Real honest to gosh books

[Jared A. Sorensen]

I'm going to try my hand at DIY bookbinding, folks. If all goes well, InSpectres will be the first MMT game to see print (it'll be the easiest one to do). Right now, the price will be $20, with a discount for current owners of the InSpectres PDF.

I'm gonna try and make it look like a corporate handbook or something.

[Matt Snyder]

I'm going to try my hand at DIY bookbinding, folks. If all goes well, InSpectres will be the first MMT game to see print (it'll be the easiest one to do). Right now, the price will be $20, with a discount for current owners of the InSpectres PDF.

I'm gonna try and make it look like a corporate handbook or something.

Far out. I'd love to hear how/what you plan on doing in this vein, Jared. Are you talking various forms, like Dust Devils and octaNe (Kinko's specials, basically)? Or are you talking more honest-to-god book binding -- perfect bound, etc.?

I'm planning on doing some of this with Nine Worlds -- I've done some "real" binding in a college coure, and my brother in law makes these FANTASTIC leather bound journals and the like. Takes a long time to make even one, but they'd be really groovy "limited ed.s" or something.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Far out. I'd love to hear how/what you plan on doing in this vein, Jared. Are you talking various forms, like Dust Devils and octaNe (Kinko's specials, basically)? Or are you talking more honest-to-god book binding -- perfect bound, etc.?

I'm going to check out actual materiel tonight at some craft shops. I plan on going the bookpress/binder's glue route and crank out some perfect bound editions of InSpectres. I've surfed around and found some really gorgeous handmade books (didn't know it was such a huge thing...but then again, I didn't even consider old book restoration...it's a freakin' science!).

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Jesus H. Christ. There goes that idea.

- J, who didn't know there were degrees in Book Arts for a reason. Sheesh.

[xiombarg]

Jesus H. Christ. There goes that idea.

Wow, is it that hard? Do you want to share your (bad) experience for our edification? (Might make a good Publishing thread...)

[Jared A. Sorensen]

I went to a craft store (Michaels) and a bookstore (B&N) -- Michaels had SHIT for books about making books (well, scrapbooking aplenty...but that's not what I needed). Plus, the staff was...

Well, you know. "Not helpful" would be a nice way of saying it.

B&N had five books about bookmaking but they were either cutesy-cute homey crafty projects or ridiculous "spend four months to create a unique work of art" projects. I declined to purchase any of them.

If I publish, it'll be through a print house. Simple perfect-bindings or something...shit I dunno. I plan on pow-wowing with some indie book publishing folks in the near future and bypass all this RPG book publishing shit. 'Cuz I really don't see the point anymore.

[quozl]

This one looks interesting:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/048629157X/ref=pd_bxgy_text_1/104-6763882-5366366?v=glance&s=books

[ethan_greer]

I plan on pow-wowing with some indie book publishing folks in the near future and bypass all this RPG book publishing shit. 'Cuz I really don't see the point anymore.

Jared, could you elaborate on this statement?  Do you mean that you don't see the point in publishing RPGs in book format?  Or do you mean that you don't see a distinction between "publishing a book" and "publishing an RPG book?"  Just curious...

[Jared A. Sorensen]

I plan on pow-wowing with some indie book publishing folks in the near future and bypass all this RPG book publishing shit. 'Cuz I really don't see the point anymore.

Jared, could you elaborate on this statement?  Do you mean that you don't see the point in publishing RPGs in book format?  Or do you mean that you don't see a distinction between "publishing a book" and "publishing an RPG book?"  Just curious...

Mostly the latter. Sometimes the former too...

A book is a book is a book. A collection of paper sheets bound together into one thing, right? So why the disparity between RPGs and "them other sortsa books"? Is an RPG a specialized book with limited appeal to mainstream audiences or is it a specialized book with extra appeal to gamer audiences?

[Chris Passeno]

Hey Jared,
Have you tried the Library?  They are more likely to have what you need book-wise.

Yeah, home book-binding is a lot of work and not expedient.  OTOH, you get  that craftsmanny feeling when you do make it and chances are that it's bound better.  Done correctly it could take days to get a batch done.  That depends if you've got multiple book-presses.

I know that I've got some info at home about that particular day-dream.  I'll post some info tomorrow.

[DaR]

I went to a craft store (Michaels) and a bookstore (B&N) -- Michaels had SHIT for books about making books (well, scrapbooking aplenty...but that's not what I needed). Plus, the staff was...

Well, you know. "Not helpful" would be a nice way of saying it.

B&N had five books about bookmaking but they were either cutesy-cute homey crafty projects or ridiculous "spend four months to create a unique work of art" projects. I declined to purchase any of them.

When I was first getting into doing my own binding, I had a fairly similar experience.  In the end, I had much better luck with paper supply stores (Paper Zone, here in the Seattle area) than any of the arts and crafts stores like Michael's.  Really, the only supplies you really need are bookboard and the right sort of PVA glue.  Bookcloth for for spine joints and a bone folder for making the signatures are useful, but you can get by without. Everything else you can either improvise, make for yourself, or just plain don't need.

There's a company called Books by Hand based in Albuquerque, NM which makes kits and supplies meant for hobbyist level bookbinding.  http://www.booksbyhand.com is their site and order form, and they also have endcap displays meant for arts and crafts stores, so you may be able to convince one of your local owned chains to carry their line.

The Hand Bookbinding: Manual of Instructions already mentioned is quite good.  The whole operation really isn't difficult, once you figure out the basics.  It took me about 2 tries to get the basics down, and I was quite satisfied with my third and fourth attempts.

All that said, if you're going to be selling books in more than single digit quantities, you do not want to be hand binding them.  It's fairly cheap, and not that much work, but it takes a lot of time, as there are multiple steps which feature spending hours letting the glue dry.  It takes about 6 hours of work, in my experience, to do a single book of reasonable size, spread across 2 to 3 days.   Though if you were doing multiple books you could probably pipeline the operation and turn out 4 or 5 books during that time.  You could probably also get your overall time down to 4 hours per book.

It can be a lot of fun, and you can produce books far nicer in quality and appearance than you're going to get from a low end print on demand or even volume publisher, but it's not worth the time and effort if you're going to try to sell them as a sideline.

-DaR