CEO
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I really have no idea how this works, but has Paizo thought of offering PODs of some of the out-of-print works currently only available as PDFs? I'm sure there's some legalities involved, but I'd love to have a hardcopy of Cthulhu by Gaslight or Baltron's Beacon.
I've given it some thought, but it is more complicated that I have the time for right now, so it will have to stay on the backburner until I or somebody I hire has more time to deal with this. That said, I think it is a cool idea and expect that we will offer it some year in the future. :)
-Lisa
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I really have no idea how this works, but has Paizo thought of offering PODs of some of the out-of-print works currently only available as PDFs? I'm sure there's some legalities involved, but I'd love to have a hardcopy of Cthulhu by Gaslight or Baltron's Beacon.I've given it some thought, but it is more complicated that I have the time for right now, so it will have to stay on the backburner until I or somebody I hire has more time to deal with this. That said, I think it is a cool idea and expect that we will offer it some year in the future. :)
-Lisa
Time has marched on since this decision to put the idea on the "backburner".
Other RPG publishers are already using alternative companies to put out products as Print on Demand books.
I think it may be time for Paizo Publishing to give this new technology another look.
Take this problem that one of your customers had with Council of Thieves Player's Guide (PFRPG) PDF:
Can I buy a print copy of this? or why this wasnt printed?It wasn't printed because, frankly, our previous printed player's guides didn't do as well as we'd hoped. They sold okay here on paizo.com, but I think many retailers didn't order them because they didn't really understand what they were.
If you were already geared up for Print on Demand, your "retailer understanding" problem would not have prevented you from getting Algarad the product he or she wanted to buy.
Print on Demand could also be very good for your non-US customers. With PoD outlets now springing up all over the world, the extra cost of one-off printings may be offset by the drop in postage costs. And the savings in storage costs may also be helpful.
Obviously, it needs an accountant to look into this sort of stuff, but I think that you may be able to help your customers to get certain things cheaper if you embrace PoD. I've seen a few grognoid products start to sell for stupidly high prices on sites like Amazon. I would rather have a PoD reprint than get ripped off.
And who knows. If WotC are really worried about the "piracy threat" of grognoid PDFs, then maybe they might let you sell them on a strictly PoD only basis.
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Director of Brand Strategy
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Obviously I don't work for Paizo, but I know this has been addressed a number of times in the past. The two most notable concerns raised by Vic and Lisa in the past were the inability for Paizo to oversee the shipping of POD book and the lack of options for customers to save on shipping by combining them with subscriptions and the lack of quality control of the printed material itself.
If you were already geared up for Print on Demand, your "retailer understanding" problem would not have prevented you from getting Algarad the product he or she wanted to buy.
Algarad can get the product for free, so the presence or lack of a POD option isn't really related. I would really like to get the new Bruce Springsteen album on vinyl but they only released it digitally and on CD. I can still listen to the songs, though, and that's what really matters, right? Not the medium.
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Obviously I don't work for Paizo, but I know this has been addressed a number of times in the past. The two most notable concerns raised by Vic and Lisa in the past were the inability for Paizo to oversee the shipping of POD book and the lack of options for customers to save on shipping by combining them with subscriptions and the lack of quality control of the printed material itself.
Anyone thats ever bought print on demand, like myself, knows you getting it from somewhere else, not the parent company. And frankly the print quality is just find. It wont be the glossy type paper piazo does, but its just fine.
Those reasons have more of an excuse fell, rather than real concerns. I'm unwilling to buy PDF's even use the free ones, but if something of interest comes along, and things do, and I can get them at say, LULU, I'm there.
As a subscriber, I'd pay for the print on demand of the players guides, if available. I probably wont ever avail myself to the free PDF.
As for you "I want vinyl of Brusce Spingsten" example, its apples and orange comparison. There's no method to gain a vinyl record of digital. There is a method of gaining print on demand.
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I posted this on another thread, but it seems to fit even more here so ...
I don't think I quite get the point of, or appeal of print on demand companies and services. If you are going to spend that kind of money for a single copy, why not just print out the PDF?
So, what is print on demand giving you? I assume you get a better paper stock, but maybe not? I also assume it would be bound? If so, do you normally get a choice of binding (saddle stitch, most likely)
I'm not being snarky - I honestly can't see using a print on demand option unless it is very cost effective and the final product is MUCH higher than what I would get by simply printing it myself on a decent quality printer on nice paper and putting it in a nice binder or something.
After all, I would assume that POD companies are basically using a high end printer to do this (some kind of Xerox Docutech or something that just prints the file and then binds it) If so, heck ... anyone with a decent quick copy shop near by could get the same thing done in a few minutes. Just give them the file, the output it, staple it and you're done.
Seriously - I'm really curious ... what am I missing?
Obviously I don't work for Paizo, but I know this has been addressed a number of times in the past. The two most notable concerns raised by Vic and Lisa in the past were the inability for Paizo to oversee the shipping of POD book and the lack of options for customers to save on shipping by combining them with subscriptions and the lack of quality control of the printed material itself.Anyone thats ever bought print on demand, like myself, knows you getting it from somewhere else, not the parent company. And frankly the print quality is just find. It wont be the glossy type paper piazo does, but its just fine.
Those reasons have more of an excuse fell, rather than real concerns. I'm unwilling to buy PDF's even use the free ones, but if something of interest comes along, and things do, and I can get them at say, LULU, I'm there.
