We would also be interested to see what interest there is; if there is enough we could look at options for bulk production.

Regards

Jeremy Baker
Kelestia Production

I would love to have hardcopies (even softcover, even black-and-white except for map pages) of all the KP publications that I've purchased. When I look through source material, I typically find myself holding three or four places in the book with my fingers as I compare different information. You simply can't do that with a pdf. I know that printed material costs far more than electronic material does, but I have always cheerfully paid that premium when possible.

Count me as VERY interested in seeing KP publish actual books.

That said, one of the awesome things about KP is the process of buying a product, reading/posting comments about it, and seeing corrections posted to an updated version. The addition of Kantal as the official name of Trade Ivinian is an excellent example. Given that every product by every gaming company usually has some minor errors (and occasionally some major ones), I'd rather buy a book published after the electronic version has gone through the audience review and editing process - say two to three months after the electronic release. (And yes, I'd buy both because lugging the laptop is easier than lugging the library on trips.) This also would open up the option of only printing products that reached a certain minimum level of popularity. For example, if the audience survey indicated that one in three customers are like me and would buy both products and the break-even threshold for printing is 100 copies, then only products that sold 300-350 electronic copies or more would be printed.

I would be extremely interested in printed versions of venarive and all other KP products if they were done.

I would definitely LOVE to have printed versions of all my Kelestia (and Fanon) stuff (I get CG in print anyway). But...

Venarive is definitely worth 35$ as an PDF. Actually to me its a steal :-)
But would I be able and willing to pay for a printed book? I think around 75$ is what I would pay without too much of a hassle for it (especially when I know whats in it), and I am not sure wether you get a decent print for that price, including taxes, shipping and the small amount of money that Kelestia needs to make. Actually I suspect that this priceband would only be viable at 1000+ copies, and that probably exceeds the current Hârnbase.

Actually a price calculation by Books on Demand (bod.de) gives a price of 120 EUR for 252 pages, hardback, full colour (normal paper, or 150 EUR for best quality paper), at 10% marge.

If we go for 80 color pages this reduces the price (hardback, best quality paper, 252 pages, A4) to 93 EUR.

That is near the price I would pay for the likes of Venarive. Actually I think it COULD be viable.

A cooperation with a BOD supplier might be the way to go. At 10% the income for Kelestia is certainly a bit lower then for the PDFs, and this price is already operating on the borderline for printed products.

Perhaps the odd test release might be of interest, eg for a Player Handbook, Kethira or just the "Reality article" from the HMG GM module.

RPGObjects has just starting publishing their .pdf offerings through an Amazon service called Book Surge. Their prices seem to run around $10 US for 100 pages. One 90-page gem that I already have the .pdf for was priced at $5 US, but that has to be a sale rather than a reflection of a low printing cost.

I have no idea what it might cost or what the minimum number of copies might be, but I would be very grateful if KP would look into it. I constantly find myself wishing for hardcopies of different KP products, mostly because I'm old-fashioned and hate being shackled to a computer in order to read a book...

After a slight shipping glitch, I received my first printed RPGObjects book today. It's a fairly typical softcover role-playing game book with 88 pages. (Apparently the Amazon printer uses eight-page sets instead of sixteen-page sets like the WotC printer.) The cover is full-color and the pages are black-and-white. All in all, it's a nice package. The cover price is $18.95 and the online price was $12.95. Therefore, the printing cost can't be that high . . . though I'm sure there are some minimum quantities involved.

Seems like a fairly inexpensive option . . . :-)

Currently the best option I found for printing Print on Demand Books is RPGNow followed by Lulu. I am a small publisher (Bat in the Attic Games) of material for older editions of D&D (and a harn fan as well).

Venarive at 250 pages will have a base cost of $31 for a full color hard back.

Lulu prices are $55 for a full color hardback. If you order in quantity of 100 to sell on your own you can go down to $44 per book.

On top of the base cost you tack on how much you make. For example selling Venarive for $45 on RPGNow will give you $14. Of that both Lulu and RPGNow take a percentage. Lulu has a better rate 20% vs RPG Now exclusive 30% or non-exclusive 35%.

If you go black and white (with color cover) you are looking at
$11 cost for 250 page on RPGNow.

Lulu doesn't have a 8.5 by 11 hardcover option. They have a softcover b/w 8.5 by 11 for $8 using publisher grade paper.

Lulu setup is pretty simple and had no problems there.

RPGNow setup is pretty picky but if you do it right the stuff looks great. There is extensive help on how to setup it.

Both go through Lightning Source. The difference as far as print quality is in the preprocessing they do on your file.

For color hardback RPGNow is the way to go despite the greater royalty they demand. In general RPGNow prices are lower than Lulu except for lulu's publisher grade.

You can make and order private copies on Lulu. Likewise on RPGNow if you are a publisher.

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/

Seriously, selling there gives more coverage. And the POD books (print on demand) are usually of higher quality then normal printrun books. They are often in normal pricerange and for us that live all over the world - the shippings is not high at all.
Also a very good place to sell pdf's

I have an interest in printed versions of long text items but cost of shipping may well make the cost prohibitive for me.