For those who aren't familiar, RPGnow is a website that sells PDFs online. Basically, you create your game, give them a copy, and they handle all fulfillment for you for a 30% cut of your profit. (This is different from the Forge Bookshelf in that you still handle fulfillment with the Forge Bookshelf - it merely enables you to do so.)

They announced a print-on-demand program yesterday. In short, they will print copies of your game at cost and warehouse them. These hard copies will be sold off their website per normal, and they handle fulfillment. They still take 30% cut, and you pay for the POD copies when you order them.

This idea, to me, is pretty revolutionary. It enables anyone willing to accept the 30% cut to make hard copies of their indie game and sell it without negotiating with printers or dealing with fulfillment. Like the traditional three-tier system, it has its downfalls (loss of control and loss of profit) but has its benefits, as well (easy distribution).

I'm not interested in inputs of "I would/would not use this" or "this is good/bad," but I am interested in whether people think this will have a big impact on the indie game community and what that impact will be.

From a personal standpoint, it means I may be offering hard copies of Paladin and Donjon very soon.

I thought the quality of print on demand was pretty bad, and that's why it's not more widespread. I think Chaosium tried it through Amazon (I have a couple of their POD titles) and they canned it.

Of course, this is all gossip -- I don't work for Chaosium, nor do I really know anything about print on demand. It's just what I heard.

Take care,

Steve Dustin

Steve,

POD can vary greatly in quality, depending on the printer. I'm not certain, but from my understanding, RPGnow is just using a local printer in Wisconsin. Personally, I've had a great experience with local print shops.

Best,
Clinton

RPGnow's POD program could make indie games more mainstream or at least more visible to the casual gamer. It might bring indie rpg's to a new level, providing the print quality is good.

If, on the other hand, the print quality is poor, it could hurt people's opinions on indie games as a whole. Too many people judge the entire "movement" (for complete lack of a better word) by the few indie games they see. And if the few games they see look bad, they might very well judge all indie games by this standard.

Of course, this is pure conjecture, but it's something to think about.

Hopefully, though, the print quality will be high or at least decent, as this will reflect positively on the indie scene IMO.

As a customer, I'm interested. Let's say I ordered the Donjon pdf and also wanted a hardcopy. How much would RPGNow charge me?

Also, has anyone actually seen a sample book from RPGNow so as to see the actual quality?

Jon,

I haven't seen one yet - they just started the program two days ago. Also, the publisher (me, for example) gets to decide on paper stock, color vs. b/w cover, inserts, and all other sorts of things, so the quality is partially decided by me.

One thing I didn't make exactly clear about this program is that ordering of new books is done by the publisher, and warehousing and fulfillment is done by RPGnow. Because of that, the publisher sets the price, and not all PDFs on RPGnow will have associated hard copies.

Hey Clinton,

...and all other sorts of things...

Is binding one of those things? I've become rather partial to saddle stitched books.

Paul

Paul Czege wrote:
Is binding one of those things? I've become rather partial to saddle stitched books.

This is an interesting development. One thing I note from visiting RPGNow is that it's not exactly been broadcast yet. But it's certainly something for me to consider since many gamers are hypnotised by "the book".

Are there any limits/minimums on pagecount, and what kind of price do books end up?

-Matt

Matt wrote:
Are there any limits/minimums on pagecount, and what kind of price do books end up?

Having just gone through the process of getting print quotes for Universalis...thats a pretty damn good price for a run that small. You could easily drop it a buck-buck and a half with a 1000 copy print run...but not having to front the capital and hold the inventory is a huge plus.

Holy crap that's cheap! For such short runs, I doubt you can beat that. I suppose that they are willing to charge less so that they can make their profit on the sales. Still, it seems like a pretty big gamble to me on thier part. I assume that they have some deal with the printer...

That all said, I found dealing with a printer to be pretty easy (just a bunch of phone calls). The only real benefit I see is the combination of services. Which may well be worth the 30% cut to some developers.

The neat thing is that they have an incentive to ensure that the printer does a good job as that will increase their profits.

Clinton, I see this as pretty much indie. You are putting up the funds, and I assume you control the game afterwards (or do they?). As such, I just see this as a complicated form of outsourcing. Much as if you wnt to a printer yourself, and then found some site to sell your game for a cut. As such, I don't think it violates The Forge's definition of Indie.

Mike

So can you get books made cheap and then distribute them through Wizard's Attic to get them in stores or is there some exlusive arrangement?

The arrangement is only with RPGnow - the books can only be sold on their site (and RPGshow.com, which is part of their site network.) They have mentioned that they will sell a portion of them to the creator at cost, which is good for conventions and the like.

Mike, you're right about this being indie. I think it's the biggest thing to happen to the publishing/distribution side of indie games ever, to be honest. And it is dirt cheap - I paid basically $10 a pop for my print run of 50 copies of Donjon. I made that back, but it was a heavy outlay. With this pricing, I could sell Donjon for $15 and make more than the $10 PDF. You can get a large print run cheaper through other printers, but for people who don't want 1000 copies, this works well.