I don't know if I would say they are excuses, but I would say they are not the chief reason. The chief reason is they don't want their older products directly competing with the new products. Say a non-subscription customer comes along and sees the newest adventure path, while they are thinking about it, someone says, "Yeah, Paizo does good stuff, their Rise of the Runelords was the bomb-diggity." This customer might then think, "Maybe instead of getting this one, I can pick up that older adventure path instead." Now they can still do that as a pdf, but a lot of folks like print copies, and if they could get one for a reasonable price, professionally made (see Marc's confusion), they might get the older product instead of the newer one. Paizo wants people to buy the newer stuff, for which PoD is not necessary for, instead of the older stuff, for which it tends to be (for a print copy).
One of the staff, it might have been Vic but I'm not sure, came out and stated this at one time.
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Just give them the file, the output it, staple it and you're done.
Seriously - I'm really curious ... what am I missing?
You are missing the collector gene that wants a book, not a stapled homemade version. Sure they appear to be the same on the surface and the information is identical but a POD company does a better job of binding the book. I have several POD hardcovers from LULU and they look identical to books you can purchase off the shelf of a Barnes and Nobles.
Something that I printed at the local copy joint and bound myself just wouldn't have the same appeal for me, nor would it fill the same niche.
Its the same reasoning that causes a near mint and an acceptable copy of the same book to go for different prices in the secondary market. They both hold the same level of information but some people prefer to have the cleaner sleeker copy.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Obviously I don't work for Paizo, but I know this has been addressed a number of times in the past. The two most notable concerns raised by Vic and Lisa in the past were the inability for Paizo to oversee the shipping of POD book and the lack of options for customers to save on shipping by combining them with subscriptions and the lack of quality control of the printed material itself.Anyone thats ever bought print on demand, like myself, knows you getting it from somewhere else, not the parent company. And frankly the print quality is just find. It wont be the glossy type paper piazo does, but its just fine.
Those reasons have more of an excuse fell, rather than real concerns. I'm unwilling to buy PDF's even use the free ones, but if something of interest comes along, and things do, and I can get them at say, LULU, I'm there.
I don't know if I would say they are excuses, but I would say they are not the chief reason. The chief reason is they don't want their older products directly competing with the new products. Say a non-subscription customer comes along and sees the newest adventure path, while they are thinking about it, someone says, "Yeah, Paizo does good stuff, their Rise of the Runelords was the bomb-diggity." This customer might then think, "Maybe instead of getting this one, I can pick up that older adventure path instead." Now they can still do that as a pdf, but a lot of folks like print copies, and if they could get one for a reasonable price, professionally made (see Marc's confusion), they might get the older product instead of the newer one. Paizo wants people to buy the newer stuff, for which PoD is not necessary for, instead of the older stuff, for which it tends to be (for a print copy).
One of the staff, it might have been Vic but I'm not sure, came out and stated this at one time.
That's one of the reasons why we don't reprint in volume, but it's not really related to this issue.
Honestly, it wouldn't be surprised if, in the next several years, POD quality and prices both get to the point where we can reasonably run our own POD printer in the warehouse for handling out-of-print stuff in small quantities. It's getting there, but it's not there yet.
To the people who don't understand why customers might like PoD, I would refer you to companies like Lulu, who are already making a profit selling both PDF and PoD versions of RPG products.
This is a market that has already been born. I just think that Paizo (as a company with a far better understanding of role playing and as a company with a large catalogue of third party PDF products) would be a much better company to be getting this sort of stuff out to the public (than a generic PoD company like Lulu).
I know that, in theory, I can print out a PDF of a RPG and then stick it into a binder, but then I could print out a copy of the SRD or the Pathfinder RPG Reference Document. How many people have done that?
Print on Demand is the middle ground between buying something from a big print run and using your own printer.
I don't buy into the "old stuff would be competing with new stuff" argument, I'm afraid. That is the sort of logic that WotC uses to justify attempting to kill the 3e market. (And I'm darn glad that companies like Paizo are continuing to support 3e and that other companies are pulling the d20 System logo and bringing back things.) If we go with the "companies have to make cash" argument, then common sense would suggest, that if Paizo can cut a deal where they make cash from old stuff, they should make that deal. A dollar spent on PoD products is as good as a dollar spent on a large print run (or something else, like a T-shirt).
If some people don't want to buy PoD stuff from Paizo, that is fine. But if other people out here, want that choice, and are willing to pay a fair amount for that choice, then I think that it would be cool if they could have that choice.
But PoD is about more than "old stuff". It is also about new stuff. PoD would allow Paizo to do stuff like offer a deal on printing things that are not normally printed (like web enhancements). (You could even put together a year's worth of Pathfinder Chronicles web enhancements as an alternative for a PoD book.)
And PoD can also be used as a "safety net" for backing up a traditional print run product. Lets say that they bring out a new product and estimate that they need to print 10,000 copies, but actually get 10,100 copies. With the old methods (where you have to wait for another print run) that would produce 100 customers that have to wait (and who might get unhappy at the delay). But PoD outlets could be told to whack out 500 additional copies. That might cost a bit more than a high volume print run (for those 100 books) but it would be better to get product to customers, make them happy and keep money rolling in. (That sort of PoD printing can also help companies avoid printing too many copies and having them sit around in warehouses.)
