Digest-sized books?

General topics, including off-topic discussion, goes here.
User avatar
bugleyman
Posts: 65
Joined: Mon Jun 05, 2017 11:31 am
Location: Tucson, AZ

Digest-sized books?

Post by bugleyman »

Does anyone know of a vendor that offers digest-sized BFRPG books, or if there is any possibility of getting an existing POD vendor to do so?
"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."

-- The Dalai Lama
User avatar
Solomoriah
Site Admin
Posts: 12453
Joined: Thu Nov 13, 2008 8:15 pm
Location: LaBelle, Missouri
Contact:

Re: Digest-sized books?

Post by Solomoriah »

BFRPG books are available on the sites where I have put them, and nowhere else.

There is not a standard digest-sized version of the game, so there is no site selling them. I do understand that such a PDF exists, but I have not evaluated it for publication.

The main reason is cost. See, small books are MORE expensive than big ones. The per-unit cost and the per-page cost are very close to the big books, but you need more pages, making the book overall more expensive. I'm not sure enough would sell to be worth the monumental effort to get the format redone correctly.
My personal site: www.gonnerman.org
User avatar
bugleyman
Posts: 65
Joined: Mon Jun 05, 2017 11:31 am
Location: Tucson, AZ

Re: Digest-sized books?

Post by bugleyman »

I see. I was thinking of the current books printed smaller, with no formatting changes (which would mean page count would remain unchanged).

At no point did I intend to challenge your choices with respect to your game. To be honest, I found your reply oddly (and needlessly) combative in tone, but maybe that's just me.
Last edited by bugleyman on Mon Jun 19, 2017 5:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."

-- The Dalai Lama
User avatar
Solomoriah
Site Admin
Posts: 12453
Joined: Thu Nov 13, 2008 8:15 pm
Location: LaBelle, Missouri
Contact:

Re: Digest-sized books?

Post by Solomoriah »

Sorry if I sounded cross. It's just that you made the comment about "a vendor that offers digest-sized BFRPG books" as if anyone can do it. I sell through CreateSpace.com and Lulu.com (and through Amazon.com because of CreateSpace) but for all intents and purposes I am the vendor.

How big, exactly, is "digest sized" from your perspective? I think 5" x 8" is the smallest I can get a book done through both POD vendors I deal with.

If I simply took the current layout and scaled it down, the fonts would be about 5 points; neither Lulu nor CreateSpace likes fonts less than about 7 points in size. The layout needs to be redone as a single column, and the wide tables (Attack Bonus, Turn Undead, Thief Abilities, and Treasure all come to mind) would have to be redone somehow to make them fit. Possibly turning them sideways would work.

The key thing is, it is a non-trivial job. Formatting a book of this size and complexity is a pain in the butt, to be honest, and doing it again for a different layout is prohibitive to me. Remember, I make almost nothing from this. If I personally wanted a digest format, that would be enough to make me do the job, but I really don't see the need personally. In an Open Source project, things get done because someone is willing to do them, not because someone asks for them.

In other words, if you want to create such a PDF, I'm more than willing to work with you. R107 seems stable for the moment... if you want to take it, remove the columnar sections, and hammer out the layout and flow issues yourself, I am more than willing to put the result into print. I'll even build the covers myself, and I'll make myself available to give you guidance on any features of LibreOffice you might not be familiar with (like how to get rid of the columnar sections, for instance).
My personal site: www.gonnerman.org
User avatar
chiisu81
Posts: 4106
Joined: Fri Aug 19, 2011 3:05 pm

Re: Digest-sized books?

Post by chiisu81 »

I created the digest-sized Core Rules a few years back as I wanted to have something that would be easier to read on a smaller tablet or phone. As I stated then, if someone wanted to use that to make a print option or such, have at it.

I used to care about having a digest-sized printing for RPGs, but these days I'm fine with letter-sized. And for BFRPG, the printed books are already so affordable there's really not much to gain trying to make it smaller.

My other reasoning is that it's time and energy we could be putting into new BFRPG things. We've still got CS1 and CS2, AA2, Strongholds of Sorcery, and even more that deserve more attention and help from others.
User avatar
chiisu81
Posts: 4106
Joined: Fri Aug 19, 2011 3:05 pm

Re: Digest-sized books?

