Specific questions about a print edition

[Tav_Behemoth]

Dear Forgers:

I've seen posters here advise that one can best tap the collective local expertise by asking very specific questions. Having seen the amazing quality of that expertise, I have high hopes that y'all might have answers for mine!

I'm thinking about an initial run of 100 copies for the print edition of Behemoth3's forthcoming Masters and Minions books. My design inspiration is the classic AD&D modules, C1: Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan for example, and I'm thinking about trying to replicate its presentation/format as closely as possible. Here's what that module consists of:

- a trifold cover, looks to me like lightweight cardstock, laminated full-color on the outside and monochrome interior (blue ink on white BG).
- a 32-page black and white stapled booklet; this has the "meat"
- an 8-page black and white stapled booklet; this has player handouts

Here are my questions - all advice is appreciated, don't feel like you have to tackle this entire list!

1) Is the terminology I'm using above sufficient to communicate with a potential printer, or is there a better way to describe what I have in mind?

2) Can you suggest a printer that would be well suited for this kind of small print run? (It seems to me that a specialist in bound books might not be ideal, and I'd be open to using separate printers for the cover and the booklets & assembling them myself if the savings were right.)

3) Any seat-of-the-pants estimates of how much I should budget for this, and how much lead time I'll need to give the printer?

4) Are there POD printers that could handle this if I decided to go with a customer-driven print model?

Thanks in advance!

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Tav,

It strikes me that your biggest expense is going to be that colored cover, especially with lamination, especially with a blue interior. I have no idea how they managed to pay for this back in the late 1970s, and maybe the whole print industry was different then.

If we were just talking about the booklets, then a POD printer is your best bet - especially since any "book-oriented" printer in this day and age will charge you an astronomical amount per copy for a 100-piece print run. My own recommendation is Express Media, which is stunningly good.

But that cover ... whew, I'm not sure. The problem is that many POD companies outsource for services like lamination and (perhaps) for certain types of color work. So not only are you paying for the work per se, but also for the work of contacting the people who do it and managing the order-within-the-order.

The solution is to ask, up-front, what services they offer and what they will have to out-source, and what features will be extra cost as opposed to a standard feature from some basic list. My experience with printers, both traditional and POD, is that the rep is usually very forthcoming about this sort of information. Given a few companies' information, you can pick and choose what you want to pay for - remember, you can always ask for bids and always ask technical questions with no obligation (i.e. client status) on your part.

What will they have to know? Off the top of my head:

1. Dimensions, listing horizontal first, vertical second

2. Page count and paper type (40 lb is thin and flimsy, 60 lb is substantial and "library"-like, 50 lb is in between)

3. Color vs. black-and-white for all parts; also, whether any of the black-and-white is grayscale

4. Cover features: color, lamination, stock (they'll help you with the terminology), and most importantly, binding type - make sure you know what perfect-bound, saddle-stitch, case-bound, etc, all really mean (ask them if you need help)

5. Make sure to tell them how you'll be delivering the manuscript; in my experience, all printers are well set up to download PDFs and CMYK files, and you should be prepared to deliver as clean and compressed versions of your work as is technologically possible.

Big advice: always call by phone. Don't use email, don't use their fill-it-in automatic bid software from a website - nothing like that. Call and talk to a human.

Finally, some companies will even send you samples of some books they've done, to give you an idea of some of the terms; I've never asked, but you might mention it, depending on your personal take of the person you're interacting with.

I hope this helps you out. Let us know whatever you find out; it's very valuable information.

Best,
Ron

[Luke]

a trifold cover, looks to me like lightweight cardstock, laminated full-color on the outside and monochrome interior (blue ink on white BG).

I think, and I may be wrong, that they call this a gate-fold cover.

The technical specs that you want to ask for are 4 over 1, 3 page 8.5x11 gate-fold cover, staple-bound/saddle-stitched to the interior.

"4 over 1" will tell any printer worth his salt that you want a full cover front and 1 color interior.

You don't want lamination. I have tons of those modules and they are not laminated. Get it printed on glossy cover stock and you should be fine. 12pt C1S should be ok. (Cover, 1-sided). And you'll save money.

The cover really shouldn't be that expensive, if you know where to go to look. Don't got to a tradtional POD or book printer with the cover. Go to your local offset printer and see if they can do the job. They run off sheets like that by the thousands every day.

You'll need two folds on the cover, and the folded in page has to be 1/8th an inch shorter than the actual cover pages.