I know it is early days for this sort of idea. But I think that PoD might also be something that could help disabled gamers. If someone starts loosing their eyesight, but a tagged PDF can be remanufactured into a large print book, they would be able to carry on playing. With gamers being a minority group anyway, I'm not sure a publisher could afford to knock out every product as a traditional large print book, but with a bit of tweaking PoD could allow partially blind people to have equal access. Not to mention that someone out there should hopefully be making PoD technology for Braile, so that totally blind people could play RPGs.
(PoD can do a lot of things. It would even be possible to scan in miniature figures and have a PoD library of out of print minis. As far as I know, nobody has started doing that yet, but it could be epic.)
I really think that this is not a "should Paizo do PoD" issue, it is a "when should Paizo start doing PoD" issue.
I've started a Facebook called "We want Print on Demand from Paizo" and if anyone reading this thread wants to let Paizo know they are waiting for Paizo to start supporting PoD, I would urge them to join and spread the word. Please note that this is not a protest group - it isn't about wagging the finger. It is about saying: "here we are, please sell us stuff". I am hoping that if membership of this group continues to rise, it will keep the issue on the table.
One day, WotC will see the light and will allow someone to put out PoD versions of old school things like BECMI. When that day happens, I expect the PoD market to really take off in a big way. Paizo's way of doing things seems to be a lot more grognoid friendly. I would like to see all the publishers go down this route.
At Vic Wertz: Thanks for surfing in.
PoD seems to be working for Lulu. Is this delay because Paizo think that the Lulu method is too pricy?
Obviously, you can't give me exact numbers, and I wouldn't want you to, but roughly how far wrong are you saying things are? Do you think costs have to halve, drop by 10 percent or what? Are you waiting for the next generation of printers or is this something that you might be able to sort out with the existing technology?
I ask this because Lisa Stevens, said this would have to be a backburner idea three years ago. Are we likely to be waiting another three years before Paizo might look at this again? Or could it be possible next year?
Or could we have something a Paizo PoD stand at GenCon printing out stuff on an experimental basis (just to see what the vibe is like)?
There are already PoD networks across the world (which is what companies like Lulu seem to be tapping into). You mentioned having a PoD printer in your warehouse. If you did ever go down the PoD route, do you think that Paizo would rule out outsourcing as a possibility? I ask this specifically, because as a non-US customer, you are forced to hit me with increased postage if I buy directly from you (to recover your costs) but if you had a "Paizo UK PoD partner", I could possibly get the book at a lower postal rate. Something like that could be better for me (and gamers in places like Australia).
Thanks for your time.
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Chief Technical Officer
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It's not just cost here—it's quality as well. Honestly, I don't think Lulu—or POD in general—is quite *good* enough yet, especially when it comes to color. We spend a lot of time and money on art and printing to make our products look as good as or better than anything else in the industry, and I don't think current POD standards would show that very well.
Further, my understanding is that many POD bindings don't hold up very well with heavy use over time; they might work well for books that get read a few times before being put up on a shelf, but RPGs get worked over harder than most books. A notable game publisher recently launched their own POD setup, and ended up having to scrap the whole thing after they realized that the binding failure rate on the finished product was much higher than anticipated.
And then cost... well, I don't know what Lulu's actual cost-of-goods are, but given their volume, I think it's safe to say that if *we* had a POD printer in the warehouse, *they* would still probably be able to produce any given book for a lower cost that we could—after all, it's what they do. But let's pretend for a moment that we could exactly match their cost-of-goods on a given product, or that we just did it through them. The closest equivalent I can find on Lulu for a Pathfinder AP volume (100 pages, full color) is the full-color edition of Open Design's Kobold Ecologies Volume 1. If you assume that Open Design and Paizo have to clear roughly the same profit margins on our products, then it follows that we'd have to price our imaginary POD Pathfinder AP at pretty much the same price as Open Design has priced that book: $34.99. And frankly, that's just too much to ask, especially when we're talking about a copy of a book that's visibly inferior to the press-printed copies that we charge $19.99 for. If we tried to charge that for a POD copy of an out-of-print book, I think most gamers would just seek out a used copy on eBay instead. I know I would.
(No insult to Wolfgang here—he knew that $34.99 was too much to ask when he did it; I gather that was a test to gauge customer demand, and since he hasn't continued to offer full-color versions of his books, I'd conclude the test didn't go gangbusters.)
At any rate, if you want numbers, I can't be precise, but using the above hypotheticals, I can ballpark that we'd need unit prices to drop about 40% before it starts to make a whole lot of sense. (To actually do it in-house, which would allow us to offer combined shipping with our other stuff, I'd say it'd have to drop even more, as an operation like Lulu has the benefit of spreading the cost of their POD equipment over a larger number of products in the same amount of time than we could.) And that decrease in cost has to *also* come with an increase in binding quality and print quality.
Honestly, my suggest to folks who want printed copies of our PDFs—find a local service bureau, and ask them to print and bind your PDF. That way, you're in control of your own personal balancing act between quality and cost, and we don't have to stand behind a product that's both too expensive and not good enough for our standards.
Vic, thanks, that was the most convincing explanation to date from you guys as to why you're not jumping on the POD bandwagon just yet.
May I suggest you sticky it somewhere so you don't have to keep writing different versions of the same thing(s)? Like a Paizo FAQ, for example.
