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After reviewing this older topic about A Day in the Life of . . . I noticed there were references to printers in Asia but there were no specific companies mentioned. The game development group I belong to is looking for a good printer that can turn out a color 96 to 100+ page supplement similar to the Companion books published by Paizo. In order to weigh all of our output possibilities, we would like to get some quotes from some overseas printers. Can anyone recommend or provide links for printers to contact?
Thanks!
Patrick
The Sculptdude's Website
After reviewing this older topic about A Day in the Life of . . . I noticed there were references to printers in Asia but there were no specific companies mentioned. The game development group I belong to is looking for a good printer that can turn out a color 96 to 100+ page supplement similar to the Companion books published by Paizo. In order to weigh all of our output possibilities, we would like to get some quotes from some overseas printers. Can anyone recommend or provide links for printers to contact?
Thanks!
Patrick
The Sculptdude's Website
We at 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming never did print runs like that. When we were handling the printing ourselves, we did small print runs via print-on-demand sources (using Lulu) as the orders came in. Now, Studio 2 Publishing handles our printing for us, and even though they do much larger print runs than we ever did on our own, they still use print-on-demand (via Lightning Source).
We at 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming never did print runs like that. When we were handling the printing ourselves, we did small print runs via print-on-demand sources (using Lulu) as the orders came in. Now, Studio 2 Publishing handles our printing for us, and even though they do much larger print runs than we ever did on our own, they still use print-on-demand (via Lightning Source).
Lulu seemed a little pricey on what wanted for a cover price for a full color book. We are anticipating spending quite a bit to get some top notch art and wanted a book to showcase that.
I checked out the S2P site a while back and that sounded very appealing since they also handled all of the distribution channel aspect of it as well. I understand that for any start-up it is very difficult to get product into Alliance Game Distribution. They may certainly be the way to go.
Patrick
The Sculptdude's Website
Lulu seemed a little pricey on what wanted for a cover price for a full color book. We are anticipating spending quite a bit to get some top notch art and wanted a book to showcase that.
Well if you are doing color, your budget goes up greatly when compared to B&W. If you have never published a color book, I would suggest you go small with a B&W product first and after a few successful attempt and positive sales, then move to color. Doing a color book that does not sell (which can be for many various reasons) is a good way to kill a start-up RPG company.
I checked out the S2P site a while back and that sounded very appealing since they also handled all of the distribution channel aspect of it as well. I understand that for any start-up it is very difficult to get product into Alliance Game Distribution. They may certainly be the way to go.
I think S2P is a good company to use, I used them in the past, but I learned that everything that they do for you, and you could also learn to do. It will take time to do it but you will learn more about the RPG industry which will make you more profitable in the long run. Best of all, S2P and any service like it have dozens of companies to pitch to distributors. They will not be able to focus on growing your business as well as you would. If you do this by yourself, you will make a lot more mistakes but you will learn a lot more about the business that will help you succeed more in the long term. Just something to think about.
The guys I'm working with have also worked on Reaper's Warlord: Savage North book and West Wind's Secrets of the Third Reich. We are essentially planning to publishing an all new alternate setting book for the PF rules along with a couple of adventure modules (not related in any way to the afore-mentioned IPs). The format we decided on was an initial 96 page setting guide/gazetteer thing.
We are hoping to fund the project through kickstarter. I have some contacts to some of the industry's top artists so reproducing their work in color seems ideal. The trouble is the math. For the number of the initial print run we anticipate, the printing cost alone from Lulu would be around $20 per copy. We were shooting for a cover price on it to be around that, so that's a bit too high. We're just looking for a less expensive printing solution.
It may come down to just making it all up as a PDF first (which we'd have to do anyway) and then rolling it out to print after building an audience later.
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We are hoping to fund the project through kickstarter. I have some contacts to some of the industry's top artists so reproducing their work in color seems ideal. The trouble is the math. For the number of the initial print run we anticipate, the printing cost alone from Lulu would be around $20 per copy. We were shooting for a cover price on it to be around that, so that's a bit too high. We're just looking for a less expensive printing solution.
IIRC only 40% of all kickstarter projects get funded. Most of those that do rely on an established network of followers to get the word out. Do you have a twitter/facebook pages set up and are you sharing details of your setting through them? If they do nothing else, your twitter/facebook pages should be pointing people to your web page where you share details of the setting. Take a look at my own web page. Last week I announced Shadowsfall. Today I posted about why the Plane of Shadows. I've got a whole series lined up that talks about the setting. I plan on doing a Kickstarter campaign for something unannounced at the moment, but not before I get more people interested in Shadowfall first.