If you want a 1c 32page book, saddle-stitched (what printers call stapled), take Ron's advice. Go POD or even down to your local copy shop.

Have the offset printer ship the finished covers to the POD printer for the binding. I know express media can handle that type of arrangement.

hope that helps,
-Luke

[Tav_Behemoth]

Thanks Ron!

I think your response might be telling me that I've misused my printing terminology; the little knowledge I have may have been dangerous.

The "cover" of the archetypical module I'm referring is more of a slipcover, not attached to the booklets; it's just a 25 1/2 x 11" piece of slightly stiff paper (cardstock I presume), folded three times. The 8 1/2 X 11" booklets are bound with staples, and tucked inside the tri-fold "cover".

It's certainly not laminated in the sense that a driver's license is laminated; water won't roll off it. What I was trying to say is that its outer surface is glossy in a way that the inner surface is not, but maybe "gloss" is the proper term.

I should be surprised if the print industry wasn't entirely different in 1980, and I'm only moderately fanatical about reproducing the physical form of the modules I loved as a kid; things like the blue interior I'm willing to let go of.

Your reply definitely does help, and I'll be happy to share whatever info I gather!

- Tav

P.S. I had assumed that the reason that no one uses the folded cover-sheet of the old modules, and that modern books are bound softcovers instead, had something to do with the changing preferences of stores and/or distributors. Now I wonder, though, if it wasn't just that binding options other than the staple became affordable? Are there other intrinsic reasons to favor bound books over slipcovered ones if I'm not going to be focusing on in-store sales at first?

[Bob McNamee]

Also they did the blue ' maps' in the interior as an attempt to keep the thing from being photocopied way back when , if I recall correctly.

So aside from pure style, it may not be necessary for you...

[madelf]

The blue interior might be that big a deal. Definitely ask the printer before you write it off.

From what I've heard (based on research not experience here) a single color shouldn't cost much, if any, more than black. It's only when you start mixing multiple colors, or black and a spot color, that the price jumps up.

[Michael S. Miller]

P.S. I had assumed that the reason that no one uses the folded cover-sheet of the old modules, and that modern books are bound softcovers instead, had something to do with the changing preferences of stores and/or distributors. Now I wonder, though, if it wasn't just that binding options other than the staple became affordable? Are there other intrinsic reasons to favor bound books over slipcovered ones if I'm not going to be focusing on in-store sales at first?

IIRC, these things were sold in shrinkwrap, to keep all the bits together. If you're going to do that, it will cost as well.

As for the switch from cover + interior booklets to softcover, I think it has less to do with production costs--the set-up you describe was likely always more expensive than a simple softcover. After all, you have two bound booklets, which includes twice as many staples, plus the cost of assembling and shrinkwrapping it. I speculate that TSR latched onto this format as the One True Way to publish adventure modules. I don't recall any other companies coming out with them in this format. So the rest of the RPG industry went to more economical softcovers. We all know what those high production costs did to TSR. Nowadays, I think, but could be very wrong, only the Hackmaster line is doing modules the "old" way, which could really make your product stand out from the crowd, if you can keep production costs under control.

[Christopher Weeks]

Are there other intrinsic reasons to favor bound books over slipcovered ones if I'm not going to be focusing on in-store sales at first?

The parts of the product can become easily separated and lost.  I went through my old collection of TSR modules and sold the bulk of them in or around 1995 and in the process found a few with missing material.

(Now if you could use powerfully magnetic staples and insert a ferrous strip on the one fold...nevermind)

Chris

[Chris Passeno]

The fold on the cover is a standard tri-fold.  A gate fold is when the sides fold in-toward each other and touch in the center, creating a "gate" with 3 panels.

There are many levels of printers, mostly determined by their press-sheet size.  Your cover (25.5x11) is gonna require a printer a couple levels up.  Copy-shops aren't gonna be able to produce that without sending it out to a vendor.  Most Mom-and-Pop as well as Garage-Printers aren't gonna be able to produce that.  Heck, even a fair bit of sheetfed commercial printers can't produce that size.

The company I work for is a small commercial printer and our max sheet is a 14x20.  My "next-step-up" vendor can run a 25.5x19 sheet.  These sizes are sheet sizes, not bleed sizes.  That means that the actual image area for my vendor is around 25x17.75.

Keep in mind that the higher you go on the levels of printers, the higher the minimum quantity.  It's just not cost-effective for that level of printer to even turn on his press for 100 sheets.  He's gonna blow more than that just setting up the press and getting the color to acceptable levels.  You are gonna need around 1000 sheets for them to even consider the job.  Even then they aren't cost effective til around 2500 sheets.

