These are the links I have found once I learned the right words to Google: "Playing Card Sheets perforated" sans quotes.

Printing Your Own Cards:

Design-A-Card "UPrintEm"
120 cards =~ $10
600 cards =~ $50
"$10 Each pack contains 20 sheets of 6 cards per sheet!  This means that you can print 2 decks of cards!!"

Playing Card Sheets - Perforated
20 sheets (120 cards) =~$6.8 + shipping
75 sheets (450 cards) =~$24 + shipping
"$0.34
25+  $0.32
100+  $0.28
1000+  $0.22
plus $3.85 shipping for up to 75 sheets"

PlainCards.com
120 Cards, 15 master Sheets, 2 matching card boxes =~ $13.85
360 Cards, 45 master Sheets, 6 matching card boxes =~ $36.50
432 Blank Cards with Blank Backs (54 Sheets 432 Cards) =~ $31.00
"These cards are also micro-perforated  with 8 cards on a master sheet.  They are blank on both sides.  If you want a standard deck of cards on one side, you can download the file "Standard Deck", open with the QuickCards program and print.  The Playing Card Clear Plastic Coating should be applied after printing with inkjet printers.  MAKE DECKS OF CARDS THAT LOOK AND FEEL LIKE REAL PLAYING CARDS."

Rapid POD
Lists "Playing Cards" as something they do, but no prices.

Blank Face Poker Deck & Blank Both Sides Poker Deck
$7 per deck, with or without a back
How to print thread
Design-A-Card with PDF, Word & Publisher templates. Seems related to the Design-A-Card link above.

LESSON #38: PROTOTYPING CARD GAMES
(see the Blank Cards section) Good tips and advice from prototyping on other cards with labels (which I've done) to making real cards.
Also shows you how to make boxes. Be sure to check out their whole "Custom Game Design" articles ranging from CCG to RPG. Looked like good stuff.
Links to "Playing Card Sheets - Perforated" listed above and...

TM Playing Cards
Has a nifty online "create your own deck, front & back" option, complete with uploading graphics, until I realized there is no way to have more than one type of face card... but then it's only to get a QUOTE not actually create the cards, so don't panic.
Fill out Online Form for a Quote

East Playing Cards
No prices listed, but handles custom cards.
It's not immediately apparent if you can get custom cards made without the standard card borders indicating Ace of Spades, for example, but they do have round cards and Tarot Card sized card-stock.

Dick Blick Art Supply
Everyone needs more Dick in their life. I punched the guy who told me that. (actually I started talking about my wife, I don't mind the art crowd as I try to be an artist)
Blank Playing Cards  Small    List $2.59 · Save 23% $1.99
Blank Playing Cards  Large    List $3.79 · Save 21% $2.99
Sadly, you can only DRAW on these, not really print on them... unless you have a photo-printer that might take something this size.
"Small cards have red backing. 2½" × 3½" (64 mm × 89 mm).
Large cards have blue backing. 3½" × 5" (89 mm × 127 mm)."

The Crafty PC Blank Playing Cards
Blank Playing Cards
9 sheets to a pack/72 cards = $9.00
Clearly, others have better prices.

Some GUIDELINES for PRODUCING SMALL EDITIONS of HAND-MADE PLAYING CARDS
Great reading, though some of these articles include people who haven't touched computers to do their artwork and have to do everything from scanning to hand engraving to get their cards made, my hat's off to them. Just pick and choose what you want to read about.

Useful notes on making and publishing your own Tarot deck
An incredible read with excellent links for those who are serious about their CCG printing.
Scroll down to "My Method of making Handmade Decks"

Playing Cards Publishers and Manufacturers
"A note about the classifications below. I have three designations for entries in this list: Printer, Publisher, and Vendor. "Printer" means I think this company owns card production apparatus. "Publisher" means I think they have a product line and brand name identity. "Vendor" means I think they had a deck (or a few decks) produced for them and are selling them to the public. Please don't send printing or publishing requests to vendors; don't expect printers to be able to sell to you direct (unless you want to buy 20,000 units); and, of course, don't expect publishers to jump at the chance to publish your work."

USI Laminators
The Roll Laminators cost the big bucks, but the Pouch ones are a couple hundred. Google's Froogle will net you more information.