I posted this on another thread, but it seems to fit even more here so ...
I don't think I quite get the point of, or appeal of print on demand companies and services. If you are going to spend that kind of money for a single copy, why not just print out the PDF?
Imagine the New England Journal of Medicine published an article that details the benefits of three drugs in a specific series of trials back in 2007. Along comes 2010 and one of the companies that holds a patent on one of the drugs wants to reprint the article for distribution to sales reps on US and North American Markets and needs to order up 400 or so copies of that issue of NEJM. The single article pdf won't do, because you want the reps to show the doctor they are visiting the article in the journal (more legitimacy).
Imagine you publish an online-only magazine with 35,000 unique paid subscribers. POD can become value-add for some subscribers, and drives more subs.
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Imagine the New England Journal of Medicine published an article that details the benefits of three drugs in a specific series of trials back in 2007. Along comes 2010 and one of the companies that holds a patent on one of the drugs wants to reprint the article for distribution to sales reps on US and North American Markets and needs to order up 400 or so copies of that issue of NEJM. The single article pdf won't do, because you want the reps to show the doctor they are visiting the article in the journal (more legitimacy).
Not that it's here or there but I've never seen a drug rep dropping a whole journal. In my experience they always drop just the pertinent journal article. After all, the reference is there and easily corroborated with PubMed.
Sorry for the threadjack.
Imagine the New England Journal of Medicine published an article that details the benefits of three drugs in a specific series of trials back in 2007. Along comes 2010 and one of the companies that holds a patent on one of the drugs wants to reprint the article for distribution to sales reps on US and North American Markets and needs to order up 400 or so copies of that issue of NEJM. The single article pdf won't do, because you want the reps to show the doctor they are visiting the article in the journal (more legitimacy).
Not that it's here or there but I've never seen a drug rep dropping a whole journal. In my experience they always drop just the pertinent journal article. After all, the reference is there and easily corroborated with PubMed.
Sorry for the threadjack.
Further threadjack:
If its a local rep on a visit, probably just the photocopy. If its for distribution at a talk or conference, they might go to the trouble of printing the cover, but only run their article inside rather than the whole journal. Depending on the journal, they do sometimes like that little extra oomph the "brand" gives.
Thank you very much for your detailed reply, Vic.
It's not just cost here—it's quality as well. Honestly, I don't think Lulu—or POD in general—is quite *good* enough yet, especially when it comes to color. We spend a lot of time and money on art and printing to make our products look as good as or better than anything else in the industry, and I don't think current POD standards would show that very well.
Hmm. I can see an issue with this. Paizo puts a ton of colour art into things and also uses glossy paper. I do know that sort of thing puts up the price of PoD products.
This might be less of a stopping block with old school products, as they tend to have more black and white content, and were designed for an era of non-glossy paper.
I think that WotC are completely out of touch with reality, for discontinuing the TSR PDFs that you and DriveThru were selling, and I think that pretty much all of those retro-design products would have worked well as PoD products.
Further, my understanding is that many POD bindings don't hold up very well with heavy use over time; they might work well for books that get read a few times before being put up on a shelf, but RPGs get worked over harder than most books. A notable game publisher recently launched their own POD setup, and ended up having to scrap the whole thing after they realized that the binding failure rate on the finished product was much higher than anticipated.
I've got a copy of Majestic Wilderlands and the binding for that is loose sheets glued onto the spine of the book - compared to the binding for your Children of the Void, which is made up of a number of slim booklets glued onto the spine.
I don't anticipate having any problems with Majestic Wilderlands (or your book), but then I try to look after my books.
I have had glued textbooks fall apart in the past, but that seems to be down to some sort of brittle glue that seems to rot. (If I was rich, I'd probably do some destruct testing on RPG books, just to find out who does good binding.)
And then cost... well, I don't know what Lulu's actual cost-of-goods are, but given their volume, I think it's safe to say that if *we* had a POD printer in the warehouse, *they* would still probably be able to produce any given book for a lower cost that we could—after all, it's what they do. But let's pretend for a moment that we could exactly match their cost-of-goods on a given product, or that we just did it through them. The closest equivalent I can find on Lulu for a Pathfinder AP volume (100 pages, full color) is the full-color edition of Open Design's Kobold Ecologies Volume 1. If you assume that Open Design and Paizo have to clear roughly the same profit margins on our products, then it follows that we'd have to price our imaginary POD Pathfinder AP at pretty much the same price as Open Design has priced that book: $34.99. And frankly, that's just too much to ask, especially when we're talking about a copy of a book that's visibly inferior to the press-printed copies that we charge $19.99 for. If we tried to charge that for a POD copy of an out-of-print book, I think most gamers would just seek out a used copy on eBay instead. I know I would.
True. But there comes a time when collectors drive second-hand product prices up to stupidly high levels. I've seen people trying to sell Towers of High Sorcery for over £100. Compared to that stupid price, a price of double the original RRP would seem fair.
Assuming that Pathfinder is a long term success (and I hope it is) there will be ToHS-like products in your range (that people fight over). Part of the reason, I like the idea of PoD is that it covers products that get a second following.
Still, I suppose you will have time before Paizo-grognoids exist.
