Hmmm. My pdfs come with a Search function, hyperlinks, and click-able bookmarks. Do your printed books? I think maybe it's what one is used to that defines what one finds easier or faster. Personally, I find finding stuff in a pdf way faster than in a printed book, to the point where I get the pdf for games I own in print specifically for the searching.

-clash

Still confused I’m afraid. One of my friends has a stack of them when he does trade shows. If I understand correctly, Lulu sells directly to the end-user, so how can publishers get their copies to sell? Do you produce 100 copies, order 20 or so for yourself and let customers buy the rest singly?

Ah ok.

You’re both right, sort of. I did say 500-1000, but as a noob publisher with a game no-one’s heard of, I wouldn’t dream of printing 1000 copies. No, what I meant was I assumed that POD would only be relatively cheap if you went with that kind of volume. I imagine if you printed 50 copies it would work out pretty pricey. I envisage an initial run of about 100-200 copies for my first game.

Yeah that's pretty much what I suspected. [No smiley for cynicism-pity]

That's also true. The big problem I envisage with the switchover from pre-printing to pre-funding is that, as is already happening with boardgames, companies won't re-print in a hurry. Example: I saw a board game in Essen last year and was considering buying it but was told that they'd 'only' printed 8'000 copies and they'd all been pre-sold. Furthermore, and this is the point, there were no plans for a re-print in the near future. Now you might say that if there was demand they'd re-print, but they presumably wouldn't do it on Kickstarter again. Anyway, I think this is a worrying trend.

Print for me. Books and dice. I have never even purchased an ebook or whatever you call.

Regards,
David R

OK - there are several different types of POD service. One is oriented to the end user. This is like Lulu. If a customer orders one, they print one off, bind it, and send it to the customer. That's it. You do not order any quantity up front. This process is more expensive, but requires no capital investment. It is possible to order in bulk, but the price breaks are not big. They have a sales, marketing and net distribution overhead the second type does not have.

The second type of POD service is oriented to the publisher. With this type of service, the publisher can order small batches - 20, 50, 100 - of a book, and they will print it up and ship it to wherever you warehouse. From that point on it's up to you to sell it. This process is cheaper, and more aligned to traditional distribution through stores. It's cheaper because they are wholesalers rather than retailers, and have much less overhead.

The fact that both types are referred to as POD makes things very confusing. I think of them as Retail POD and Wholesale POD to keep them separate.

-clash

No matter what the format-print or PDF-at our table we limit rules lawyering to 45 seconds. (So looking up rules, arguing rules, etc...) After 45 seconds the GM, usually me, makes a call and we run with it until the game is over with. Then if someone feels strongly enough about a call they look it up.

Smart rule! I'm happy to rules wrangle, but not during play.

-clash

It works pretty well for us. Everybody understands it, and we all know that post game we can rules lawyer our hearts out.

Lulu will allow you to order copies of your own book at a reduced rate, so you can bring them to trade shows or signings or whatever and sell them.




The advantage of POD over offset printing is that POD practical at very small quantities. For offset printing, you'd have to order 1000 or more in order to get a reasonable cost per copy. POD can work at very small quantities, even only a single copy.

The great thing about Lulu is that you don't have to pay anything to get a book printed for a customer. When someone orders a book, they pay the manufacturing cost. If the retail price you set is higher than this cost, you and Lulu split the profit.

So let's say that someone purchases a copy of Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road on Lulu for $14.99 (the retail price I set for the book). $7.20 goes to cover the manufacturing costs (And this is the price I would pay to have my book manufactured for my own use). $1.56 then goes to Lulu to cover their non-manufacturing costs and $6.23 goes to me.

As Clash pointed out, this is great for direct-to-customer sales, but not so great for distribution. In order to sell to a distributor, you must offer your game for 40% off the cover price (so they can sell it to retailers for 60%, and the retailers can sell it for retail), which is about $6.00 for Adventures in Oz. But if I go through Lulu and pay $7.20 per copy, that means I'm losing money.

So I find some other POD firm that will offer me a better manufacturing cost. It turns out CreateSpace offers the same sort of setup as Lulu (they print the book and give you a cut of each sale) but since they're an Amazon company, you get listed on Amazon.com for free (always nice). They also offer a better manufacturing cost ($2.48 for Adventures in Oz). So if I'm going to be selling into distribution, I'll be ordering form there.

Yep, my printed books do have a search function, it's called me flipping through the book. Fastest search function ever!

@Knarf: Thanks for that, that's extremely helpful. The problem with easy solutions to almost anything these days, from publishing to rock-climbing, is that not only is it possible to do what you want to do much more easily and quickly, it's also very easy to set up a company catering to those needs, so we now have a gazillion companies offering pod services* to choose from. But Lulu seems to be the current go-to small press printer for all the reasons you've stated above.

*Including presumably the optimal size and shape of pod for Body-snatching.