Tips from a Card-Printing Road Warrior:
"I found the way you don't put 9 cards on a 81/2x11inch you put 8 on a 60 pounds Georgia Pacific card stock and you laminate it with 3mil it gives a nice thin rough smooth cards that is playable for life , a bit thicker than the real ones but not much,"

Make your CCG an Online Computer Game
If you want to make your game playable as a Computer Card-Trading Game using the GatlingEngine, head to the Developer WIKI on that.
Alternatively you can purchase C#/VB.NET and go to town on your own, or check out SourceForge.net.

Links that Digress...
Modern Art review - a card game that involves amassing wealth through acquiring and auctioning art.

GamersGoneBad.com - my artwork & online web comic about videogames and my hot little elven lass (in real life she's a Latina).

Plain cards, it should be noted, have a width above that of Bridge cards, but are narrower than Poker Cards.

The Crafty PC cards are actually "Plain Cards" being resold.  So, they are more expensive than they are at Plain Cards.

Since we're on the topic:

If I want to create a game with 70 different cards (roughly)

How would I go about ordering/printing/packaging/etc these cards if I wanted:

-5 "decks" of 70
-20 "decks" of 70
-100 "decks" of 70
-more than that

Can you just outline (with a sample retailer), in layman's terms, the easiest way to go about those processes?

Same backs, or 70 unique backs?  Production quality or prototype quality?  True playing card stock or just 12 or 14 point C2S standard stock?

As a general rule it is bloody expensive to go to a professional printer and get one copy of anything done on an offset press.  Same goes for 50 copies.  For slightly more than the cost for a 100 copies you can get 500 copies generally, and for slightly more than that you can get 1000 copies.  Initial price is in the films (used to setup the offset plates) and on the setup of the print run itself.  After that, you are basically just paying for paper and ink.

RapidPOD supposedly offers POD playing cards but they have reportedly dreadful customer service historically, are inattentive, don't return calls, and according to some, they sometimes don't even fulfill your orders.  I'm not certain that they use true playing card stock.

Okay, lets say 500 decks of regular size (52/54)....

Either custom backed, or one of those standard blue/red backs.
What's the cost going to be?

Let's assume a standard poker-card quality.

There is only one domestic game card manufacturer that I know of that will even produce 500 decks.  That's Delano.  You'll have to ask them for a custom quote.  However, when I last priced 100 card decks with Delano the costs were:

$3,700 for the decks in cellowrap (no deck boxes)
$6,500 for the decks in tuckboxes with rules
$8,700 for the decks in tuckboxes, with rules, packed in a printed Point-of-Purchase display

I'm not sure how much you'd pay for a 50 card deck.  Presumably substantially less.  I'd say about 2/3 of that price (I think some of the fixed costs may make it more than half).  But that's a guess.  You'd have to ask them.

To get somebody who does cards willing in 500 deck quantities other than Delano you'll probably have to go overseas if you don't want to pay an arm and a leg.  500 decks is a TON of trouble for a non-playing card printer because they don't have the tools.  For a playing card printer, they want to work in higher volumes in general (in the thousands of decks).

As for deck size -- your deck size should be some exact multiple (including 1/2) of the press sheet size of your printer to minimize costs (otherwise they have to charge you for printed on sheets even though they may cut off half of it and discard it).

BTW -- if your deck is exactly standard size I misspoke, but couldn't edit it.  Few people other than hobby game card manufacturers can deal with non-standard deck sizes, but there are a number of American manufacturers who can get you decks of standard size.

http://www.customizedplayingcards.com/wst_page8.html

As you can see, these guys do decks down to 2 decks, but at a cost of $12.00+ per deck, which is insane if you want to get to market with the decks.

Also, other than hobby card manufacturers, most people will probably not be equipped to do really cool tuck boxes and packed point of purchase displays (and, in my experience, that's where the extra cost really piles on, as seen from the Delano figures).

There is only one domestic game card manufacturer that I know of that will even produce 500 decks.  That's Delano.  You'll have to ask them for a custom quote.  However, when I last priced 100 card decks with Delano the costs were:

$3,700 for the decks in cellowrap (no deck boxes)
$6,500 for the decks in tuckboxes with rules
$8,700 for the decks in tuckboxes, with rules, packed in a printed Point-of-Purchase display

joepub wrote:

There is only one domestic game card manufacturer that I know of that will even produce 500 decks.  That's Delano.  You'll have to ask them for a custom quote.  However, when I last priced 100 card decks with Delano the costs were:

$3,700 for the decks in cellowrap (no deck boxes)
$6,500 for the decks in tuckboxes with rules
$8,700 for the decks in tuckboxes, with rules, packed in a printed Point-of-Purchase display

Should that read "when I last priced 1000 card decks"?

