For my personal hard copy of an RM, as said above, I plan on using a ring bound notebook and swapping out the paper for my printed cards.
So, in my hunt for one I came across this one which I think will be perfect as it looks like it has a nice hard pair of covers -
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Derwent-Sket...+pad+landscape
But of course I still need some dividers for each section, like on the in-game RM, so I cobbled together this image from the artwork in the game, to print onto 1 side of one of the A5 sheets of card, to which I'll glue a little tab to the edge to make flipping easier, with the appropriate word on it (like Japan for the Japan section, probably with the same leather texture also), I may however change the brown leather to black so it matches the outside covers of the notebook -
Because the cards will be A5 sized I had to resize the artwork for the leather RM cover in photoshop as well as resizing but maintaining the shape of the flag and bar with the word on it. Turned out quite nicely though, just need to find a "flag" to use for the merchants, in-game they don't appear to have one on the RM.
I'll also be using "ivory" coloured card to print on so it should look nice and authentic.
I would offer to sell people a hard copy as per how mine will be, but I'm in the UK so shipping costs will likely be horrendous, and the materials for the hard copy will in fact set me back about £15. So nearly the cost of a used copy of the SH IV collectors edition, but my RM will likely end up covering both SH IV and SH V ships.
Probably going to use up quite a bit of ink on my printer doing this also, but the result will be worth it...
Have to stick to supplying you guys with the files so you can print your own I think.