Zornhau Forums

I think we discussed this once upon a time, but no consensus was met. As the draft writing is coming closer to closed, I'm starting to chew on the format for the book itself.

http://www.strawpoll.me/12552422

Big Book Format
Pros

• The classic 8.5x10.75 is traditional and looks official and impressive.
• More page real estate gives you more room for sidebars and things.
• Charts can fit more on a single page.

Cons

• Bigger pages inevitably mean more wasted room per page.
• To make the most out of the real estate, you need to go double-column a lot of the time which sucks for mobile viewing.
• The size of the text relative to the page makes it suck further for reading on phones, tablets, or even some computer monitors.
• More expensive per page, even after the difference in word count per page possible is considered.
• Takes up more space at the table

6x9" Trade Hardcover
Pros

• Smaller footprint at the table, leaving you more room for drinks, snacks, dice, and play-aids.
• Smaller page means less wasted space.
• Smaller page size means we don't need to do double-columns except in very specific situations.
• Bigger text size relative to the page. Combined with the above, this makes it way easier to view on mobile devices, or even on computer screens as you can easily do a two-page spread on a monitor and read without zooming in.
• Easier to thumb through, and thus easier to look things up in.
• Cheaper per page, even after the size difference is accounted for, meaning the rulebook would be cheaper.
• Eligable for mass market distribution through Lulu, putting us on amazon, barnes & noble, etc.
• Easier conversion to ebook format for ereaders.

Cons

• Not a big fancy traditional book.
• Sidebars don't sidebar properly.
• Charts have less room to freely sprawl

I'm open to arguments for either side I haven't considered.

I'd never thought about it before, but the smaller format would make us look less D&D'ish, especially now that we have an ampersand in our name. That sort of makes me excited for no rational reason.

The only other thing I can add is that the big book can stay open on the table and won't force itself shut... while taking a massive amount of space. So, could be both a pro and a con, depending on your table real-estate and reference load.

I vote 6x9.

If i had to pick 1 to use for myself it would be 6x9

Because I love PDFs.
Even if I have a hardcopy, I still often use PDF on a tablet at the table simply because search functions and digital indexing/hyperlinking in a well made doc is amazing.
Plus, increasingly more games are run over skype, so screen friendly layouts without 2 columns might be preferred.
If sidebars don't work out, use footnotes instead!
Getting copies of the commonly used tables like the wound charts out of the book and onto the DM screen or a larger print version might be handy though.



But just to make your job as hard as possible, here's something else to consider.
Here's a really great article by Fred Hicks (Of evil hat productions) that you should definitely consider when thinking about whether you want to allocate resources to making S&S more print vs digital friendly.
http://www.deadlyfredly.com/2016/02/pdf-vs-physical/
It looks like you might only expect to make ~10% of kickstarter revenue from digital purchases and ~20% of ongoing revenue from digital download sites like drivethroughrpg. My instinct was that the majority of revenue was going to be from digital purchases because that was where i buy most of my RPGs, but apparently I got that completely wrong. So really, how the book opens on the table (as opposed to how it looks on the screen) should be the prime consideration for layout as it is where the majority of your revenue will come from. In that case, 8.5x11 is the clear winner because of the spacious room for tables, in my opinion.



If I'm allowed to be greedy, having completely different formatting in the book and the PDF would be ideal. The Nova Praxis video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biBxNCZ1d1s) is a really great example of a book designed as a digital product from the ground up. (kickstarter goal? ) If that were the plan, I would take a nice big 8.5x11 book and a 2:3 PDF (so you can fit 2 pages on a 4:3 ipad).

I have two books of these sorts of sizes: the big one is D&D 3.5e Player's Handbook and the small one is Mythender. If I compare my Player's Handbook to the Mythender book, I much prefer the smaller one. I'd like to see 6x9 more than the other option.

