Does Cover Matter?

[Ashlin_Evenstar]

Greetings!

I am coming close to finishing up work on my RPG.  Layout and art are taken care of, so I'm in the process of choosing printing options.  The main choice I have to deal with deals with hardback vs. paperback books.  I wanted to get a feel for what other people on this site had done or will do.  Have most of you gone with paperback or hard back?  Why? Also, if the cost to you as the designer was not an issue, which would you choose?  And to you as a consumer, is an extra 3 bucks (which would be the retail price difference for us) worth getting a hard back?

Thanks in advance!

Peace,

-Ash

[quozl]

And to you as a consumer, is an extra 3 bucks (which would be the retail price difference for us) worth getting a hard back?

Thanks in advance!

Peace,

-Ash

Yes.

[Mike Holmes]

Uh, can I get it for less via PDF? I don't like books at all. Primitive thingies.

What I'm really saying is that in previous postings on the subject the ansewer ranges from people who love a quality document to people who want it cheap and with no frills.

Here's a question. What kind of player do you want to attract?

Mike

[Sidhain]

Well I'll suggest even for PDF's cover can matter.

For example while trying to find an artist for my superhero RPG, I showed said artist my cover--now his response was "You want that!?" which is to say he, being an artist didn't care for it. I being an artist and /writer/ though not professional level on the former, like said cover. It isn't what one normally finds on superhero rpg's--its not a bunch of badly dressed people waiting for the bus (SAS), its not a bunch of better done, but still badly dressed heroes battling it out on the cover (Mutants and Masterminds) and its not trying to send signals to alien lifeforms on earth to show what humanity looks like (Hero) but it is a cover I can get behind--will it be the final cover of the finished product? I don't know... I like it.

http://dirtybox.dwave.net/~stormbringer/index.html  near the bottom (a friend did it for me.)


My opinion is to find a cover even for PDF's as some people like to print them out. At least its something to put on webpages to show what the game "looks like" and can double as a picture for "buy this now" buttons.

[Scorpio]

Forgive me for stepping in, as I'm not a publisher, but hardcover makes all the difference in the world. If you have good cover art, that's fine. If you also have a hard cover, it's a Book. It gives you credibility. If possible, why don't you try a run of the same book with both? You'll probably be suprised at the results. I'll be willing to bet you'll sell 3 HC for every 5 you sell...

[Mike Holmes]

Scorpio, Sidhain, good points.

What I'm hearing is that it's mostly a marketing thing. You'll get more people, because people are suckers for this sort of thing. So, assuming that this is correct, and assuming that you're hoping to attract the largest number of players, then a hardcover may be what you're looking for.

But this only make sense if the game is going to be marketed well, and have widespread visibility. Are people going to see this book? Or are they going to be ordering it on-line? That makes a huge difference.

Basically, how many copies you think will sell overall and the venue have an impact on your choice.

BTW, I wasn't seriously suggesting PDF at all (though that is my preference, personally; without any art). I was just pointing out that in the past a large spectrum of people have responded with a wide variety of responses to this. There doesn't seem to be any one consensus on the whole cost-to-production-value issue.

Mike

[Valamir]

To give a counter point, I actually prefer softcover.  I find it a heck of a lot easier to use in play then mucking with a hardcover that gets in the way and knocks stuff over.  With a soft cover, I can basically prop the book on my lap and thanks to a cooperative bendy cover cause the pages to flip through with one hand to look up a rule while rolling dice or taking notes with the other.  Its possible, but not nearly as easy to do with a hard cover.

[Paul Czege]

Personally, I'm a huge fan of the 48-page saddle-stitched book (Swashbuckler, EPICS, Epiphany, etc.), almost dysfunctionally so, to the extent that I'll buy nearly any RPG I see with that format. Maybe I wouldn't so much if it were more common. Perhaps the under-utilization of the format for anything but adventure supplements by larger-scale RPG publishers has caused it to achieve a positive association with indie-ness for me.