Post by chiisu81 »

bugleyman wrote:I see. I was thinking of the current books printed smaller, with no formatting changes (which would mean page count would remain unchanged).
That's pretty small print. :shock: I know my eyes couldn't take that.
User avatar
bugleyman
Posts: 65
Joined: Mon Jun 05, 2017 11:31 am
Location: Tucson, AZ

Re: Digest-sized books?

Post by bugleyman »

Solomoriah wrote:Sorry if I sounded cross. It's just that you made the comment about "a vendor that offers digest-sized BFRPG books" as if anyone can do it. I sell through CreateSpace.com and Lulu.com (and through Amazon.com because of CreateSpace) but for all intents and purposes I am the vendor.
No worries. I just wasn't sure I knew of all the POD providers with whom you work, so I didn't want to try to list them. "Vendors" was a poor choice of words on my part. It certainly didn't intend to question your ownership of the rules or your right to do with them as you please. ;-)

To be absolutely clear, I greatly appreciate your generosity in sharing your game.

P.S. Any chance I can get you to wipe out the above posts, which I created with the avatar "Aaron"? Apologies for the confusion. :D
Last edited by bugleyman on Mon Jun 19, 2017 7:53 pm, edited 4 times in total.
"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."

-- The Dalai Lama
User avatar
bugleyman
Posts: 65
Joined: Mon Jun 05, 2017 11:31 am
Location: Tucson, AZ

Re: Digest-sized books?

Post by bugleyman »

chiisu81 wrote:I created the digest-sized Core Rules a few years back as I wanted to have something that would be easier to read on a smaller tablet or phone. As I stated then, if someone wanted to use that to make a print option or such, have at it.
Thanks!
chiisu81 wrote:II used to care about having a digest-sized printing for RPGs, but these days I'm fine with letter-sized. And for BFRPG, the printed books are already so affordable there's really not much to gain trying to make it smaller.
Good point...
chiisu81 wrote:IMy other reasoning is that it's time and energy we could be putting into new BFRPG things. We've still got CS1 and CS2, AA2, Strongholds of Sorcery, and even more that deserve more attention and help from others.
What, specifically, can I do to help? I've done some technical writing in the past, and I've considered jumping in, but I'm not sure exactly how/where to get started.
"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."

-- The Dalai Lama
User avatar
Hywaywolf
Posts: 5271
Joined: Fri Mar 13, 2009 11:30 pm
Location: Wilmington, NC

Re: Digest-sized books?

Post by Hywaywolf »

Chris, you just can't win lol. After my first reading of your reply earlier today I thought, "well, Chris is being much more agreeable, forthcoming, and informative than the last time someone asked a production question." and thought, further discussion should go much smoother this time. But perhaps I am just too used to your style and fail to see anything disagreeable in it anymore.
User avatar
chiisu81
Posts: 4106
Joined: Fri Aug 19, 2011 3:05 pm

Re: Digest-sized books?

Post by chiisu81 »

bugleyman wrote:What, specifically, can I do to help? I've done some technical writing in the past, and I've considered jumping in, but I'm not sure exactly how/where to get started.
Hmm, well there are many different areas that are possible to jump in and help: content creation, layout, editing and proofing, and artwork. Some of these can overlap, or someone can be good or even great at more than one thing. I personally started out just pointing out mis-spellings, grammar corrections, and small suggestions for corrections and improvements. Later on, as I learned more about working with LibreOffice and reading more and more material, I became more comfortable editing the ODTs myself and either posting or at least sending to Solo to get his feedback.

It really depends on what you think you'd be best at contributing, or maybe something you may not be very good at now, but want to improve on. We welcome contributions in all areas, and overall this is one of the friendliest online communities I've ever been a part of, so you'll get plenty of encouragement, support, and assistance, as long as you put in equal effort yourself to see it through.

If you want to dive in, download and install LibreOffice, get the fonts by PM'ing me or Solo, and then start with an existing ODT and/or the template linked in my sig. See how LO works and how our ODTs are put together. Start with basic text editing, paragraph styling, and then move on to more layout and styling work, starting to use track changes, things like that.

Ultimately, I like to see contributed new material, whether it's new rules or class options, an adventure, new monster or magic items, or artwork.
Locked

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Bing [Bot] and 25 guests