It seems to me that $37 for a deck doesn't really make much sense.

joepub wrote:

Should that read "when I last priced 1000 card decks"?

It seems to me that $37 for a deck doesn't really make much sense.

So, is that with custom backs? And what's the quality on those?

Yeah, but that's only $7.40 for cellophaned.

What I am considering them for doesn't require a rulebook insert, because its part of a RPG "box set": Rulebook, cards, Character sheets, necessary dice.

(that is, if I decide to go ahead with the idea).

What is the cellophane packaging? Is it like the packaging for Magic, YuGiOh and those sorts of cards - the booster packs?

joepub wrote:
Yeah, but that's only $7.40 for cellophaned.

What I am considering them for doesn't require a rulebook insert, because its part of a RPG "box set": Rulebook, cards, Character sheets, necessary dice.

What is the cellophane packaging?

CCG production is insane.
Your best bet is to totally bypass CCG style production and go with more of a flash card production. Drive costs significantly downward while still fullfilling the same goal.
90% of the appearance of CCGs right now is to appeal to the collector crowd. Collectors collect because they're an investment. 500 copies of a small press RPG with cards won't likely rank very high on the InQuest or Scrye "Must Have" list. Because of that, you're free of a few constraints.

Sides, thats $7.50 for the cards, just wrapped. About, what, $2.00 for a good book (155 copies of my last RPG cost me about $2.30 per copy. Higher quantitiy, varying production values will affect the final cost per). Consider about $.50 per box to house this package, plus package printing, if you get creative with the local Kinkos or such, could run you $.25 per facing and could possibly use one sheet to print the sides if you really wanted. Dice can run you about a nickel per, so that'll depend on what you want.
SO, you're looking at about $10.00, give or take, cost. Retail sales through distribution means that $10 has to AT LEAST be 35% of the final price. Without making profit, and not counting any shipping costs to and from, your game will need to run about $28.00 per copy. Direct, that means $18.00 profit. Distro? Nothing. Also have to deal then with people looking at that for $28.00 or the D&D starter set for $25.00.

Your best bet is to totally bypass CCG style production and go with more of a flash card production.

joepub wrote:

I'm looking to create an RPG with card-based mechanics...

What are my options for producing the cards?

BTW, hands down, Nate is the guy on the Forge with the greatest knowledge of small scale, Indy-friendly techniques for producing cards to support a niche market game.  His game is available in hard copy, with boosters, and is available for online play and available as a PDF.  He's even in mainstream distribution.

Me -- I've been working for a couple of years to license a large quantity of art (your first big license can take FOREVER to get) to bring my game to the mainstream.  I may know a bit more about mainstream production techniques as well as the printing and finishing requirements for print on demand (I've been researching buying that technology myself instead of outsourcing).

What one of us doesn't know, the other is very likely to know.  We are interested in someone different methods and different scales.

And if both of us are telling you that you'll likely go bankrupt trying to include hundreds of professionally produced cards printed on real card stock in a boxed game, trust us.  Both of us have done considerable homework.  Maybe you can teach us something new, and if you can, bless you, sir.  However, realize that even Nate's clever methods for cost reduction are likely to still drive up the costs of a RPG if you need many dozens of cards in each boxed set.

I say this, because you are coming across as a bit skeptical (perhaps I'm misinterpreting your statements).  So, I'm just trying to convince you of one thing -- printing cards is an expensive venture

Printing cards using just black ink, on 12 point coated stock, and getting them cut (without round corners)... well, that's not so expensive.  You should strongly consider whether this can meet your criteria instead of full color front, full color back, cards on playing card stock with rounded corners.

For what I do, at 500 units, the costs are fairly negligible. Can hit that for about $1k, so its less than $2-ish per deck, which I can live with and still make money off even. Getting it lower and still cost effective is the difficult part.
My expansion decks (25 card, playable mini decks) will run me ballpark of about $500 to produce 250 decks. Course, thats with: Shipping of cards and packages, local press cutting down larger sheets, hand rounding the square edges to 1/8th inch playing card round, sample rules insert, and hand packing said decks.

Regarding else wise: Yup, for the most part it doesn't matter unless you get into situations involving randomization and specific collating (IE 1 rare, 2 uncommon, rest common). Playing cards or collectors cards are a small fortune.

