RPGnow's new POD system

[quozl]

I just noticed Musical Mistresses (for Heartquest) is now available as POD.

Michael, any chance that you'd like to share the process you went through to get the file ready for print quality and how the actual book turned out?

[Michael Hopcroft]

Essentially, I had to have a new PDF done just like for a printed book, at the resolution they set. That resulted in a pretty big file. The cover was a separate file, and there were a couple of other files in the zip whose nature I don;t recall at the moment -- my art director put it all together.

On my end, I filled out a spreadsheet describing my book in detail -- page count, type of binding, internal bleed and the like. The bleed was actually the hardest part -- it took forever for James to get a quote from the printer on how much internal bleed would cost per page. After that I had to pay printing costs for the first ten copies, which came to about $43 for this particular book. Scrambling for the cash was the hardest part on my end, although if a certain nameless fulfillment house ever pays me what they owe that step will be a lot easier on my next POD book.

As for the result? I don't know yet. They have yet to ship me a copy of the book....

As a result there are many unanswered questions. The most annoying of these is that RPGNow can only ship within the United States. Since the author of Musical Mistresses lives in Malaysia, he can;t promote the book to his friends and have them buy it directly. He'll have to come up with some circuitous, roundabout way to smuggle it to them.

[quozl]

Thank you for the information, Michael.  I'd love to hear what you think of the book once you get a copy.

One question: what is internal bleed?

[Matt Machell]

Only ships in the US you say? That would make it a bit annoying for me to use, being in the UK.

James (rpghost), any plan to expand shipping to other continents?

-Matt

[Michael Hopcroft]

To answer that question: bleed is the printing term for printed matter (graphics or text) that goes all the way to the edge of the page instead of stopping at a set margin. Bleed is nearly universal on covers, and is used by many RPG books in their interiors as well.

Bleed is a problem for printers because it's more work cutting the paper and with less room for error. At least I THINK that's the rationale for charging 1.5 cents more per page to have internal bleed in Musical Mistresses. I could be wrong about this, so I can easily stand corrected if someone here knows the terminology better.

When you look at the HeartQuest book and see the rose graphics on the margins of each page where blank space would be in many books, that's internal bleed.

[rpghost]

Only ships in the US you say? That would make it a bit annoying for me to use, being in the UK.

James (rpghost), any plan to expand shipping to other continents?

Yeah, we added a global priority mail envelope. Anything you can stuff in it for $9.95 and it gets there in 3-5 days even :)  Here are the shipping options for customers on POD:

Major international locations.
$9.95 Global Priority (5-10 days)

Rates for only U.S.A. zip codes:
$2.45 Media Mail (2-3 weeks)
$4.95 Priority (3-5 days)
$15.95 Express (1-2 days)

[rpghost]

One of our goals for this year with RPGHost Network is to create a centeral forum for users to hang out in for our network. We have chosen is this forum and encurrage everyone to stop by and say hello!

  http://www.rpghost.com/forums

It'll be the hub for all our sites. The software is excellent and allows for in-line user polls, automate email notices, and much more.

We'll be hosting some special forms for RPGNow to help publishers speak to their customers and address issues as well as post press releases. Plus an e-Publishers forum for sharing information on creating and selling PDF products.

James
http://www.RPGHost.com

[Michael Hopcroft]

Jonathan asked me to post when I got my copy of the Musical Mistresses POD book. Well, it came while I was at DunDraCon and I got my first good look at it today.

The interior of the book looks just fine, However, the cover just doesn;t feel like the cover of my other book for some reason. It looks pretty good and feels OK; it's just that it looks like a POD book rather than one that went through an offset press.

That said, I'm really glad I did this book and could not have been able to afford to do it any other way.

[quozl]

Jonathan asked me to post when I got my copy of the Musical Mistresses POD book. Well, it came while I was at DunDraCon and I got my first good look at it today.

The interior of the book looks just fine, However, the cover just doesn;t feel like the cover of my other book for some reason. It looks pretty good and feels OK; it's just that it looks like a POD book rather than one that went through an offset press.

That said, I'm really glad I did this book and could not have been able to afford to do it any other way.

Thanks Michael!

When you say the cover doesn't feel like the other cover, do you mean that the material is different or it's not as glossy or something else?

Also, what dpi did you use for the cover image?

[Michael Hopcroft]

Thanks Michael!

When you say the cover doesn't feel like the other cover, do you mean that the material is different or it's not as glossy or something else?

Also, what dpi did you use for the cover image?

The material feels a little bit different somehow. Like it's not quite as hard.

I'm not sure what dpi I used for the cover image. You'll have to ask my art director.