I am getting ready to publish a game (a miniatures game, not an RPG) and I am looking at selecting a POD publisher to use.  The final product will be approximately 120 pages, full color cover, b/w interior.

I thought that I'd ask the small press publishers here who they use and what their experiences have been.  Right now I am leaning towards using Create Space or Lulu.  Any suggestions, experiences, pitfalls, etc?

Any help would be much appreciated!


TGA

I used Lulu to print the Third Kingdom PHB and was pretty impressed.  Quick turn-around, quality product.  My specs were the same as yours although I had 200 pages and no art (it was a rough draft print).

Todd

I am personally looking into Amazon's Createspace, but I have not heard of anyone using it for games.

You may find this discussion interesting:
http://forums.palladium-megaverse.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=104876

Quote from: Spinachcat;310561I am personally looking into Amazon's Createspace, but I have not heard of anyone using it for games.

You may find this discussion interesting:
http://forums.palladium-megaverse.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=104876

A potentially tempting offer, and certainly durability wise, Palladium's books have traditionally held up like tanks.

One would hope however, that the limited nature of their layouts are not in part a factor of their chosen printer.

EDIT:  The other flaw in his point is that 1500 copies at $2 is a far greater risk and initial chunk of cash than POD offers.  

Lulu requires zero investment up front, zilch.

Thanks for the feedback, guys.  I am leaning towards Create Space right now, but I am crunching the numbers to see which one will be a better deal.  Being automatically listed on Amazon is a nice perk to Create Space - realistically it there may be only a small chance of it generating sales, but any exposure is good.

@thirdkingdom - I am assuming that you used a traditional printer for the final production run? Have you ever used POD for limited runs? I am also glad to hear that Lulu's quality was good.  One of my concerns with POD is obviously the issue of quality.

@Spinachcat - thanks for the link.  Kevin is right about the economies of scale on traditional printing, but we are looking at a pretty limited initial run, so POD makes sense right now.  My wish is that it will stop making sense soon!  

@J Arcane - you hit the nail on the head.  For us the advantages of POD right now are many.  Small printing runs, no overhead cost, and no large stock of books that have to be stored, shipped, etc.


TGA

Some further observations:

Lulu's cost-per-book may be more than Amazon's, but Amazon takes a massive cut of the profits, and Amazon's cut is taken off the final price of the book as opposed to a percentage of the profit margin.  The result is a potentially pretty extreme difference in overall profit.

Further, Lulu ALSO gives you the option to list your book through Amazon, as well as the ISBN for free (both of these used to be additional cost).  Ironically, this is in contrast to Amazon's CreateSpace, which DOUBLES their cut of the book price if you want the book listed on Amazon instead of just the Createspace store, from 20% to 40%.

This to me is pretty extreme, and while there are certainly some things I'm not happy with at Lulu either (their shipping rates are obscene for example), so far it looks to me like unless you've got $3,000 or more to throw about willy nilly to the guys at Palladium, it seems like your best bet from a profit perspective.

Quote from: J Arcane;310742Further, Lulu ALSO gives you the option to list your book through Amazon, as well as the ISBN for free (both of these used to be additional cost).  Ironically, this is in contrast to Amazon's CreateSpace, which DOUBLES their cut of the book price if you want the book listed on Amazon instead of just the Createspace store, from 20% to 40%.

All this is true, though it should be noted that neither Lulu nor Amazon give you a "real" ISBN for free. They give you an ISBN out of their pool of pre-registered numbers and recycle them as they see fit. The net result is that you do not get any of the (used to be direct, but now fringe) benefits of a real ISBN: Books in Print entry that's correct, and so on. All you really get is a UPC for vendors to correlate scan and inventory and price.

That probably doesn't matter to most people. But potential author/publishers should be aware of what they are and aren't getting.

Quote from: Halfjack;310774All this is true, though it should be noted that neither Lulu nor Amazon give you a "real" ISBN for free. They give you an ISBN out of their pool of pre-registered numbers and recycle them as they see fit. The net result is that you do not get any of the (used to be direct, but now fringe) benefits of a real ISBN: Books in Print entry that's correct, and so on. All you really get is a UPC for vendors to correlate scan and inventory and price.

That probably doesn't matter to most people. But potential author/publishers should be aware of what they are and aren't getting.

I'd have to dig further, but in the olden days, Lulu did offer a proper ISBN number for an additional charge.  It was sort of expensive, several hundred bucks IIRC, but it got you a real one.

Quote from: J Arcane;310778I'd have to dig further, but in the olden days, Lulu did offer a proper ISBN number for an additional charge.  It was sort of expensive, several hundred bucks IIRC, but it got you a real one.

Yeah, several hundred dollars is de rigeur for a real ISBN in the US of A. But if it's free (again, in the US -- ISBNs are free in most other countries, handled by a government registrar), it's not the same thing.

Quote from: Halfjack;310779Yeah, several hundred dollars is de rigeur for a real ISBN in the US of A. But if it's free (again, in the US -- ISBNs are free in most other countries, handled by a government registrar), it's not the same thing.

So what you're saying is, I should get my book published in Europe somewhere.  

Quote from: J Arcane;310780So what you're saying is, I should get my book published in Europe somewhere.  

Or Canada.

But yeah, it's an ROI calculation US publishers have to do that most others don't. These days an entry in Books in Print isn't nearly as powerful as being indexed by Amazon. It just lends an air of legitimacy I guess. Mostly air, mind you.

Quote from: Halfjack;310781Or Canada.

But yeah, it's an ROI calculation US publishers have to do that most others don't. These days an entry in Books in Print isn't nearly as powerful as being indexed by Amazon. It just lends an air of legitimacy I guess. Mostly air, mind you.

See, in my considerations my biggest concern was always whether someone could just go down to a bookshop, give them the name or the ISBN, and they'd be able to order it.  Any B&N or Waldenbooks can get any book you like if you're willing to wait, as long as it's listed with the proper channels.  

Ironically however, this means fuck all for actual hobby/game stores, because most of them don't go through normal book channels anyway, they have their own fuckass distributors, so you're still pretty much locked out of that scene as a POD unless the individual shop decides to order a batch off Lulu or wherever, at least that's how it seemed to me.  Making the online version discounted or offering some kind of store discount, so as to all them some margin of profit, would seem the way to encourage that.

Quote from: J Arcane;310782Ironically however, this means fuck all for actual hobby/game stores, because most of them don't go through normal book channels anyway, they have their own fuckass distributors, so you're still pretty much locked out of that scene as a POD unless the individual shop decides to order a batch off Lulu or wherever, at least that's how it seemed to me.  Making the online version discounted or offering some kind of store discount, so as to all them some margin of profit, would seem the way to encourage that.

Yeah, you can get around some of that by listing with IPR (and I hope there are others, but I only know IPR), because they get on some of the same distributors' lists that comics do, and that seems to be more how game stores want to operate. But even that's a crap shoot, depending hugely on the game store and customer demand. And it will eat deeply into your margins.