As for "flash cards", thats exactly right, more or less Lee. A basic card stock, good printing ala a high end laser printer (local print shops can typically do the work, and don't require anywhere near the investment the hardware or paying a printer would). Hell, for Supers DJ and I printed it on regular card stock off a high-quality inkjet printer, front and back, and it came out very nice. Hand trim and round the edges with my lovely Lasco rounder and its all good and costs us pennies per pack.

I'm still confused as to how you expect players to build a deck of 200+ cards (per your last post) if you are only putting 50+ in a boxed set

daMoose_Neo wrote:
For what I do, at 500 units, the costs are fairly negligible. Can hit that for about $1k, so its less than $2-ish per deck, which I can live with and still make money off even. Getting it lower and still cost effective is the difficult part.
My expansion decks (25 card, playable mini decks) will run me ballpark of about $500 to produce 250 decks.

joepub wrote:
I'd read posted on a site that it was most cost effective to publish cards at average deck size (54)

So, I live in British Columbia right now - living in a small rural town with no printing (or even office supply places) near me.

Assuming I go with a black-on-white back, and white/black images on the front...
And assuming I do 500 sets of the 200 cards.
And assuming that I put the cards into tuckboxes - 100 cards to a tuckbox, so a total of 1,000 tuckboxes.

What is the cheapest route for me? Nate - how do I go about setting up the process you outline?
Veritas, how do I reach such a printer in China?

joepub wrote:
And assuming I do 500 sets of the 200 cards.

And assuming that I put the cards into tuckboxes - 100 cards to a tuckbox, so a total of 1,000 tuckboxes.

What is the cheapest route for me?

Veritas, how do I reach such a printer in China?

Dear freaking lord don't get me started on the hassles of dealing overseas.
Twilight's first run cost me $3600 for 2016 decks, of one kind. I did a lot of hand assembly just to accomplish that and man is it a chore. I found it easier and more economical for me to do it locally via Overnight Prints (http://www.overnightprints.com) and hand pack from there. No tearing apart, sorting, or anything else, plus fewer hassles and a lot less of an investment, which is the key for me. I am, technically speaking, a college kid trying to make ends meet on top of managing the game production. Don't quite have the dependencies a lot of the folks here have with family and what not, but I also have a lot less realworld experiance, business sense, and I kind of think disposable income (Insurance companies really bend you over a barrel when you're my age :P)
From talking, if you're going overseas and doing 200 cards to a unit, we're looking at probably packs of 100 cards, 50 of each of your factions. Means to make a set, you throw two cello wrapped packs in a box with your rules and call it good. Ordering 1000 of these packs gives you 500 units, easy.
You're in Canada, so even my brief brush with Customs means nothing. I had to pay for the shipping, which I don't know is factored in Lee's estimate of $1500, plus customs fees: hiring a broker, paying for warehousing while it was being kept for the next shipment bound inland, it took bloody forever, and longer while it was being handled (Patriot Act really messed with me here), and you have to be careful about the taxes of the state. State of Michigan sent me a letter attempting to assess a Use Tax for importing the cards, would have come to a couple hundred dollars as well except as a publisher I was able to list myself as a wholesaler for the purposes of the tax. Always, ALWAYS do your research.

One cavet: even with representation, I'm placing initial orders of about 150 units for my books, and about the same for my cards, and sitting comfortably with those numbers. Doing so, I can keep my inventory low and my cash as free as I can. Overseas will always be cheaper than stateside, but you have to consider the hassle and you have to consider the sheer investment, not just cost per unit. If you don't have the $1500 to $2500 to invest, there are other ways to come close for a lot less.

Lee: Overnight Prints ^_^ My best little secret. Lowered their minimums to even 100, which means I'm going to be doing a number of single releases as well just to keep some activity going release wise. They also sell in 500 and 1000 sets and more. Cards are 4 over 4, 12 pt. stock, THICK and nice, free UV coating so they don't wear as easily and look almost as good as the aquious coating or playing card coating.
Order 500 prints of each card, 2 of my cards to a postcard, means I'm getting 1000 cards out of each postcard, two different kinds of decks. End up with 250 total (125 of each kind).

daMoose_Neo wrote:
Cards are 4 over 4, 12 pt. stock, THICK and nice, free UV coating so they don't wear as easily and look almost as good as the aquious coating or playing card coating.