At any rate, if you want numbers, I can't be precise, but using the above hypotheticals, I can ballpark that we'd need unit prices to drop about 40% before it starts to make a whole lot of sense. (To actually do it in-house, which would allow us to offer combined shipping with our other stuff, I'd say it'd have to drop even more, as an operation like Lulu has the benefit of spreading the cost of their POD equipment over a larger number of products in the same amount of time than we could.) And that decrease in cost has to *also* come with an increase in binding quality and print quality.
Hmm. I suppose the in-house benifits would be great for your US customers. I'm not sure they would be so good for your UK, Australian or other non-US customers, but then I don't suppose we are as large a customer base.
(I would love to see Paizo be successful enough to have a UK branch, like TSR had for a short while.)
Honestly, my suggest to folks who want printed copies of our PDFs—find a local service bureau, and ask them to print and bind your PDF. That way, you're in control of your own personal balancing act between quality and cost, and we don't have to stand behind a product that's both too expensive and not good enough for our standards.
That is a great suggestion. However, I have heard that some people have had problems getting a print bureau to print things. Apparently, some of the print shops are concerned that customers with PDFs may be trying to infringe copyright.
I went to a print shop in Central London (as I am currently trying to find a place that will print and bind Adlatum Campaign Setting*) and got told that I would need written permission from the authors/owners before they would do it.
* = Adlatum Campaign Setting is brilliant, by the way. Someone should hire the people who made it.
That caution (from the print shops) seems logical to me (even though it is in my way). If I get a print shop to print your stuff, I am kind of stepping on your toes. Maybe you intend some of the freebies to be printed, so you don't mind. But I could easily see a bandit trying to take advantage of that and then trying to whack out bootleg copies of freebie PDFs like "Pathfinder: Council of Thieves Player's Guide" on eBay.
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Director of Sales
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We have added verbiage to the FAQ which should help if a local bureau has any problems with printing your Paizo PDFs.
Thanks,
cos
I think it would be great.
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I've been getting the player's guides professionally printed and am looking into getting the PFS scenarios bound in 'season bundles' as well. I took in a player's companion and told them to replicate it - the cost so far (for extracting the book and printing two copies) has ranged from $25 each to almost $50 each (apparently some of the PDFs extract more easily to booklet format - perhaps the page count and divisibility by 4 factors into it as well). I have no idea on print on demand quality or costs, but the ones I have are indistinguishable from the player companion line from Paizo (other than the watermark). It might suit those (like me) with an obsessive need to see an entire bookshelf of Paizo products - I'd really recommend it to any collector with a reasonably friendly printer interested in such quirky projects.
I believe the merging of many PDFs is going to make the 'season compilation' of PFS scenarios prohibitive, but they're looking into it for me.
We have added verbiage to the FAQ which should help if a local bureau has any problems with printing your Paizo PDFs.
Thanks,
cos
Hmm, maybe I've been violating the allowable use - I didnt realise you were only allowed to print one copy.
I've been getting two copies of the player's guides printed (one of everything else). I never really asked about a limit on number - the two I have would only ever be used for my personal use (in that if I run that specific AP, I'll lend them out to the two players I have likely to read them for them to generate their characters, then get them back when the campaign is over).
Is that unacceptable?
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Chief Technical Officer
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We have added verbiage to the FAQ which should help if a local bureau has any problems with printing your Paizo PDFs.
Thanks,
cosHmm, maybe I've been violating the allowable use - I didnt realise you were only allowed to print one copy.
I've been getting two copies of the player's guides printed (one of everything else). I never really asked about a limit on number - the two I have would only ever be used for my personal use (in that if I run that specific AP, I'll lend them out to the two players I have likely to read them for them to generate their characters, then get them back when the campaign is over).
Is that unacceptable?
I have no problem with what you're doing.
Further threadjack:If its a local rep on a visit, probably just the photocopy. If its for distribution at a talk or conference, they might go to the trouble of printing the cover, but only run their article inside rather than the whole journal. Depending on the journal, they do sometimes like that little extra oomph the "brand" gives.
What?!? Drug reps bring Journal articles? I thought they only brought food and low cut blouses. *innocent pharmacist whistling* Zing!
I have no problem with what you're doing.We have added verbiage to the FAQ which should help if a local bureau has any problems with printing your Paizo PDFs.
Thanks,
cosHmm, maybe I've been violating the allowable use - I didnt realise you were only allowed to print one copy.
I've been getting two copies of the player's guides printed (one of everything else). I never really asked about a limit on number - the two I have would only ever be used for my personal use (in that if I run that specific AP, I'll lend them out to the two players I have likely to read them for them to generate their characters, then get them back when the campaign is over).
Is that unacceptable?
Thanks Vic, I appreciate it - and they do make pretty cool player handouts at the start of a campaign. :)
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I spent the better part of yesterday uploading on Lulu the Adventure Paths Player's Guide that Paizo no longer prints (as private books visible by me only, so no need to go look for them). Fine-tuning the covers to make the things look like books was the worst part of it. A last check and I guess I'll be able to have the books on my shelves at last.
I had to spend a day to make things look like they should, when I'm used to just adding things to my sidecart at Paizo. I'm disappointed that Paizo just doesn't provide a simple way to have their PDFs printed professionally.
I'm disappointed that the watermarks will appear on my physical copies. If Paizo officially supported print on demand, I guess there would be no need for watermarks on the physical copies.
I'm disappointed that Paizo won't see a cent from my printing, which means they won't know I would have gladly paid for physical copies of the books.