Also do you have a proven record of providing balanced material? Setting are tricky. Companies that do the best with their settings have been selling products, gaining followers, and proving that their material in as balanced and imaginative as Paizo (or WotC, back in the 3.5 days). You could do spell of your setting, monsters of your setting, feats of your setting, ... all as PDFs. These will find your book printing efforts.
Printing costs: Shop around. Goto a local printer and ask for a quote. Someone is bound to be cheaper than Lulu. Then google search printers. someone else is bound to be cheaper still.
As a print publisher who is in distribution, the best way to start out is PDF only. Much, much lower risk. Move to print once you're more established.
We use CreateSpace, an Amazon affiliate. It's significantly less expensive than Lulu and has great production quality. In the years we've been using them, we've had maybe 10 bad copies out of thousands.
Companies that do the best with their settings have been selling products, gaining followers, and proving that their material is as balanced and imaginative as Paizo (or WotC, back in the 3.5 days). You could do spells of your setting, monsters of your setting, feats of your setting, ... all as PDFs. These will fund your book printing efforts.
Without wanting to appear to get the "cart before the horse" this whole project is still in the proof-of-concept stage. The projected release on it is July 2012. So all of the foot pounding is to determine if we even want to bother doing the thing in the first place. There is a marketing campaign planned including the areas you mentioned as well as print and web ads, viral marketing, etc. which should launch in the first quarter. Anyway, the suggestion to piecemeal out PDFs is really a terrific idea I hadn't even considered. It will certainly give us a gauge to see if compiling it all into a printed volume would be worthwhile. It would also be great to offer the new classes/races, feats & skills, equipment and so forth as its own supplement at a lower price-point PDF. Genius!
We use CreateSpace, an Amazon affiliate. It's significantly less expensive than Lulu and has great production quality. In the years we've been using them, we've had maybe 10 bad copies out of thousands.
I had looked at CreateSpace years ago for a graphic novel project. It may be worthwhile to check them out again. Thanks for the suggestion!
Without wanting to appear to get the "cart before the horse" this whole project is still in the proof-of-concept stage. The projected release on it is July 2012. So all of the foot pounding is to determine if we even want to bother doing the thing in the first place. There is a marketing campaign planned including the areas you mentioned as well as print and web ads, viral marketing, etc. which should launch in the first quarter. Anyway, the suggestion to piecemeal out PDFs is really a terrific idea I hadn't even considered. It will certainly give us a gauge to see if compiling it all into a printed volume would be worthwhile. It would also be great to offer the new classes/races, feats & skills, equipment and so forth as its own supplement at a lower price-point PDF. Genius!
9 months until release is not as long as you think, and 96 pages for a color document is going to be pricey. How much, roughly, is already done, if I might ask?
What kind of price are you aiming to set for the finished product?
There is a marketing campaign planned including the areas you mentioned as well as print and web ads, viral marketing, etc.
There's an old joke in the RPG industry. How do you make a small fortune in the RPG industry? Start off with a big fortune.
A marketing campaign like you mentioned is one of the best ways to accomplish that. When I started JBE, one of my prime directives is to never lose money. With the exception of my first pack of stock art, I never spent money before I already made it and had it in hand. And that has kept me profitable every year I've been in business. Spending money before you have money means your final product has to sell X amount more just to break even before it goes on sale.
Marketing works best when there's something already to buy. "Oh this looks great! Where can I buy this? Oh it isn't available yet. Oh well." My upcoming Shadowsfall is the first time I advertised something that wasn't already out (for reasons that will be obvious in a week or two). Marketing works best when there is something to buy now. "Oh this looks great! Let me go buy it!"
Also remember, ads cost money. Facebook and twitter and posting on message boards is free.
The best thing to do is to built up your products first, then figure out how you're going to sell them.
9 months until release is not as long as you think, and 96 pages for a color document is going to be pricey. How much, roughly, is already done, if I might ask?