But I think cover choice depends primarily on how much content you have. Element Masters is ridiculous as a saddle-stitched book. It's too damn thick. I think something as thick as Champions 3rd or the Pharos Press edition of Lace & Steel is very nice as a perfect bound book, and anything thicker probably ought to be a hardcover. I dislike the comb binding, and probably will never use it for any of my projects. But honestly, I buy for content. Sure, I appreciate a nice hardcover. But it won't cause me to buy a book I wouldn't have bought if it were perfect bound. And putting a comb-binding on a 280-page game might make me gripe, but it won't keep me from buying it if the content grabs me.

I think when you start to talk cover/binding, you're getting into trying to maximize sales by appealing to fetishism and ownership issues, rather than an audience likely to actually play the game. You can probably squeak out some additional sales that way, but it won't have a positive impact on how much play you provoke. Where the hell is Ron's thread on fetishism? The search engine has failed me. Was that an RPG.net post?

Paul

[clehrich]

I'd agree with Valamir and Mike, but summarize a bit differently.  If I am looking at a game in a store, i.e. I have it physically in front of me, I might be attracted by a hard cover (but see below).  Sounds like a lot of people feel this is the case.  If so, and you are going to be selling in a store sort of venue, then definitely get a hard cover, with pretty art.  Not only will it sell more copies, but if the cover costs you $3 over X (soft), you can charge X+$5 and make a little money.  I suspect that's why most harcover games are hardcover.  Heck, if it matters that much to the customers, charge X+$10 if you can get it --- whatever the market will bear.

If you're talking about usage, however, harcovers have a huge problem, which is that they crack when bent against themselves, and when this happens to cheap ones the pages start to fall out.  If the cover is very tight and well made, however, the book often will not lie flat for easy reference.  Both of these tick me off from a session-use perspective.  Of course, pages fall out even more easily with softcovers, but one tricks oneself into thinking that one didn't actually pay for the cover.  If your concern is usage, I'd say go with a stiff cover and back and a spiral binding.  It may not be attractive, but it sure lies flat nicely.

As to my own personal preference, I dislike advertising, and I hate to feel that someone's taking me for a ride.  I find almost all RPG art rotten, and I feel like I'm paying for something I don't want.  I find that most big-publisher RPGs take up a huge amount of space with pictures and formatting stuff, and actually have very little text per page; this means that I am paying for a larger binding and more printing, none of which I want.  Furthermore, the basic structure is of a markup, with images rated extra (you have to pay artists), which means that the more images, the more base cost and pages, and the more pages, the higher the total value of the markup.  So I end up paying a lot for a little.

I'm an academic with pretty traditional preferences.  I like books --- physical, on-paper books --- and I like text.  Pictures do not fool me into thinking a book is good, nor do I judge a book by its cover.  If you hand me an RPG book that's 500 pages long, and it turns out it's 100% clear and concise prose, well edited, you've got one very happy customer.  If you hand me an RPG book that's 100 pages long, and it turns out that the entire actual valuable text (cutting pictures and crappy pseudo-fiction, intended to "inspire" the reader --- I'll inspire myself, thank you) could have been compressed into 15 pages, you have a peeved customer.  When I further discover that the authors didn't consider it important to make sure that their spelling and grammar were accurate, and that they left in the odd "See page XXX" because they didn't copy-edit carefully, you have an angry customer.  When on top of this you ask me to pay $40 for it, you have a customer who would like to smack you one with your hardcover book.

Sorry, I'm ranting.  I'll stop now.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Boy, there are some older threads about this, but I'll have to dig for them.

It comes down to two real issues.

The first reality: if you are selling your books through stores, then you first must satisfy the middlemen before you can satisfy your customers.

Therefore asking, "Gee, what does the consumer want?" is painfully naive.

The retailers and distributors want to sell expensive books. I make no judgments in this regard, taken at face value. They are in business and they make more money by selling $50 games than by selling $5 games, utterly regardless of the play-quality of the games.

The other reality, however, is that true long-term sales (i.e. sustained by consumer demand) do depend on the game appealing to many people, through its use.

Have some companies driven themselves into bankruptcy by trying to satisfy the middleman with too little attention to the playability of the product? The answer is Yes.

Have some companies failed to attract the middleman due to under-par production value, even though their games were brilliant and wonderfully fun? The answer is also Yes.  

Those are the two chasms facing the RPG publisher who wants to sell games through the game stores. Pick your route through them carefully.

That is the question, not "what do people want?" which is frankly a waste of air-time.

Best,
Ron