10pt or 12pt fonts?

[Moon_Goddess]

As a customer I prefer printed books to be in the 10pt - 8pt range. I like alot of text.

For online texts I almost have to have something like 12pt, reading from a CRT is just hard.

 

[HermioneO]

In hardcopy I prefer a 10-pt font if possible. On our most recent project there was so much input that, even after cutting a lot out, I had to make one large section (the NPC stat blocks) 9-point in order to bring the product in at the budgeted page count.

I usually print my PDFs on a laser, so again I am happy with 10 pt. I get unhappy when I get something I have paid a lot for, and find the text not only very large, but also spaced gappy. As a page layout person, I prefer to keep things tight but readable.

As far as artwork is concerned, I'm all for it so long as it actually contributes something -- tells a story or illustrates a point or helps to set the theme or mood of the product. I don't like shapeless blobs. My current favorite kind of illustration is street scenes, so I can get a feel for a culture. Character illustrations are also good, giving flavor and setting to a product. I like having something I can print out or copy and show to the players and say "This is the guy."

Art that is just there as filler, not really lending anything but borders to the page, is a waste of my money.

HermioneO

 

[ToddSchumacher]

Type size also varies from font style to font style. a 10 point Garamond can look vastly different from a 10 point Gill Sans. In the end...ital all about readability. If it hurts the eyes to read the type is too small (Or the leading (space between lines) is too small, or the line of type is too long to read)

A great deal factors contribute to good reading. Font size being only one. And these factors differ from print to screen. That's why eBook readers haven't been too popular. People don't want to read from a screen they want a book. And why there is a great deal being invested into new types of fonts and font technology being designed for ease of reading on the screen.

Any way I'm rambling

Todd

 

[tensen]

Font size

We released our latest PDFs as 12 point font, because many of the readers are reading it purely on the screen. We do have a smaller font size version for any who request it. But we never got any feedback or complaint from anyone so we haven't yet sent out any copies of it in the smaller format.

Since this is our PDF format, we aren't crammed for space.... and we aren't selling it as a page count to the user. So to Dark Quest it doesn't matter either way the font is required in the PDF form. Our print form of course will be in a smaller font size... large enough to read, but small enough to cram in the best goodies. Dark Quest current charges the same (hopefully low) rate for PDF whether it is a 24 page adventure, or a 64 page chock full of goodness expansion. We believe the different of expense on those products occurs when the end user decides to print it out, thats where the major difference in cost occurs.


You'll note that when Ambient sold their prestige classes, they were selling based on number of prestige classes in it, not on the number of pages per prestige class.

Now, I think the issue comes into play when a PDF publisher is using the page count as a selling point. I'd expect to hear the font type, style, and size, as well as columns and margins.