I hope the quality of the books will be good, because otherwise, I'll be even more disappointed I had to go through all this ordeal to have physical copies of the books.
So, lots of disappointment that (in my sense) could be alleviated. Yes, I read Vic Wertz's post up there, but I don't feel we're arguing over the same thing. His post feels like he's making a point over the quality of print on demand books vs. Paizo printed books. I'm arguing for a "Print on Demand" link on small, less than 32-pages booklets like the Player's Guide or Pathfinder Society scenarios that have never been available as printed books anyway.
(By the way, I found two books on Lulu that shouldn't be there (some people who wanted private copies and wrongly set public access?): GameMastery Guide and Crucible of Chaos.)
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(By the way, I found two books on Lulu that shouldn't be there (some people who wanted private copies and wrongly set public access?): GameMastery Guide and Crucible of Chaos.)
I can't answer the other portion of your post, but we have previously checked this out and those books were actually legit copies purchased by lulu from a distributor and just sold via their site (they aren't printing themselves).
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It's now the beginning of fourth quarter 2014. It's time, Paizo. We need Print on Demand.
You are actually losing sales. I'm not purchasing several out of print APs because I can't get one or more of the chapters in print - unless I want to spend $75, $100+ for one book. Example: Carrion Crown Chapter 1.
Lulu's quality is just fine.
Please consider this. In an era of 3D printing for goodness sakes, I think that PoD is a pretty tried and true business option!
Actually, Paizo has been dipping a toe in Print on Demand for a while now: some updated Pathfinder Adventure Card Game cards are expected sometime in the future.
(But since this project has been under development for a year now and color-matching is still not satisfactory, I'm not sure it actually bodes well for other Print on Demand endeavours.)
I'd love to be able to get Player Guides and out-of-print books via POD. Fingers crossed the economics are improving.
Does anyone have experience with lulu and perhaps some photos of the finished work - looking it over it seems like a very attractive option to get a 'don't care if the mtn. dew spills on it' copy.
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Does anyone have experience with lulu and perhaps some photos of the finished work - looking it over it seems like a very attractive option to get a 'don't care if the mtn. dew spills on it' copy.
I don't any personal experience, but I've heard from others that the quality is passable, especially for a "don't care if I spill something on it" copy.
-Skeld
How does it work, exactly? Do you just upload a PDF and they post you a printed copy?
Or do you need to tinker with the file(s) a bit?
How does it work, exactly? Do you just upload a PDF and they post you a printed copy?
Or do you need to tinker with the file(s) a bit?
From what I understand, the files given to the company are the same ones that would go to the printer when ordering a batch of books. They just keep them on file and print as required. I could be over simplifying it, but that's the way it was explained to me. So whatever format normal printers would want the files in, it'd be the same deal.
I've not used Lulu, but I've ordered books from Blurb and DriveThruRPG and had mixed results.
DriveThru has never had poor quality results that I've seen, though the paper stock (even for the "premium" isn't quite as nice as Paizo's, but is still serviceable (I've got friends with WoD books from there, since that's the only way they do physical copies these days except for the Kickstartered new games), and I've got a copy of the recently released Savage Worlds Battle for Oz campaign which turned out pretty nice.
From Blurb, I ordered 4 copies of a small format artbook called Artrocity (one for me, three as gifts), basically it's just a collection of a dude's sketches. Quality was varied across them, internal quality was all basically the same apart from maybe minor differences in the alignment of some images on the page. The covers though were where I noticed a real difference. Front cover image alignment was different on each of them, they were mostly centered, but one of them was moved to the left a bit and had the far side of the image wrapped around the spine instead of being all on the front (I kept that copy for me), others the images were higher or lower on the cover, or on a slight angle. Didn't really impact on the actual physical quality, which was fine, it was just something I noticed because I had 4 copies of the same book in front of me.
I have a friend who published a paperback book through Lulu. I'd say it turned out just as well as any other paperback book. It didn't have lots of images or anything, so can't say much about that, but the cover looked good and the binding a printing was fine.
I was wondering about the process Fayries used to print the player guides. By the sound of it, it's possible to get one copy of someone else's Ebook/PDF via print on demand, which would be great for me (I currently get them printed professionally, but the printer only really does it as a favour since the copy protection makes it a pain for him).
Anyone have any idea how Lulu's "print one copy of someone else's book" works? Does it require any technical competence? (Fayries' post kind of suggested it wasn't a walk in the park).
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Chief Technical Officer
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From what I understand, the files given to the company are the same ones that would go to the printer when ordering a batch of books. They just keep them on file and print as required. I could be over simplifying it, but that's the way it was explained to me. So whatever format normal printers would want the files in, it'd be the same deal.How does it work, exactly? Do you just upload a PDF and they post you a printed copy?
Or do you need to tinker with the file(s) a bit?
I can't speak for service bureaus that print one-shot PDFs for customers, but on a professional level, all printers, including PoD printers, require you to provide files made specifically for them, taking into account their particular printer's requirements for things like trim, bleed, creep, dot gain, total ink coverage, and the like.
I haven't used Lulu, but I have taken Paizo's PDFs and had them printed up on my own for a physical copy (curse of the crimson throne #8 Seven days to the Grave) and it turned out really nice. If you don't mind going yourself and paying for it, you can already get the PDFs and print out a physical copy if needed.
The paper probably wasn't as heavy as the Paizo standard, but the cover I put on it was heavy cardstock with an outer plastic cover, which was actually heavier then Paizo Typical.
