Help! I'm new to the e-publishing and pdf

[Beholder Bob]

In a nutshell

1) what are the prefered fonts - or fonts to stay away from? For example, I like Comic Sans MS, is it 'kosher' for use?

2) what is the standard font size?

3) What is a reasonable price to sell your work at? X/word, per page, per 'ounce of crunch'?

4) How active should I solicit d20 company sites looking to 'pimp my wares'?

I'll think of another 30 questions by the time these are answered. I'm not saying response is low, just I'm real new at this

Thanks, BB

 

[Wycen]

I'm not a publisher Beholder Bob, but I can provide links to some threads you may find useful.

publishing FAQ : http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=44413

landscape vs. portrait : http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=93071

new trend in pdf's : http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=92607

These will answer some of your questions but probably also bring up more.

 

[Beholder Bob]

Thank you for the quick reply Wycen, but I've already checked these out. They may have the answer I'm looking for, but I couldn't find it.

BB

 

[jmucchiello]

1) what are the prefered fonts - or fonts to stay away from? For example, I like Comic Sans MS, is it 'kosher' for use?

Unless you are doing some comic bookish or childish. Stay away. Oh, you mean legally. Hard to say. It's probably safe as it comes with Windows. Whoops, maybe not. Let's see what it says in the font viewer: "Copyright 1995 Microsoft Corporation, all rights reserved." So unless you have a license that says you can use it in a product, you can't.

2) what is the standard font size?

I like 9 but some people complain it is small. 10 is nice. Any larger than that I think the page is swimming in wasted whitespace.

3) What is a reasonable price to sell your work at? X/word, per page, per 'ounce of crunch'?

For PDF, good luck going over 2 cents a word, if you can find someone paying by the word. Most PDF writing rates involve percentages of sales, with a maximum equal to some number of cents per word. In print 3-5 cents is average for the previously published. Established writers can command higher pay.

4) How active should I solicit d20 company sites looking to 'pimp my wares'?

Go to their website and see if they have a policy about unsolicited material. If they do, follow it. If they don't, move on.

 

[Beholder Bob]

...It's probably safe as it comes with Windows. Whoops, maybe not. Let's see what it says in the font viewer: "Copyright 1995 Microsoft Corporation, all rights reserved." So unless you have a license that says you can use it in a product, you can't.


Aaaagh! My font preference is copyrighted! Nooooooo!

Those bastards, they killed my preference!

Thank you for the response, I'll post more questions after I'm done simmering (and get back to work on Monday),

BB

 

[Vrecknidj]

Bob,

Just go buy a bunch of companies' PDFs. Chalk it up as a business expense, and then take a bunch of lunch breaks to read all the stuff. After a few thousand pages you'll have a good idea of what is being charged and what quality goes with what price. You'll also have a feel for the font sizes, white space, and all that stuff.

I get that, in effect, you're hoping this leg-work has already been done by the folks on the messageboard, but if you're the one doing the selling, then your opinion of where your material will fall on the spectra will matter most.

1) what are the prefered fonts - or fonts to stay away from? For example, I like Comic Sans MS, is it 'kosher' for use?

2) what is the standard font size?

3) What is a reasonable price to sell your work at? X/word, per page, per 'ounce of crunch'?

4) How active should I solicit d20 company sites looking to 'pimp my wares'?

But, to answer your questions . . . .

1) I don't know what's okay and what's not. I'd go with Times New Roman because a bunch of other products either use it or their own.

2) I don't know that there's a standard size, but 8, 9 and 10 all seem to be somewhere within the "small enough" to "big enough" range for comparing readability to words-per-page. Well, that's for the Times New Roman that I mentioned above.

3) Compare what you're planning to do with what's out there. There are a lot of things in the "less than 10 pages" category that probably are selling at $3 or less. There are quite a few products in the "32 page" (or nearly so) category, and perhaps we're shooting between $5 and $10 based on quality of material and art and stuff. There are then the 64-page and the 100+-page categories (I'm making these up, don't assume I know what I'm talking about) that have appropriately higher prices.

4) The more you want to sell, the more you'll need to advertise, I'd wager (I've never taken a class in business, but it seems logical to me). So, 'pimp' away.

Dave

 

[Padril]

...It's probably safe as it comes with Windows. Whoops, maybe not. Let's see what it says in the font viewer: "Copyright 1995 Microsoft Corporation, all rights reserved." So unless you have a license that says you can use it in a product, you can't.


Aaaagh! My font preference is copyrighted! Nooooooo!

Those bastards, they killed my preference!
BB

AFAIK you can use Comic sans in a PDF. If Microsoft didn't want you to use it in PDFs there is a flag that can be set on the font file to prevent it being embedded.

Padril

 

[Cergorach]

1) what are the prefered fonts - or fonts to stay away from? For example, I like Comic Sans MS, is it 'kosher' for use?

2) what is the standard font size?

Font size really depends on the font used, some fonts are readable in 9-10 points, others are not.

Please keep in mind to check the lisence for each font, some do not allow you to embed the font in a pdf file, other don't allow commercial use without a seperate lisence (based on the price of the product and the amount expected to be sold, pterra is such a font).

 

[Fast Learner]

As Cergorach notes, font licensing is a whole heck of a lot more complicated than who holds the copyright -- the license spells it out. The fact that it has the no-embed flag or doesn't has absolutely nothing to do with it. For example a font could not have the flag and the license could specify that you can use it personally all you want, including, say, making intra-company PDFs, but you couldn't sell a PDF with the font embedded.

 

[DaveStebbins]

Have you checked out the ePublisher Guide?

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=1668

-Dave