Sorry, I just had a weird random thought: I've never seen a hardcover game book sold with a dustjacket.
Does anyone have any examples of this being done?
What are the costs involved?
Would there be any cost advantage to doing this instead of another style of color cover?

Sorceror has a hardcover with dust jacket. No idea on the costs. You could call a couple of printers and get quotes.

You could call a couple of printers and get quotes.

Why are you considering a dust jacket? What do you see as the advantages?

(Me, I hate'em, they get torn or lost all the time).

It's more traditional to have a dustjacket instead of a plain, clothbound book. It also seduces the potential buyer's eye and promises what lies within the covers. The problem I saw with it many years ago was the amount of handling a RPG book gets. Instead of one or two readings and then placed on the shelf as a pleasant memory, a RPG book is handled several times a week or month and the dust jacket soon gets torn. Even during casual inspection in a bookstore the cover can get ratty.

The current standard of a self jacket hardcover is a very usable/functional solution to a wear and tear problem inherent to RPG books.

Keith

matthijs wrote:
Why are you considering a dust jacket? What do you see as the advantages?

(Me, I hate'em, they get torn or lost all the time).

KeithBVaughn wrote:
It's more traditional to have a dustjacket instead of a plain, clothbound book. It also seduces the potential buyer's eye and promises what lies within the covers.

For the deal on Sorcerer's dust jacket, see Ron's post in this thread:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=2546.07

Personally, I think this is a creative choice for the designer - what do you like?  But that's just an opinion,

Gordon

Oh, and for some more from Ron about the Sorcerer size/format, check out this thread:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=2184.0

(sigh.  I miss that few-minutes editing of posted messages feature . . .)

Gordon

Just a historical note. GDW did a hardcover with a dustjacket called: "The Traveller Book." It did rather well as I recall but GDW never did another book with a dustjacket.

Keith

A few reasons for duskjacket:

You've heard about Tenra Bansho ( http://www.tenra-rpg.com/ ).

As with every other Japanese  rulebooks, it is softcover and comes with a duskjacket.

But if you took the dustjacket, you could discover that on the back of it there is a B4 character sheet, ready for photocopying. To be honest, it took me a while to discover this, but I think this is a great idea.

Or you could do a Gamemaster's paravan: all the relevant info on the back side of the dustcover.

The only hidrance is that the book itself is too pinkish without the dust jacket.

And to cite another "Japanese" example: if you buy the Sengoku hardcover, it is an RPG book with samurai. If you took the dustjacket, it is a scholastic work on Japanese history ;)

So the dust jacket is a wonderful idea - and full of possibilites.

Well, I think that ...

Oh. Gordon hunted those threads down already.

Best,
Ron

Hey, if you had a cardboard dustjacket, it could double as a GM screen...

I've thought about doing dust jackets on my books. There is a cost advantage.

Say I'm printing up a books and put a laminated color cover on it. This involves a bit of labor assembling the hardback case. Nothing glues to lamination so the cover sheets need to be run through the machine back to back and trimmed out. A plain paper cover on the other hand is easier. So for cost you end up with a plain blank covered book. Durable yes, but ugly as sin.

If I run a color sheet through my laminator and wrap it around the book as a dust cover (tape does stick to lamination and could hold the dust jacket in place) the books would look pretty on a store shelf and thus sell. After that sale the dust jacket is so much trash as far as I'm concerned - it has fullfilled it's mission.

Why would this be good? Sadly, though people love them, laminated book covers are not as durable as plain covers. So the ugly contents inside the dust cover are more durable to that long term use you mentioned.

Now a reason not to do this.

No one does it. Consumers will look at the book and be confused by the doo dad. "Is it a game book? It doesn't look like  game book." Which equals death - no sales. As mentioned above GDW never did it again. I know Frank Chadwick. He's an astute businessman. If he didn't do it again it either cost too much to do or it hurt sales.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

Hello,

Chris, you wrote,

No one does it. Consumers will look at the book and be confused by the doo dad. "Is it a game book? It doesn't look like  game book." Which equals death - no sales.

Ron wrote:
Clearly you are not reading, or if reading, not thinking.

Ron's point (I believe) is that Sorcerer--dust-cover and all--is in fact in distribution through Key20 (right?) and does consistently sell in brick-n-mortar stores. So absolute statements like "customers don't like dust-covers" ignores the data from things like Sorcerer's success.

I didn't mean to start a row over something that at this stage is hypothetical product fellas...

I am interested in the idea though from the fact that there does seem to be a difference in perception between gamebook hardcovers ( no dustjackets, generally speaking) and mainstream hard covers ( often having dustjackets).

To give a little better idea of what I'm working on:
I'm interested in creating small games meant for gamer parents to introduce children to concepts common in full-on rpgs. I'd also like to tackle it from a starting point similar to HG Wells Floor Games. Rather than try to create a single, unified and lengthy game, I wanted to break it up into chapters of different games that introduce different concepts of play and play styles. Hopefully, the book would act as a hobby guide for people to then create their own, more personalized systems. Anyway, the idea is that I might like to get this into more than just gamer circles, and I was considering several different potential formats, one of which was a hardcover with dustjacket, perhaps of a non-rpgbook standard size.

All I was really looking for were the cost issues involved with a dust jacket as opposed to hardback with a color cover, although customer perception issues were also something that came to mind.

Thanks for all of the hints on previous threads, btw. I have found them very interesting and helpful. All further  insighte is appreciated as well.

Hello,

For that goal, I think any design that's similar to kids-and-parents books, for your target age group, is a very good idea.

The one that comes to mind, out of many possible, is a book that's wider than it's tall, with case-bound covers I can only describe as "partly puffy." A maximum of half-page of text per page, with the rest of it taken up by white space or illustration, and possibly some full pages as well. A lot of the illustrations are literally what's being described on that page or the facing one. The paper is fairly heavyweight and just a little rough-feeling.

But as I say, that's only one. I mention it because it's dramatically different from the standard game-store RPG. I'm sure you can think of exactly what kind of kids/parents book would fit your anticipated market, and my point is that you might take that as a starting point, on the basis of customer attraction, and not consider standard RPG format at all. Even thinking "standard RPG but with hard cover and dust jacket" (or whatever) is still, as I see it, starting from the wrong rock.

Best,
Ron