Turned out very pretty. As long as we are allowed to print a personal physical copy from the PDF, I think it works...
Just my two cents on this looong running thread.
I can't speak for service bureaus that print one-shot PDFs for customers, but on a professional level, all printers, including PoD printers, require you to provide files made specifically for them, taking into account their particular printer's requirements for things like trim, bleed, creep, dot gain, total ink coverage, and the like.From what I understand, the files given to the company are the same ones that would go to the printer when ordering a batch of books. They just keep them on file and print as required. I could be over simplifying it, but that's the way it was explained to me. So whatever format normal printers would want the files in, it'd be the same deal.How does it work, exactly? Do you just upload a PDF and they post you a printed copy?
Or do you need to tinker with the file(s) a bit?
Fair enough. I imagine that's probably what the guys I was talking to were referring to, in that it's gotta be in a certain format, and I just kind of zoned out over the whole "each printer has their own technical requirements" part. Kind of like when I start talking about technical issues for SharePoint with my father, at which point the rest of the family start to get a glazed look in their eyes.
I can't speak for service bureaus that print one-shot PDFs for customers, but on a professional level, all printers, including PoD printers, require you to provide files made specifically for them, taking into account their particular printer's requirements for things like trim, bleed, creep, dot gain, total ink coverage, and the like.From what I understand, the files given to the company are the same ones that would go to the printer when ordering a batch of books. They just keep them on file and print as required. I could be over simplifying it, but that's the way it was explained to me. So whatever format normal printers would want the files in, it'd be the same deal.How does it work, exactly? Do you just upload a PDF and they post you a printed copy?
Or do you need to tinker with the file(s) a bit?
Gosh, are TIC and dot gain really issues you guys are dealing with? The papers you guys use should be handling well over 300% TIC and coated paper basically got invented to combat dot gain. I hope your printers aren't giving you issues with these specs. I really hope apprehension over these issues aren't keeping you guy from pursuing domestic POD services.
I was wondering about the process Fayries used to print the player guides. By the sound of it, it's possible to get one copy of someone else's Ebook/PDF via print on demand, which would be great for me (I currently get them printed professionally, but the printer only really does it as a favour since the copy protection makes it a pain for him).
Anyone have any idea how Lulu's "print one copy of someone else's book" works? Does it require any technical competence? (Fayries' post kind of suggested it wasn't a walk in the park).
It was definitely not easy. In fact, I did it for the 5 player's guides that were only available in PDF at the time (AP 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9), but I couldn't find the will to do it again after that.
Just to give you an idea, here's how you create a cover in Lulu… Certainly not a 1-Click experience!
Cheers. Definitely too much effort for me, I appreciate the explanation though.
What were the approximate prices for printing through Lulu? Did you do hardcover?
If I remember correctly (it was three years ago), there was a special offer at the time that let you order a proof copy of your book at a discounted price. Each player's guide ended up costing me roughly the price of a Pathfinder Player Companion.
It was a lot of work dealing with the limitations of the platform, which is why I ended up posting that message up there.
At the time, I wanted to have my whole collection as printed material on my shelves. Today, honestly… I don't care that much anymore. Dusting up the shelves every month is trouble enough and PDF-only books have become frequent enough in the industry that I just accept the fact.
Ahh, ok. Thanks for the response!
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Print on Demand is the future. There's really no financial reason for Paizo not to be offering it. It's almost like making YouTube videos; anyone who can make a pdf can publish a book. All the Paizo pdfs are done already, they could republish them instantly. It really is a one click solution. If I recall correctly, the main impediment for Paizo to republish out of print works is the cost of another print run. Non-issue for print on demand, you print only as many copies as are actually purchased.
The only trick would be finding a publisher that offers POD with the kind of high-quality color that we've come to expect from Paizo, but there are already several online companies offering many color solutions and that automatically distribute to Amazon too.
Even if the POD cost is high because of ink cost and all the middlemen involved, if someone wants to pay $60 for an Adventure Path reprint, why not let them? It's win-win all the way.
I was wondering about the process Fayries used to print the player guides. By the sound of it, it's possible to get one copy of someone else's Ebook/PDF via print on demand, which would be great for me (I currently get them printed professionally, but the printer only really does it as a favour since the copy protection makes it a pain for him).
Anyone have any idea how Lulu's "print one copy of someone else's book" works? Does it require any technical competence? (Fayries' post kind of suggested it wasn't a walk in the park).
It was definitely not easy. In fact, I did it for the 5 player's guides that were only available in PDF at the time (AP 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9), but I couldn't find the will to do it again after that.
Just to give you an idea, here's how you create a cover in Lulu… Certainly not a 1-Click experience!
Lulu's a pretty primitive solution these days. There are much better out there, for example Lightning Source. Lulu is really only for individuals who just want to see their own stuff in print. Not for major companies.
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Print on Demand is the future. There's really no financial reason for Paizo not to be offering it. It's almost like making YouTube videos; anyone who can make a pdf can publish a book. All the Paizo pdfs are done already, they could republish them instantly. It really is a one click solution. If I recall correctly, the main impediment for Paizo to republish out of print works is the cost of another print run. Non-issue for print on demand, you print only as many copies as are actually purchased.