Since there are two options here I went with 6"x9". Agamemnon's and thirtythr33's bullets (mostly) cover my point of view. Even if my favorite book format for gaming seems to be the rare 7.5" x 9.25".

Question 1: Have you considered another size? 7"x10" for example is a good alternative to 6"x9" when you need extra space for sidebars or pull quotes.

Question 2: Why aim for Amazon/Barnes & Noble/etc? Unless you plan to release some S&S novels/comic books (or both) along with the Rulebook, it doesn't seem like a good marketing move. Not to mention that Lulu is rather pricey compared to the quality for a PoD service.

Again I find myself in agreement with Benedict. Tbh though, I'd probably buy both if you were to have two editions.

Benedict wrote:Since there are two options here I went with 6"x9". Agamemnon's and thirtythr33's bullets (mostly) cover my point of view. Even if my favorite book format for gaming seems to be the rare 7.5" x 9.25".

Question 1: Have you considered another size? 7"x10" for example is a good alternative to 6"x9" when you need extra space for sidebars or pull quotes.

The two most readily available sizes from the printing services I've gotten price quotes from have been 8.5x11 and 6x9. I haven't actually seen 7x10 available.

Benedict wrote:Question 2: Why aim for Amazon/Barnes & Noble/etc? Unless you plan to release some S&S novels/comic books (or both) along with the Rulebook, it doesn't seem like a good marketing move. Not to mention that Lulu is rather pricey compared to the quality for a PoD service.

It's not an aim so much as an option that one leaves open over the other, thus it was listed.

Agamemnon wrote:

Benedict wrote:Since there are two options here I went with 6"x9". Agamemnon's and thirtythr33's bullets (mostly) cover my point of view. Even if my favorite book format for gaming seems to be the rare 7.5" x 9.25".

Question 1: Have you considered another size? 7"x10" for example is a good alternative to 6"x9" when you need extra space for sidebars or pull quotes.

The two most readily available sizes from the printing services I've gotten price quotes from have been 8.5x11 and 6x9. I haven't actually seen 7x10 available.

Well, I don't know what printing services you have checked, to my knowledge Lulu for example offers only 6x9 and 8.25x10.5 for hardcovers. From these, only 6x9 B&W is eligible for retail distribution. And if you want 8.5x11 it must be a softcover.

With a little search I found these.

Let's assume that we are talking about a 100-page hardcover color print on 70gm white paper. The following prices are for a single unit and do not take into account taxes, shipping, volume discounts etc. Check the links to find what suits you best.

Lulu
http://www.lulu.com/create/books
6 x 9 : 23.15$
7 x 10 : not available
8.25 x 10.75 : 30.15$
8.5 x 11 : not available

Blurb
http://www.blurb.com/pricing#/tab/trade-books
6 x 9 : 32.59 $
7 x 10 : not available
8 x 10 : 34.63 $
8.5 x 11 : not available

DriveThru
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/pub_pod_cost.php#discounts
6 x 9 : 9.86 $ / 8.25 $ *
7 x 10 : 10.45 $ / 9.14 $ *
8.5 x 11 : 10.45 $ / 9.14 $ *
* First price is for US printing, second for UK printing.

Ingram
https://myaccount.ingramspark.com/Porta ... Calculator
6 x 9 : 8.60 $
7 x 10 : 9.14 $
8.5 x 11 : 9.14 $

Out of curiosity, is there an update on the Format question?

nemedeus wrote:Out of curiosity, is there an update on the Format question?

It seems pretty certain that we're going to go with some smaller format. Whether this turns out to be 6x9, digest, whatever is yet to be seen.

On the plus side, we've finally started hearing back from some of the artists we've asked after. On the not-quite-so-plus side, all the ones we've liked tend to be somewhat expensive. So in addition to needing to finish writing and editing and laying out the book, I need to scrape out some free time to get some extra freelance for money work in so I buy enough art to do the kickstarter so we can get an art budget.

Alas.