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Old 10-19-2018, 09:17 AM   #71
Kromm
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Default Re: Why no new GURPS hardcovers?

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Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company View Post

Which leads me to wondering why we don't see most GURPS PDFs offered as POD editions [...] I do not doubt that there are sound reasons, but I'm curious as to what they are. Layouts not as optimized for printing as SJ Games would like?
That's the main reason why. When our PDFs are dumped into CreateSpace "as is," the printed results don't make us happy, so we've committed to reoptimizing them for Amazon's printing process rather than for reading on the screen. We could be lazy and say, "Eh, close enough is good enough," but we really do care about quality. And tweaking the PDFs to deliver that quality is a manual task; there's no automation for it. We have very few staff devoted to GURPS, which limits how much we can do, so we're prioritizing the big stuff that more readily pays for the labor involved.

The smaller reason is that we don't reprint anything without fixing errata. That, too, takes time. Most of the former Fourth Edition hardbacks were released in the first half of the period 2004-2018, so errors have been reported and accounted for. The huge number of PDFs we've published – particularly in the second half of that period – are still on their "shakedown cruise," really. We'd prefer to wait until the errata have been settled before offering them in print . . . and given the shortage of dedicated GURPS staff, we're not especially interested in or able to respond to a huge glut of errata reports intended to redress that.

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Originally Posted by Refplace View Post
I would think the licencing and royalties might make it more complicated.
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Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company View Post
Shouldn't be.
To be clear: There are no rights issues at all. The bottlenecks are PDF optimization and errata.
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Old 10-19-2018, 11:09 AM   #72
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Default Re: Why no new GURPS hardcovers?

Kromm, It sounds like you are directly saying that there is no path towards POD.

To paraphrase an old adage, "Perfect is the enemy of good." or alternatively, "Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without."
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Old 10-19-2018, 11:21 AM   #73
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Default Re: Why no new GURPS hardcovers?

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Kromm, It sounds like you are directly saying that there is no path towards POD.
We already offer POD – that's why this page exists and is increasingly populated every month. What I said directly was this (pared down to avoid quote spam):

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Originally Posted by Kromm View Post

[...] we're prioritizing the big stuff [...]

PDFs [...] are still on their "shakedown cruise" [so] We'd prefer to wait until the errata have been settled before offering them in print
Once the "big stuff" – meaning things printed previously as full-length books – is out of the way, the PDFs will be in our sights. And as we're releasing almost no new full-length printed books these days, we'll eventually run out of those, so this isn't some moving target.

In other words, the path isn't merely toward POD but already passing through the land of POD, and just happens to wind through a lot of longer, older stuff before it reaches the shorter, newer stuff.
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Old 10-19-2018, 11:32 AM   #74
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Default Re: Why no new GURPS hardcovers?

Kromm,

Is there a reason why hardcover POD is not being offered? Virtually everything that I would order POD, I would want in hardcover.
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Old 10-19-2018, 11:42 AM   #75
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Default Re: Why no new GURPS hardcovers?

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In other words, the path isn't merely toward POD but already passing through the land of POD, and just happens to wind through a lot of longer, older stuff before it reaches the shorter, newer stuff.
There's a long, long trail a-windin'
Into the land of my games
Where the PDFs are printed
And the quality's the same.

There's a long, long night of gaming
Until I get POD
Till the day SJ and Amazon
Offer dead-tree books by me.
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Old 10-19-2018, 11:54 AM   #76
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Default Re: Why no new GURPS hardcovers?

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Kromm,

Is there a reason why hardcover POD is not being offered? Virtually everything that I would order POD, I would want in hardcover.
My guess is that it's cost prohibitive. You can check this at virtually any vendor that offers POD (Lulu, DriveThruRPG, etc).

Being hardcover adds something like $10 to the cost of the book. Being hardcover and color (as the original books were) multiplies cost of the book by about x2.5, so the price goes from $30 for B&W Softcover to ~$40 for a B&W Hardcover to ~$75 for a Color hardcover.

That being said, the extra cost is largely born by the buyer not the seller, so the only downside to offering the option of Hardcover and Color Hardcover is having to set up the different versions of the file. This does cost time and effort which could be used to make different books available, so it becomes a matter of getting more 3e books (and maybe eventually 4e PDFs) available in PoD or getting already available 4e books in additional formats. Given that choice it's probably a better use of time to make more books available than fewer books in more formats.
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Old 10-19-2018, 12:09 PM   #77
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Default Re: Why no new GURPS hardcovers?

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Is there a reason why hardcover POD is not being offered?
I have no idea. I interact with the process only in the sense that I answer questions about errata, and then sum up the releases here. As I said upthread, print-buying and sales have nothing to do with me.
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Old 10-19-2018, 12:50 PM   #78
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Default Re: Why no new GURPS hardcovers?

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Going off-topic, but apparently the new Kindle Paperwhite is waterproof. No prize for guessing why that feature was added.
I take showers like someone has a stopwatch on me, no time for a sit down in the tub ;)

That said, I am not a pdf fan because to let a player read something, I have to hand over my tablet which has everything else on it.
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Old 10-19-2018, 02:47 PM   #79
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Default Re: Why no new GURPS hardcovers?

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Hi all!

So - Dare I say: "GURPS: Empire of the Petal Throne"?

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Say it a lot. But I won't hold my breath. I'll dream of it though.
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Old 10-20-2018, 07:30 AM   #80
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Default Re: Why no new GURPS hardcovers?

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Once the "big stuff" – meaning things printed previously as full-length books – is out of the way, the PDFs will be in our sights. And as we're releasing almost no new full-length printed books these days, we'll eventually run out of those, so this isn't some moving target.

In other words, the path isn't merely toward POD but already passing through the land of POD, and just happens to wind through a lot of longer, older stuff before it reaches the shorter, newer stuff.
This is terrific news for those of us who have been advocating for POD releases for GURPS for years—probably more than a decade now in my case, counting from when I bought my first (non-GURPS, obviously) gaming product from Lulu back in 2008. Why haven't I seen anything about this plan previous to this? Also, I understand (now) the desire to get the 3E stuff out of the way, but it would also be nice to be able to see Psionic Powers on the schedule.

Anyway, if anyone were to poll me on the question, my preferences are strongly toward softcover first of all, hardcovers an acceptable second, and PDFs a distant third. These are, as I recall them, the same answers that I gave back in 2003 or so.
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