Whoa, hey, that was weird. I was all, how come no one's responding to my thread, and Ben PM's me and says, you have a post up with no content in it. Ghosts in the machine, I guess. And weird coincidence that Ben's the one who asked, since he inspired my post.

Here's what I had intended (put it on my blog when I was having trouble posting):

So in the GAMA thread, Ben was talking about needing to raise his prices to accomodate retail rates, and it set me down a whole line of thinking.

First I thought, Dude, why are you paying $11/copy to get Polaris printed? It would cost less at Kinkos.

Then I thought back to Gen Con 2005, when I had my revised version of Primetime Adventures done, and Luke was giving me the big-print sales pitch. I remember being terrified of the idea. Maybe of Luke, too. He gets going with gestures and stuff.

But long since I’ve done me a big print run, and I can’t recommend it enough. It more than halved my original cost per book, and it resulted in a really nice, quality book. Thanks Luke! Now Ben may have many reasons why he doesn’t do a run of a thousand, but he’s a great example of a publisher who could (and ought to, man, seriously). And I’ve been thinking about big runs in terms of a benchmark.

The thing about POD printers, and especially ones like Lulu, is that you can fix all kinds of errors and make revisions and it’s all seamless. Click, and the updated version is good to go. But why is a product that’s potentially full of errors available for sale in the first place? If you don’t know what might be wrong with it, why are you hawking it as a complete and finished game? I ask the me of 2004 that same question, don’t doubt it.

A run of a thousand copies (plus sweet, sweet overruns) cost me just over $2000, including shipping to my house. And that was roughly half up front, half prior to shipment. That’s for a 112 page digest size game. Do the math in your heads accordingly and imagine how much your game might cost. Then think about how much more you’d make per book. Then make sure the reason you aren’t doing it is a lack of confidence in the product.

This site in part is set up to discourage would-be publishers from printing ginormous runs of books, then getting stuck with a basement full of them; however, I’m proposing that a not-so-ginormous run be an excellent goal to strive for. Consider your finished game to be something that you’d confidently print a thousand of (plus sweet, sweet overruns).

Not to knock the Lulu stage* by any means. POD printers like Lulu are also an awesome resource, maybe a crucial one. I’ll leave that for another thread.

And Ben, by the white suit of Ackbar, get those per-book costs down! Down I say!

* I will, however, knock the people who work for Lulu. One of them didn’t show up for FM, and I have now made him my sworn enemy. Sworn! The deadly past participle of swearing! You know who you are!

A word of warning.

My suggestion is - don't do a regular print run until you have a proven POD game. If you've already sold a few hundred copies, and things are going well, sure, do the print run, otherwise you'll have an expensive, festering pile of books going nowhere. I've seen this so many times in the past and it's painful to see people sinking money into large print runs.

Simon Rogers
Pelgrane Press Ltd

Hi there,

It might be helpful for people reading this to understand what you mean by "print run," Matt. To newcomers, and possibly to others, they're probably thinking in terms of 5,000 or 10,000 copies. Whereas I'm pretty sure you're talking about a hundred or a couple hundred. Am I right? Can you clarify?

Best, Ron

Matt indicated he did a run of 1000 for PTA.  I did a run of 750 for the second run of Uni and 1000 for the latest Revised run.

The breakpoints vary by printer but somewhere between 750 and 1200ish copies there is a HUGE drop in per unit.

The first 100 copy run of Uni cost something like $6 a book.  The 750 run cost less than $3 and that was after upgrading the lamination on the cover.

Which printer do you use for longer print runs?

I do Panty Explosion in print runs of 300 copies. I'm currently on my 5th. I find that 300 at a time works pretty well for me. It's not so expensive that  I break the bank on it, which is vital. I'm a really poor person. I find with 300 copeies available to me I usually* can predict when I'm going to run low and should order more.

There are sevral printers that can do you print runs of a few hundred for a reasonable price. At 96 pages, PEcosts me about $2.80 per book to print, with the specially cut rounded corners. Matt's definetly saving money by doing a larger print run, but for those of us who can't afford to drop $2000 or have an untested product then a smaller print run is safer.

That being said, if I could afford it I might switch from 300 copy runs to 5oo copy runs. It would save some money. But I never would have started with a 500 copy run. But I'm guessing that this topic wasn't directed at starting publishers, right?

*Ususally but not always.

jake