One feature I like is that they will notify you if your warehouse stock goes below X, where you define X. This way, people without a lot of outlay - like me for example, with my unemployment - can keep stock in the warehouse indefinitely, paying, in my case, $50 to buy 10 more whenever I get low.

What sort of contractural obligation are you in with RPGnow when you sign up for this? Do you have to deal exclusively with them, or can you have them POD your book while you run your own print runs for other distributors?

It would be nice to have your book at RPGnow for the online community. It would also be nice to sell your book at (at least) local gaming shops.

Awesomizer,

It's the same agreement as with their PDF sales: you can sell your game anywhere else you like, but if you do so, they will not provide a link back to your site. (I think this policy is spurious at best, but they claim it stops them from losing sales, which I understand, even if I think it's wrong.)

If you'd like to look it over, their contract is here:

http://www.rpgnow.com/legal/RPGNow_Service_Contract.pdf

I am sorely tempted but don;t know how much RPGnow would charge for the one book of mine currently on their site I would be interested in seeing them do -- Musical Mistresses, my new supplement for HeartQuest. I don;t know for sure how much it would cost and how much I would be able to charge for it. I don;t know whether it will have a decent enough print quality that people will buy it. I don't know when I will make back my costs.

THis is, of course, the usual state of affairs for yours truly. I don't even know if the pdf I submitted is adequate for their purposes.

Sorry I'm a bit late coming here to clear some things up... but better late then never :)

One of the largest complaints about PDF products we've had is that people don't like to read through them all on the screen and they don't want to spend the money printing it on their own printer. This POD processes is to offer a solution to help us gain markeshare into the traditional RPG marketplace.

First of all, we take a 20% cut (not 30). You can get the pricing for printing your books here: http://www.rpgnow.com/POD_Worksheet.zip

quozl wrote: As a customer, I'm interested. Let's say I ordered the Donjon pdf and also wanted a hardcopy. How much would RPGNow charge me?

quozl wrote: Also, has anyone actually seen a sample book from RPGNow so as to see the actual quality?

Mike Holmes wrote: Holy crap that's cheap! For such short runs, I doubt you can beat that. I suppose that they are willing to charge less so that they can make their profit on the sales. Still, it seems like a pretty big gamble to me on thier part.

quozl wrote: So can you get books made cheap and then distribute them through Wizard's Attic to get them in stores or is there some exlusive arrangement?

Awesomizer wrote: What sort of contractural obligation are you in with RPGnow when you sign up for this? Do you have to deal exclusively with them, or can you have them POD your book while you run your own print runs for other distributors?

Michael Hopcroft wrote: I don't even know if the pdf I submitted is adequate for their purposes.

James,

One question I need answered before I use this service (which I'm planning to - it's very exciting): what percentage of our order can we get at for our personal use? I actually sell quite a few copies of Donjon by hand and local printing is crazy expensive. If I could get 2 or 3 out of every 10 for personal use, I'd be on this train in a heartbeat.

(Also: sorry about messing up the 30% thing. I mis-typed.)

The pricing that we have setup is not designed to handle regular or mass distribution other then through RPGNow. So, I'm sure I could come up with a reasonable quote, but sending 2 or 3 out of every 10 your way would add up handling costs on my end and shipping costs on your end that just really wouldn't make it worth the bother.

There is no set limit right now. I'm going to play it by ear right now. If you need 5 and order 15 right off that bat, that's fine. But ordering some every time we order some isn't something I want to get into at this pricing level. It doesn't pay for my employees at the price we're charging.

If more people are wanting larger volumes of their books for their own to do with what they want, I'm certainly able to work up a new model and pricing schedule for such a service. My very rough guess would be around $1 per book more.

James

rpghost wrote: You can get the pricing for printing your books here: http://www.rpgnow.com/POD_Worksheet.zip

Is there or will there be a way to search for all products with the POD option?

quozl wrote: Is there or will there be a way to search for all products with the POD option?

I think this is an exciting development. I am stoked.

Of course, what else needs to be changed to the PDF other than resolution? Do I need to set the PDF up on tabloid pages (one left and right page)? Do I need to do the odd numbering (last page/first page/second page/2nd to last page/etc)? Or is fine just to change the resolution and keep the file setup as a normal PDF?

Good stuff...

Thanks,
Nathan Hill
nathanh@cameron.edu

Just make the normal PDF at the highest resolution you can and you're fine. No special numbering.

James

James,

as somebody who has used print ready PDFs, are you sure that's all? Most printers don't accept truetype fonts as part of a PDF, for example, and require type 1 fonts instead.

Sounds like a great servcie though. I'm impressed.

-Matt

Yeah, I'm sure that's all. The cover needs to be seperated out, but I thought that was mentioned. The printer can use either font style but true type is by far better/easier to work with. PDF's can include the fonts in them, so if you're not already doing that you should.

James

quozl wrote: Is there or will there be a way to search for all products with the POD option?

quozl wrote: So far, there is only The Complete Guide to Drow available. Is anyone else going to be using this P.O.D. option soon?

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?

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.

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?

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

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.

Matt wrote: 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?

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

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.

Michael Hopcroft wrote: 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 wrote:
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?