You are gonna have more luck finding a local printer with an old 40" 2 color press, who's willing to run a 4 color for you.  But it's still gonna cost you a fair bit, and the quality might be acceptable.

To echo what's been said, don't go with a lamination.  It's expensive, and will peel with age.  You'd want a gloss varnish on a 10 or 12pt. C1S (coated one side).

As has been suggested, call a printer and talk to them.  You can use a POD or a local shop for your Guts, but the cover is gonna be a pain.  The assembly should be done by you to save some money, but you are gonna need to take them back to a printer to wrap them for you.

I'm sorry I don't have any positive news, but these are the facts as I know them.

How about a nice duotone image on the cover?  I'd be unique and cost effective.

Later,
Chris

[Chris Passeno]

For curiousity's sake, I called one of my vendors and asked them to quote just the covers.  A guess-timate answer to the cost:

A 25.5x11 Trifold Cover, printed 4+varnish/1 on a 12pt C1S, scored and folded to 8.5x11.........at a quantity of 250, expect to pay a bit more than $4.14 each.  At a quantity of 1000, expect to pay a bit more than $1.34 each.  Now that's just for the covers.

Hope that helped.
Chris

[Matt Gwinn]

Have you considered doing a sigle fold cover instead?  That seems much simpler.  If you have more maps you can do 2 covers which will give you three 11"x17" areas for maps and justa bout any printer can manage that.

A great deal of my old D&D modules only had the single fold, so it's not like you'd be breaking from the old school style.

Either way you need to shrink wrap it anyway.

,Matt

[Tav_Behemoth]

I spoke to Express Media this morning and the largest sheet they can print on is 18 x 12". They would thus have to outsource a trifold of the size I was thinking of, which Chris's estimates imply would not be cost-effective for me.

I'm leaning now towards two separate single-fold covers as per Matt's suggestion; this is indeed within the old school template (I3: Pharoah, for example) and one could set up a decent GM screen by standing both covers on end, which was what I wanted from the trifold.

Do y'all think shrinkwrap is necessary if I'm not expecting to sell this edition in stores? In other words, if you bought one at GenCon, would you be upset if there wasn't anything but friction to prevent the booklets from falling out of the covers?

It's interesting to hear that Hackmaster has also resurrected this old format for its adventures; I've never seen one in a FLGS. I definitely want to evoke the original D&D spirit, but I'm concerned that this packaging makes people think strictly "adventure"; the Masters and Minions releases will be more truly modules, units that can be plugged into a game ("supplement" always makes me think of stirring something sludgy into my morning OJ). This is certainly true of many AD&D releases - "Dungeon Module S4" had a dungeon, but also 18 pages of game stats for monsters, a page of magical items and 2 pages of artifacts, five pages of new spells, two pages of demonological theory, a chart of the magical properties of gems, and a table of wandering monster encounters. Nevertheless, that's not what people remember, which might be a problem for my branding.

Thanks again to everyone for the help, and I promise to bring out a magnet-and-ferrous-strip edition if this one sells well enough; I wouldn't be doing old-school correctly without indulging in ruinously high production costs!

[madelf]

Do y'all think shrinkwrap is necessary if I'm not expecting to sell this edition in stores? In other words, if you bought one at GenCon, would you be upset if there wasn't anything but friction to prevent the booklets from falling out of the covers?

I think it would be a draw back.


But...
You might look into bags, in lieu of shrinkwrap.
The office supply company that I get a lot of stuff from (for my day business) has clear frosted merchandise bags that might work for you.
A box of 1000 9x12s goes for about $34.00

Just take your book & slide it into one of those and you have a nice package that won't fall apart on the way down the hall.

The company is Viking, & they've got a website at www.viking.com if you want to look into it.

[Matt Gwinn]

You could also print comic book size and use comic bags.

I've always hated shrink wrap because it prevents you from looking through the product.  It's always nice to know what you're paying for.

,Matt

[Clay]

Back in my youth, before we had the internet for getting our pornography fix, we had things called "centerfolds" and I assure you that they were very popular.  They allowed a publisher with an 8.5x11 format to deliver 11x17 product.  

This would conceivably work well for RPG material as well. It would definitely get peoples' attention at conventions to have people opening your product up and viewing it in that way that is unique to the centerfold.  You would want to format it so that the writing was at 90 degrees from the writing on the rest of the product.  

Now if you don't mind, I have to go do some more research on the subject.