Order 500 prints of each card, 2 of my cards to a postcard, means I'm getting 1000 cards out of each postcard

two different kinds of decks. End up with 250 total (125 of each kind).

Nate, who do you use for card cutting.  Our local finishing service in Boston have over a $100.00 fee just to set up for cutting.  I haven't checked at too many places, so I can't say whether all places are like this or not.

Nate, Overnight prints, while cheaper than other places on the net still seems to be expensive.  Let's say you want to have 250 decks with 50 cards each.  OK, they charge $40.00 per 250 postcards.  You get 2 cards per postcard.  So, you need 25 sets of postcards to make a 250 decks of 50 cards.  25 x $40 = $1000.  That's $4.00 per deck before finishing services or any kind of packaging.  That doesn't look workable with any kind of profit (except direct sales).  Nobody's gonna want to pay more than about $12.00 for an indy starter deck with 50 cards in it.  Wholesale on a $12.00 deck is $4.80.  So, you have 80 cents per deck to pay for art, finishing services, packaging, shipping, etc.

How are you making a profit?

Now, what I can see is this being a great way to make some limited supply convention give aways.  But this seems too expensive to sell through distribution (which is, in part, what you do).

I've been searching, hunting, and number crunching for months/years, and they are by far the best and the cheapest. And I usually only hit them when they have a sale or I have a sale code that has similar slashing. This is actually very common for them.
Part of it depends on how many individual cards you want. Start talking 50 different cards to a deck, yes you're talking quite a few. Start talking preconstructed decks with multiple copies, its still very VERY cheap. Even at 1000 postcards, thats 2000 playing cards for $65+ shipping. Thats $1.63 per deck before shipping, which only raises it pennies per deck. Nearest competator is GotPrint, who produces 4/4, 14 pt (My mistake, ONP *is* 14 pt) Collectors Cards, $70 per thousand. 

For my expansion decks: I have 5 new cards per deck, 2 new decks, plus Major Characters & Locations. I order 5 sets of 500 postcards. 4 copies of each card, as has become my standard for decks and boosters, you get 125 sets of cards. I'm also using full color paper inserts for the cover and back cover (another $.06 per deck), and trying to come up with a walkthrough ruleset/example for the mini-deck with the direction to go online for the full rules (about another $.05 per deck). I'm using BCW plastic cases ($.18 per via a resellers account I established with them) with large clear stickers to seal them (think like on software boxes, again only pennies per). Gives me a cost of around $1.60 per deck, before shipping. SRP is $6.00. Plenty of room for other costs and a little bit of profit in there.

As for cutting, my local copy shop has a hydrolic press, big producer of printed advertising material in the area. Provide the guidelines and they cut, about $8.00 per thousand. Before that, a friend works at the local college as an instructor to a printing and advertising course which also has a hydrolic press. Not the most accurate person, so I had to weed some cuts out, but otherwise spot on and he did it free. Getting them die punched or something similar will cost a lot more. Hunt, be flexable on what you need, these are key parts to assembling something like this indie. Mainstream, this wouldn't cut it; way too much leg work, too easy to have one plant print, cut, and pack. But for my operation, its perfect. Spend a weekend packing, save thousands. It works.

Nate, you and I should put together a website.  I can host it.  I'm most of the way done collecting the links, glossary of print terms, etc.  I'm trying to put together a web resource for people who want to either prototype a CCG or to sell an indy CCG.  I've seen 4 people ask questions on this in the last 2-3 weeks that either you or I have had to answer.  That's a sign that a small website would be useful.  We've researched different things (I've researched mass market production and purchasing print on demand technology).  You have the indy stuff down cold.  I'm certain some of our research will be useful to others.  If you want, as I have some time, I'll kitbash together the skeleton of a website and then let you see if you want to contribute.  Even if you don't have time to contribute, can I post links to the two postcard printers you have recommended?

Heya,

Lee, I'd be very interested in that.  Make sure you let folks know if you ever make such a website happen.

Peace,

-Troy

Hey,

Also want to drop my vote in the hat for this idea. I've stayed away from cards in my game ideas, but if it's even vaguely possible to do it affordably, it would definitely be something I'd be interested in looking in to. Either way, there's a mine of information in this thread alone.

Thanks, guys.

Troy_Costisick wrote:
Lee, I'd be very interested in that.  Make sure you let folks know if you ever make such a website happen.

Lee,

Drop me an email about what you'd need. I may be able to help, depending on what you need (text editing, no prob. HTML, no prob. Any of this new-fangled CSS, etc, that's where my knowledge stops).

