are usually limited, therefore the eChecks payment method is another solution, for those that are affected because they are new to PayPal. We have a Premier Business Account, therefore, if the desired, we can also invoice directly from within PayPal and then the unit or MWR are able to make payment per Credit Card at the PayPal site  We also accept wire transfers or Government checks (marked for deposit only) to our account at the Navy Credit Union. Look for our account number on the estimate we provided.  Please do not send personal checks or money orders directly to us.  We have recently opened a Navy Federal Credit Union Account that allows for account to account direct transfers directly from your account to ours.  The convienence of this option is that you can do so online if you have online access with the Navy Federal Credit union.  Look for our account number on the estimate we provided to go to the actual  payment page _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ test your ftp login/password .   In your estimate we provided a login/password.  Test it!  Click the button on the right. Send a test image!  Need more logins and passwords, let us know & we will meet your needs login here to ftp files to us _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Alternative methods of getting pages or image files to us .  Go to http://www.zapr.com and upload your pages or images and then provide us the link login and password.  This service is FREE. This service is relatively easy to use and has no file size limitations to go to http://zapr.com/ or go to this page for other methods _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ meeting the requirements of DOD OPNAVINST 5070.1C .   If you desire we will fulfill the requirements as set forth by DOD OPNACINST 5070.1C that each and every USMC unit provide a copy of their Cruise book to the Marine Corps Historical Center and that any other activity Department of the Navy activity, that publishes a Cruise book provide a copy to the the Navy Department Library.  We do so at no additional cost to your order.  We usually make an annual shipment to both locations read OPNAVINST 5070.1C _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Need to see examples to stimulate your artistic talents or graphics to enhance your upcoming book .   Just contact us by email and we will provide you with access to megabytes of .jpg files, images and other graphics to use in whatever manner you wish to use them to see layout & cover examples _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ have any questions or need any help? .  Email any questions, comments, special needs, or help requests by clicking on the right. We want you to be satisfied with our cruise book services. Our reputation depends on it!  And we will do anything to protect that reputation cause it was hard getting to this point  to email us