Re: print quantity as benchmark for fully baked games

[Matt Wilson]

Whoa, hey, that was weird. I was all, how come no one's responding to my thread, and Ben PM's me and says, you have a post up with no content in it. Ghosts in the machine, I guess. And weird coincidence that Ben's the one who asked, since he inspired my post.

Here's what I had intended (put it on my blog when I was having trouble posting):<

[Pelgrane]

A word of warning.

My suggestion is - don't do a regular print run until you have a proven POD game. If you've already sold a few hundred copies, and things are going well, sure, do the print run, otherwise you'll have an expensive, festering pile of books going nowhere. I've seen this so many times in the past and it's painful to see people sinking money into large print runs.

Simon Rogers
Pelgrane Press Ltd

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

It might be helpful for people reading this to understand what you mean by "print run," Matt. To newcomers, and possibly to others, they're probably thinking in terms of 5,000 or 10,000 copies. Whereas I'm pretty sure you're talking about a hundred or a couple hundred. Am I right? Can you clarify?

Best, Ron

[Valamir]

Matt indicated he did a run of 1000 for PTA.  I did a run of 750 for the second run of Uni and 1000 for the latest Revised run.

The breakpoints vary by printer but somewhere between 750 and 1200ish copies there is a HUGE drop in per unit.

The first 100 copy run of Uni cost something like $6 a book.  The 750 run cost less than $3 and that was after upgrading the lamination on the cover.

[Pelgrane]

Which printer do you use for longer print runs?

[Jake Richmond]

I do Panty Explosion in print runs of 300 copies. I'm currently on my 5th. I find that 300 at a time works pretty well for me. It's not so expensive that  I break the bank on it, which is vital. I'm a really poor person. I find with 300 copeies available to me I usually* can predict when I'm going to run low and should order more.

There are sevral printers that can do you print runs of a few hundred for a reasonable price. At 96 pages, PEcosts me about $2.80 per book to print, with the specially cut rounded corners. Matt's definetly saving money by doing a larger print run, but for those of us who can't afford to drop $2000 or have an untested product then a smaller print run is safer.

That being said, if I could afford it I might switch from 300 copy runs to 5oo copy runs. It would save some money. But I never would have started with a 500 copy run. But I'm guessing that this topic wasn't directed at starting publishers, right?


*Ususally but not always.




jake