HellHound said:
So, take a product that provides less revenue than a print product, and invest in having it laid out twice? We aren't only talking a time drain, but a significant monetary drain on the little income that the PDF market brings in.
Disclaimer first. I'm not a professional layout designer. I do my own layouts in Word for campaign handouts, campaign handbooks, and little things that never see the light of day. I've got epublishing dreams, but that's still all they are. I don't know how the big boys do it, or how professionals do it. All I know is what I see, and what I've done.
I'll bring this back around to topic by the end, I promise.
WotC, AEG, FF, Bastion, and just about every other "big boy" out there link product lines through design. Same borders, same background, same font, same everything but content. Doing so creates a visual link between products in the customer's mind, and (assuming they like the initial ones) creates a feeling of familiarity and comfort. Customers comfortable with your product are more likely to buy it. Doing so also spreads the cost (in money, time, or both) of the initial design over as many products as you produce -- at least 2, possibly more. Which makes more sense for the Arsenal line...to create from scratch a unique "look" for each book, or to create a single, identifiable look for the line? Which saves more money? Which goes further to creating a brand image that benefits EN Publishing? Ditto for Joe, if he writes Joe's Book of Divination (which I hope he does, JBoE was GREAT) and considers continuing the series past that (I want Joe's Book of Illusion, personally...).
Within MS Word, I can create styles that identify and control different types of text. The styles control font size, bold, italics, font, whether or not the text is listed in the TOC and index*. I can change -all- the text of a style by changing one portion of it. Headers too small? I highlight one header, increase the font size, and all the other headers in the same style increase. If I want to create a different style for a different product, I open a style box, make the changes I want, and save it under a different name. I can write a product in one format, and in 20 minutes, create a totally different look by switching fonts, font sizes, and underline effects.
Most of this doesn't matter, though. If you're doing the same product, only in portrait and landscape orientation, you want most things to look the same. You want the same font style, the same headers style, and the same borders...except in a b&w line art style, or something like 12% shaded grey, which you hopefully did at the same time you spent a few hours creating the colored version. The l-r borders need to be cut down, and the top & bottom borders need to be stretched, but all you're really doing is altering your initial layout, and once you do it, it'll be good for the rest of your line.
What really takes time is altering the breaks. You need to decide if you want one column (only scroll down, never scroll up to finish a sentence), 2 columns (more traditional), or 3 (closer in width to portrait-oriented double columns, and least likely to screw up tables. You want material that might be printed out by itself (classes, spells, items, feats) to either not cross page breaks, or to cross as few as possible. You might need to drop tables into a text box so they'll cross columns and allow text to flow around them. You'll have to reposition art, assuming you keep it in.
But that is not impossible. It's not even particularly hard. Art and tables will go slower, text will mostly be a matter of clicking along, adding section breaks (Insert:Break
age Break). And given the value you add to the product, it's my opinion that the time will be repaid.
This topic has gone around and around, and I've come to the conclusion, IMO, that there is no magic bullet. If there was one, Polyhedron would've been it. The only thing better would be to put a CLICKABLE link inside the magazine, and we're just not quite there yet.
The best way, the most reliable way, and very likely the only way to increase pdf awareness is the slow process of converting occasional buyers to frequent buyers, and one-time buyers into repeat customers. And the best way to do that is to increase the quality of pdfs, in ALL aspects, as high as we can, as far as we can, as best we can. Can we reach every and all freshmen publishers? No. But they get their ideas and their inspiration from looking at your work. If we set the bar higher, they'll jump to meet it. And while they're doing that, you'll be simultaneously winning more customers, raising profits, and freeing up more time to do what you really want to do...write.
Phew
Nell.
), but that won't increase the number of customers for the industry, but rather only for the publisher making these efforts (if these are worthwile is another issue...).
