Home Printing

[Christopher Weeks]

I found this sufficiently interesting that I've been doing some outside reading.  I particularly found this site useful.  There were some sections of Chris' description that were opaque to me that this other resource was able to fill in.

Thanks for the thread Chris.

[Andrew Morris]

I also did some reading, and found another potentially useful site.

[philreed]

So how many hand-bound games are going to debut at GenCon this year? :)


While not a perfect method for distribution it would appear that hand-binding books can be an excellent way to produce limited runs for direct sales.

I've also heard that scrapbook stores can be a goldmine for those interested in manufacturing books, boardgames, and other printed items. I'm heading off to look through a scrapbook store later this week -- I'll try to remember to report my findings.

[MatrixGamer]

So how many hand-bound games are going to debut at GenCon this year? :)

All the books at the Hamster Press booth are hand bound. I made 12 books over the weekend. It is an ogoing process of figuring out how to make it work but that's half the fun.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

[MatrixGamer]

I also did some reading, and found another potentially useful site.

Thanks for the site. I didn't know the name of the recommended glue for perfect binding. Cool!

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

[Andrew Morris]

And you can get the glue for $2.50 for ten tubes over at American Science & Surplus, as opposed to the $24.35 whack for six tubes at Gigabooks. I've used AS&S for ages to get great deals on prop-building odds and ends, but you can't guarantee that stock will be there for any length of time, so I suggest you buy up a bunch. AS&S is a great company. Reading their catalog is entertainment in and of itself.

[Luke]

Luke, why is that? Simply a matter of volume, or something else?

Hi Andrew,
Like Thor said, it's a matter of time. At this point, I'm in the boat opposite Chris. I no longer have blocks of free time to entertain arts and crafts urges. It's cheaper for me to front the cash and pay a printer to do the labor because I value my time more highly than what they charge.

And, as Justin very neatly pointed out, Chris' picture is rosy. But I work in print,  and I know it's a pain in the ass to set up a mock up studio and maintain it.

My priorities have shifted over the years, too. I'd rather be working on the creative side of Burning Wheel than on the labor side. Paying for printing costs, and any other labor costs I can, gives me more time to (hopefully) enhance the value of my product. In fact, for the next printing, I'm already planning on paying someone to do the banding of the sets.

But in the old days, I used produce BW on a copy machine, a few sets at a time and then haul them down to Kinkos to be bound. It took me all night to do this -- just for eight sets of the game -- but back then, I had more time than I did money. (But I still paid for the bindery!)
;)

-L

[MatrixGamer]

It is the bindery that is the hard part. That is where I spend most of my time and effort. The printing part is pretty straight forward once I got a duplexer and PageMaker.

Not to be "too rosey" remember I said up front that my Dad was a printer - that I grew up in the studio - and that I ran his business after he died so I did not come into this cold. Even with that background it has taken me years to get to the point where I'm pleased with my output. And I've invested in a good bit of machinery (to the cost of 4-5 POD print runs or one commercial printer print run of 1000 units.) And remember I said that this was really my hobby now more than gaming (given that I spend more time at it). So the roseyness is tempered with a lot of caveats.

At some point I write up the whole process (with all the details I left out in the opening posting) in book form. That way those who want to do it will not have to have the same slow learning curve I've had. It's on my list of writing projects. I'll eventually get to it.

As to the value of your time writing. I've spent five years building up a backlog of completed books before really taking them to market in a serious way. Part of that has been to create an easily repeatable formula for the book. I'm not reinventing the wheel each time, and the game rules have been almost unchanged for most of that time. I did all the development work back in the 90's. So my tasks are different from where they would be if I was just starting. My amibition is to build Hamster Press into a middling sized game company. This is probably not where most people are at.

All that being said, if you like making things, and really enjoy working with paper, cardboard, string, and glue, bookmaking is fun and doable with a mosdest (couple of thousand dollars worth) investment.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

[MatrixGamer]

I just ordered some book binding supplies from here
http://talasonline.com/

They have pictures of a lot of the equipment which is nice because it gives you a feel for what is what. This focuses on hand sewing.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press