Vanity Publishers?

[xiombarg]

Okay, in this thread, someone talks about http://www.goldenpillarpublishing.com/...

Now, I have to admit that ever since I first heard about it, my thought was: "What the f*$%? What is this, vanity publishing for RPGs?"

But that may have just been my prejudice/cynicism/refried beans talking. Has anyone had any experience with this outfit, or anything similar? Good? Bad? Indifferent? How viable a route is this?

[Michael Hopcroft]

I was going to work with Golden Pillar for a very long time. In fact, I wouldn;t be going to print at all were it not for Mark's advice. But it gradually became clear that I couldn;t meet his technical requirements.

What I did instead was hire a typesetter for an advance and royalties, and he happened to have excellent connections with a printer in his area. Then I paid $300 for a set of 10 ISBN numbers (so that retailers and wholesalers can find me) and now everything is in the hands of those who know. Will they help me grow to one day be a profiotable company?

Golden Pillar is not the only company doing print-on-demand for RPGs. It's not a bad company, and if you can afford their specific services they can serve you quite nicely. They just weren;t as good a fit as I thought they'd be for my particular project.

[Jerry D. Grayson]

POD is a good choice if you dont have very much artwork in your project. I considered this route as well but finally decided it wasnt a good choice for me. Maybe I'm a controll freak but I couldnt stand the idea of someone else doing the layout and dictating how many illustartions I could use.
I went ahead a spent a little extra and got the book I wanted.