Minibooks

[Jason Morningstar]

(cross-posted over at Story Games)

I was reading a book about making zines (yeah, irony) and one of the formats it talked about was the minibook, a 32 page zine made from a single sheet of letter-sized paper. Super cool, thought I, so I made a couple and perfected an indesign template.

Here's my first try. Contact me if you'd like the .indd file to make your own - they are fun and I think the format has potential. You can cram about 3,500 words in there. There's some labor involved but you can't beat the paper cost. If you print out my little book, share your experience - was it hard? Was it worth it? If one came as part of a game .pdf package, would you bother?

[Seth M. Drebitko]

These would be awesome for those little questions that always get brought up and some one has to search the book for. Advancement rules, combat charts, modifiers, a standard ninja duck pic all the normal stuff people need frequents access to. (aside from that side little blurb I would love to get a copy of the blank file you used). I can also see this as a nifty very, very low cost weekly "mini supplement" to support a larger game. Hmm now I am all in thinking mode and stuff I will have to get back to you if I think of any more nifty ways to use these with a company.

Regards, Seth

[Ron Edwards]

I want a card-based role-playing game which is nothing but the deck of cards and a little book like this.

I want it a whole hell of a lot.

Best, Ron

[Seth M. Drebitko]

Oh man thought of a good one before crashing how practical would it be to work up a double sided version of this allowing little mini 64 page books?

Oh and these would make fun game aids, like little character sheet books, and small booklets that people can use to pass notes back and forth without need of peeking...sneaky buggers always trying to conveniently end up in the right place to cut in on your secret plans.

Regards, Seth

[Jason Morningstar]

Hey Seth,

It's 32 pages because it is a letter-sized page divided into 16 small pages, double sided.  To do 64 you'd have to actually bind two of these together, which is what printers do when they perfect bind anyway.  If you were going to do that, you'd want to glue a bunch of 8 or 16 page chunks together, which would require a different page layout, but it is possible.  Lots more work.

The greeked-out .indd file is here.

[MatrixGamer]

I tried folding up a sheet of paper to see the size. Boy! It's pretty small. My ability to read PDFs is temorarily down at work so I haven't been able to see you sheet. How small is your type? I was wondering, are you stapleing the booklet and cutting the folds? I personally found the 16 page book size more smal book like. that is closer to the card size book Ron is talking about. They type would still be small but not as small.

I'll be interested to see what you do with this format. I'm always up for experimenting with new formats and on a larger scale this is pretty much what I'm doing with my folded up laminated map game folios.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press = Engle Matrix Games

[Seth M. Drebitko]

Yea I noticed it was already front back just after I hit post lol. This tiny book deal gave me the idea of a weekly supplement for the game I want to publish. I would put out tiny little 32 page books in a "pocket monsters" series that would feature one new monster a week.

regards, Seth

[Thenomain]

Hey, Jason, which version of Indesign are you using, because I cannot open your greeked-out version in CS.

Thanks.

[Jason Morningstar]

CS2, version 4.0

[David Artman]

Thanks for the inspiration; this just MIGHT be a perfect sub-sub-book for GLASS. I intend to do a digest free book (shotGLASS) to loss-lead for the full book, but as it's a LARP system, a minibook could be PERFECT for actual in-game use, for quick reference of Ability Calls or specific effects or whatever in a pocket-sized reduction.

Sadly, I'm not an ID user--FRAMEMAKER FOR LIFE!!! ID IS A BASTARD STEP-CHILD--uh, sorry. Old business. Anyhow, I can't use the ID template, but that wold probably be true even if I had ID: I am using conditional text to make both (now, all three?) formats with one set of files but different master pages and book files. As such, having only a production template for this format wouldn't get me very far along the path to having master pages and such. It IS, though, useful to have a easy access review of the pagination/imposition, for when I am making text flows in Frame.

Thanks again!
David

[Jason Morningstar]

You can see the correct page flow from the pdf - I specifically included page numbers for that reason.  Good luck!

[Adam SBG]

I printed one out yesterday and cut it up and stapled it this morning. It's a neat little thing, but there are some small problems.

I printed it on my new laser printer and though the pages (when printed back to back) were vertically lined up well, they were horizontally off by nearly an eighth of an inch. Normally that wouldn't be an issue, but when working so small, it makes for weird margins. It might have been the file, or more likely it was my printer.

Also, I would bet more people have inkjets than lasers, so printing back to back will frequently cause bleed through, and hurt readability. And again, since the text is so small, that can also cause problems.

Lastly, I'm a graphics nerd and have several papercutters to choose from, but your average gamer does not, so that could also cause problems.

This is a really awesome idea, but it might be just too fiddly for your average user. I would certainly make sure to make any project that's going to use this format to also include a one page format as well for screen or print.

[Jason Morningstar]

Good comments, Adam, thanks.  I haven't seen that registration problem with a laser printer, so I suspect it is machine-dependent. 

I think the minibook is best positioned as a value-added alternative format, precisely for the reasons you illuminate.  Although the next time I'm shopping for print quotes, I'm going to ask what it would cost to get some run up.  I have no idea how a printer would price a job like that.

[David Artman]

Out of curiosity, have you tried to do this by simply setting the book up with page format that's the right size page, and then use a specific printer's PostScript Printer Description with Distiller to PDF the book as 8-up, duplex, booklet output? Basically, some printers (modern IBM InfoPrint, for example) will impose such booklets for you, during "print." As you are printing to file (PS) in order to Distill into PDF, you can actually let the printer driver do the layout and sorting work *as if it's actually printing to paper* and your final PDF will be built for Letter output to any printer.

I think I'll experiment with this when I get some time and report back on results. It should work perfectly--I routinely print out 2-up booklets at work, because I have to edit multi-hundred page books and I don't like wasting that much paper.

I'll report back, if you don't beat me to it (I'm actually kind of busy--I shouldn't even be posting and reading, frankly!).
David

[Jason Morningstar]

I'll await your report!  It never occurred to me.  If it's as simple as you think it will be, than the whole layout program component will be obviated.  That'd be cool.