The only trick would be finding a publisher that offers POD with the kind of high-quality color that we've come to expect from Paizo, but there are already several online companies offering many color solutions and that automatically distribute to Amazon too.
Even if the POD cost is high because of ink cost and all the middlemen involved, if someone wants to pay $60 for an Adventure Path reprint, why not let them? It's win-win all the way.
Financial reasons:
1) None of them offer the print and paper quality paizo requires (in one of the panels at Gencon, I think it was Wes who talks about this)2) They use different formatting/layout than the printer in China, therefore graphic designers and editors would have to layout twice as many products a month plus do previous products that the majority of the audience has already and won't want.
3) Because of number 2, you'd need to be guaranteed enough revenue to justify at least 3-4 more jobs. And since most of the product that would be POD is sold out, you cannot do that on the limited audience that is left.
Financial reasons:
1) None of them offer the print and paper quality paizo requires (in one of the panels at Gencon, I think it was Wes who talks about this)2) They use different formatting/layout than the printer in China, therefore graphic designers and editors would have to layout twice as many products a month plus do previous products that the majority of the audience has already and won't want.
3) Because of number 2, you'd need to be guaranteed enough revenue to justify at least 3-4 more jobs. And since most of the product that would be POD is sold out, you cannot do that on the limited audience that is left.
Sorry, don't buy Number 1 at all. Elves of Golarian Pathfinder Companion is going for $105.00 used on Amazon. Do you think that me or any others who would love to have this book would mind that the quality is a little less than the original print? Come on! I doubt we'd notice.
I'm not purchasing 5 books in the Carrion Crown series because I can't get the first chapter for less than $45* (which, when I first posted, I couldn't get for less than $75).
* And which I guess I need to snag at that price...
We're not asking for the entire line to be printed this way; we're asking for OOP books.
I've bought RPG books done through Lulu, and they look exactly like what I'd pick off a shelf somewhere.
Number 2 and 3 posits are way overinflated.
I can't do pdfs. My eyesight won't let me, so that is not an option for many of Paizo's customers. I do appreciate them making the pdfs available, however, for their OOP works.
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Financial reasons:
1) None of them offer the print and paper quality paizo requires (in one of the panels at Gencon, I think it was Wes who talks about this)2) They use different formatting/layout than the printer in China, therefore graphic designers and editors would have to layout twice as many products a month plus do previous products that the majority of the audience has already and won't want.
3) Because of number 2, you'd need to be guaranteed enough revenue to justify at least 3-4 more jobs. And since most of the product that would be POD is sold out, you cannot do that on the limited audience that is left.
Sorry, don't buy Number 1 at all. Elves of Golarian Pathfinder Companion is going for $105.00 used on Amazon. Do you think that me or any others who would love to have this book would mind that the quality is a little less than the original print? Come on! I doubt we'd notice.
I'm not purchasing 5 books in the Carrion Crown series because I can't get the first chapter for less than $45* (which, when I first posted, I couldn't get for less than $75).
* And which I guess I need to snag at that price...
We're not asking for the entire line to be printed this way; we're asking for OOP books.
I've bought RPG books done through Lulu, and they look exactly like what I'd pick off a shelf somewhere.
Number 2 and 3 posits are way overinflated.
I can't do pdfs. My eyesight won't let me, so that is not an option for many of Paizo's customers. I do appreciate them making the pdfs available, however, for their OOP works.
Vic Wertz addresses POD in another thread.
Paizo have mentioned Print-On-Demand before and from what I understand the issue is predominantly one of quality control. I'm hopeful that once the technology improves and the quality becomes consistent enough for them that they will revisit that option and allow print-on-demand for things which have gone out of print. They've never actually said that that's on the cards though.PoD printing does get better all the time, and I strongly suspect that one day we'll make that jump. However, quality is not the only issue—there's a prepress issue as well. Every print job needs to be tailored to the output device, meaning you can't just take the file created for our book printer, send it to a PoD printer, and expect it to come out right. At best, somebody proficient with prepress would need to make some adjustments to the file, and, in some cases, we'd even need somebody to tweak the layout of the entire book. And setting up for a second output device is often harder than setting up for the first—just ask some of the 3PPs who have done PoD with both Lulu and DriveThru.
So getting a PoD printer wouldn't mean "immediate access to everything"—it would mean the start of a lengthy process that would result in a small number of initial products growing over time.
Here's another nugget from later in that thread.
As many of you know, one of the biggest issues that lead to TSR's insolvency is the proliferation of campaign settings. When they were actively selling one or two or three campaign settings to their audience, a big chunk of their audience would buy any given book they were releasing. When they were actively selling seven or eight campaign settings, only a small fraction of the audience would buy any given release.
A similar problem exists with APs, as the typical gaming group plays only one at a time. Right now, a group looking for an AP might well rule out the 3.5 ones, and the ones that have volumes out of print, so that leaves them 7 APs to consider—or, assuming quality and appeal being similar among them, a 1 in 7 chance they'll buy the current product. If we updated the 3.5 ones, and reprinted the out-of-print volumes, the odd that they'd choose the current release drop to 1 in 12.
The simple fact is that we need to sell you what we're making more than we need to sell you what we've made, and allowing things to go out of print is therefore a necessity.
And when those out-of-print volumes go for big money on eBay, that's actually helpful in that it helps establish an upward trend for the future value of a present subscription, and underlines the fact that the best time to subscribe to our lines is "as soon as possible."