Also, IIRC Under The Bed uses a small amount of custom cards, you may want to check with Joshua Newman (glyphmonkey) and see if he did anything strange or wonderful for those.

Nathan wrote:
Lee,

Drop me an email about what you'd need. I may be able to help, depending on what you need (text editing, no prob. HTML, no prob. Any of this new-fangled CSS, etc, that's where my knowledge stops).

Also, IIRC Under The Bed uses a small amount of custom cards, you may want to check with Joshua Newman (glyphmonkey) and see if he did anything strange or wonderful for those.

I'm game- site like that would let me put my notes together in smaller, more self-contained articles as opposed to the 'manual'-esque monster I've been working on ^_^
Really is amazing how little information there is out there...

Groovy.  Let me get the skeleton together, and then I'll let you review everything and contribute some articles, links, and glossary entries.  Maybe we can dig up some other people who want to contribute to.  The BGDF has a great forum section, but it's a lot to sift through.  They keep talking about putting together a wiki, but haven't.

I find this thread very encouraging. Thanks, everyone. This is why we have community: after hours upon hours of searching, I came up with dip squat and ran a print run, with predictably uneven results, with a local printer.

One thing I really want to see in this site:
A walk through process. Well, several.

If there was a page that said: "Walk me through domestic printing" "Walk me through basement printing"

and then i could click on it, find my first steps, my design steps, my production steps, my distribution steps...

I'm not saying it'd have to cover all possibilities, because that's ridiulous. Just something I can read to understand the whole process.

What I'll be doing is segmenting my notes, from an earlier promised compilation.
Whatever I do won't be a step by step per design way, but handle the options at each step: design, collecting artwork, printing, assembly, etc. Theres way too many ways to go, and no clear path for any one of them. You can do top notch printing that rivals Wizards in your basement for a little or mass produce black & white cardstock cards through a local press and spend a lot.

So yea, I'll just ramble about what I've done, what worked and what bit me in the butt, and what it costs overall ^_^

For better or worse, http://www.veritasgames.net/ now has a Game Design Glossary and Articles section.  Lots of the best links are in the Glossary section.  Anyone who wants to submit corrections or submit an article, let me know.  I'll be happy to consider any thoughtful emails.  I just found that I was sharing some of the same information over and over again, so I figured I'd put it up on the web.  Now, I'm visually impaired and I did this by touch typing with only what limited edits my vision allows, so goodness knows if the links even work.  So email me with all complaints (via my website).  If it's good, email me with kudos too.

If people this something deserves an article, email me with an article idea, and if I know the answer or can find it out, I'll post it.

I'm hoping that Neo Production and Guild of Blades, in particular, will contribute some articles.

Gimme a day or two to pull together a small article on designing specifically for small/self publication.
Aside from that, you might want to relist a couple of those "Articles" under glossary/link collections.

>>I'm hoping that Neo Production and Guild of Blades, in particular, will contribute some articles.<<

Well, actually, for the last couple of months in my spare time I have been writing a book that will be titled the "Small Publishers' Guide to Alternative Production" that will be presenting, in detail, all of my experiences with, well, alternative production options for books and games. Eventually I will be marketing it for sale through a partner publisher who has a better reach into the RPG segment of the industry than I do.

But until then, naturally, I have always been free with my advice and my experiences and will tackle any questions I think I can help with. Anything I write on these forums, you can certainly feel free to archive if you think it has any value.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com

Thanks, Ryan.  Give us a heads up when you publish, 'cause I'd like to see what you come up with in your book.  Any idea when it's due out?

Not really sure. Its a side project of my own, not an official publication of the Guild of Blades. So it gets written in my own personal spare time only, which right now is pretty limited because I am shoulder deep in work trying to get our interactive computer game ready for beta in one month.

My best guess is 4 to 6 weeks to finish the writing and layout. Layouts won't be anything fancy, as its a business text. Though it will likely be clocking in at over 100 to 150 pages when completed.

Basically it goes over the various avenues I have used, or looked into and opted not to use for alternate production and/or cost saving tactics when producing RPGs, board games, card games and other types of production. So it will include production benefits/trade offs, lists of equipment and machinery for potential use, accounting issues impacted by this alternate business model, etc. Basically everything I can think of with regards how using in house production will impact your business. Though I also write about some interesting cost saving options when outsourcing your printed good to offset printers as well.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com