Well if you figure that the page count equals 45K words and you pay 2 cents a word that's $900. Add on one full page of color art (est. $100 each) per every four pages you get $2,400 for a total of $3,300. Best yet, I have not included the cost of the editing, layout, cover art work AND printing (If you are not doing POD). This project could easily get to $5,000. To break even with a retail cover price of $20 (meaning you get AT MOST 50% -- $10 -- if you sell through retail stores and distributors) you need to sell at least 500 copies, just to break even. Anyone looking to get into the RPG publishing field take a second a look at the numbers for making this work as a business. This is the most important thing you can do to help you in the long run.
Well if you figure that the page count equals 45K words and you pay 2 cents a word that's $900. Add on one full page of color art (est. $100 each) per every four pages you get $2,400 for a total of $3,300. Best yet, I have not included the cost of the editing, layout, cover art work AND printing (If you are not doing POD). This project could easily get to $5,000. To break even with a retail cover price of $20 (meaning you get AT MOST 50% -- $10 -- if you sell through retail stores and distributors) you need to sell at least 500 copies, just to break even. Anyone looking to get into the RPG publishing field take a second a look at the numbers for making this work as a business. This is the most important thing you can do to help you in the long run.
Louis knows what he's talking about there. Those numbers are real dollar amounts we publishers routinely work with.
When you go through Studio 2 or Impressions (as I do) to get your book into distribution, the percentage you get is closer to 33% of the cover price. Remember the game store, distributor and the subdistributor all need paid from your cover price. That's where that 67% goes. So that $20 book gets closer to $6.50. That means you have to sell more than 750 book before breaking even. And to reemphasize Louis' point, this doesn't include two very high price tag items of cover art and printing.
I have yet to sell 750 print books of a single title.
A few helpful modifications to Louis' numbers. All b/w artwork (est. $25 each for a new artist): $600. Using stockart to cover about half of those images will bring that number down to about $400. You do all the writing yourself saves you the $900. So right there, that just saved you almost $3000.
So lets say it costs you $2000 to produce and print the book. At $20/ book and getting it into distribution, you're looking at needing only 300 copies to break even. While that is possible to reach, it is not likely from a brand new, unknown publisher.
Chief Technical Officer
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I'd also note that if you're selling PDF editions as well as print, the PDF sales will help you cover the writing, editing, layout and art costs, and that reduces the number of print copies you need to sell to break even.
Also, if you're selling those PDFs on paizo.com, you'll get 75% of the purchase price; depending on how you set up your pricing and distribution deals, you may be able to make as much (or more) from a single PDF sale than you make from a single print sale.
All of this has been extremely helpful! I certainly appreciate all of the input because you guys have lots of experience in doing this. I'm basically just the InDesign guy just trying to package it in a cool looking wrapper.
I had brief discussion with the other guys last night and related a lot of what had been posted here. The general consensus is to stage out a series of PDFs for various new feats & skills / races & classes / powers and critters and such as suggested. These will likely be crunch-heavy with a slant to the intended setting fluff and will also feature just a couple of b&w designs and illustrations. If the individual PDFs prove popular, we will compile all of it into "book" form as a definitive PDF and then look at our print options.
I put the Savage North book together in about six months starting with about 50% content all while playtesting was going on. There are some things I learned on that project I would like to avoid. With this particular project, it is all in the concept phase so we are looking at what output we want to shoot for to tailor our work to that end.
There are four of us in the group, three are writers two are artists and we have another individual who we will be paying for art by the piece for the PDFs. We are all basically doing it for free as a time investment to see if it will crawl.
Patrick
The Sculptdude's Website
I had brief discussion with the other guys last night and related a lot of what had been posted here. The general consensus is to stage out a series of PDFs for various new feats & skills / races & classes / powers and critters and such as suggested. These will likely be crunch-heavy with a slant to the intended setting fluff and will also feature just a couple of b&w designs and illustrations. If the individual PDFs prove popular, we will compile all of it into "book" form as a definitive PDF and then look at our print options.
This is a very smart, low risk strategy.
I had brief discussion with the other guys last night and related a lot of what had been posted here. The general consensus is to stage out a series of PDFs for various new feats & skills / races & classes / powers and critters and such as suggested. These will likely be crunch-heavy with a slant to the intended setting fluff and will also feature just a couple of b&w designs and illustrations. If the individual PDFs prove popular, we will compile all of it into "book" form as a definitive PDF and then look at our print options.This is a very smart, low risk strategy.
This will be helpful to you long term to see even if you have a success on your hand OR if you need to make some changes before you release the final book.