One Column vs Two Columns and other questions

[Michael Dean]

The 40 bucks covers bandwidth so its not just your 40 buck to what alot we already know. The bottom line is for 40 bucks you should be able to get on their site, despite their quality assurance program in some way, but lessons learned. Enough said.

I think I'm with Felon, here. Man, I have no idea what you're trying to say here. "...its not just your 40 buck to what alot we already know." Huh? I feel like I'm in that Twilight Zone episode where the whole english language becomes completely unrecognizable to the main character. Enough said, indeed.

Edited to put a smiley face in. I didn't want my post to sound too peevish. I just place a premium on clarity, especially from professional writers/publishers/editors.

 

[Janx]

I'm going to have to agree with both Phil, Felon and the English Majors.

An inability to express and present an idea clearly in an e-mail is a warning sign of other writings you may create. Perception is everything, and only you control it.

Graphically, I'll agree with Phil. Those covers don't look as good as they could. You're right that the B&W looks better. It's a good drawing from what I can tell. However, the title is hard to read, and this detracts from the cover. This is what a good graphic artist can take care of. They should be able to arrange things and choose text stylings that work together with the art.

For instance, look at most cereal boxes or comic book covers. The title is almost always big and outlined, seperating it from the graphic. This in turn, ensures that the art is not covered up by the title. In your case, slapping a big "TITLE" over the forest might detract from the forest. Not if the tree branches blurred and opened up, where the title would go, that would help create space around the title, bringing the eye to it. You could also try shrinking the art image down, and putting an interesting tiled border around it (like some of the old FR sourcebooks). Then the title could go above that, in the tile space, and the picture would remain intact.

When in doubt, copy the style of a successful product. Only deviate when you have experience.

 

[Psion]

Errhm, you can change the zoom level of the pdfs. Side-scrolling is never an issue in them.

And instead render the text too small to comfortably read.

Erm, this is not looking like a happy tradeoff.

 

[gizmo33]

I think I'm with Felon, here. Man, I have no idea what you're trying to say here. "...its not just your 40 buck to what alot we already know." Huh? I feel like I'm in that Twilight Zone episode where the whole english language becomes completely unrecognizable to the main character. Enough said, indeed.

I took the above paragraph, and using Babel Fish, translated it to German, and then back again to English. Here's what I got:

I think that I am with author, here. Man, I do not have an idea, which you try, here to say "... its not fair their dollar 40 too, which alot we know already." Huh? I believe, how I am in this dawn zone episode, in which the English language of the whole one the main letter completely unrecognizable become. Enough said, indeed.

I tried to do the same with one of Nightcrawler's posts, thinking that it would translate it back to English, but that didn't happen. I'm having a hard time reading my own writing now and my head hurts. I thought there'd be an applicaton to the d20 Modern game or a horror RPG. My God, I can't feel the top of my head. I'm going to go lay down.

 

[Mercule]

I use two-column layout for my own writings, that I never intend to be seen by anyone else or to be printed out.. That probably speaks well enough for my own preferrences.

 

[tarchon]

On an 8 1/2 inch page, I'd always prefer 1 column, but on paper 2 columns are acceptable. In a digital format, 2 columns are always extremely obnoxious.

 

[GMSkarka]

Its no secret that when you sign up, paying your 40 bucks to rpgnow they send you three pdfs and a bunch of other stuff like anime srd, I think a superhero srd guideline, then the pdf creator "the bible" it is supposded to be called and I can't think of the other two right now.

Um...no. You don't get any SRDs with the Vendor set-up fee at RPGNow. None. Not anime, not superhero.

You get:

• New Vendor Instructions
• RPGNow's Vendor Contract
• RPGNow's Vendor Help Guide
• RPGNow Product Standards Document
• The ePublisher Guide, which contains info about EVERY aspect of running an ePublishing business (the book sells for $19.95)
• The ePublisher D20/OGL Guide (which sells separately for $12.95, and is a guide to the legal ins and outs of the licenses.)
• The ePublisher PDF Creator (which sells separately for $16.95, and is a guide to the techical aspects of PDF creation)

I would recommend that you read those, cover to cover, and learn the material. Especially the Product Standards Document, the PDF Creator, and the ePublisher Guide.

The 40 bucks covers bandwidth so its not just your 40 buck to what alot we already know.

I have no idea what the second half of your sentence even means, so I'll just address what you said at the beginning: "The 40 bucks covers bandwidth"----

No, it doesn't. As stated in the description of the package, the 40 bucks is to cover the cost of adding new vendors to the site as well as the addition of a review process for products. It's not a bandwidth charge, is a service fee to cover the cost of staff who have to add the new publishers to the system, and who have to examine the publishers product to make sure it reaches minimum standards....which they obviously don't in this case.

The bottom line is for 40 bucks you should be able to get on their site, despite their quality assurance program in some way, but lessons learned. Enough said.

So anybody who can pay 40 bucks should be able to circumvent professional standards?

No. There are far too many well-meaning but incompetent amateurs in the PDF business already. There needs to be at least SOME quality control.



RPGNow puts the following quote on their vendor information page, and I really think that you and your company should strongly consider the question:

"Potential publishers need to examine their goals. Do they want to be published, or publishers? Being a publisher means running a business. It means creating a website, coordinating art, editing, and layout, marketing the product, keeping finances in order, and so on."

Because, from where I'm sitting, it looks like you guys didn't even look at the materials you were given, which makes me question whether or not you're ready to be publishers.

 

[HellHound]

The first product released by Natural 20 Press (now sold by E.N.Publishing) was Wild Spellcraft. It used a single-column design, and was the LAST product to use such a design to be released by Nat 20 / E.N.Publishing. A lot more people don't like that layout than do like it, so a vast majority of our products are published in 2-column portrait format.

Still get hate-mail about publishing products in landscape...

 

[GMSkarka]

Not to beat a dead horse, but something else has been bugging me:

I geuss you can only go so far against tradition, before tradition locks you out (Shakes head and mumbles the 1st amendment is not what it used to be).

The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America (since I assume that's what you're referring to):

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

How is this even remotely an issue about Congress making laws?

You're talking about a privately-owned store, choosing what products to carry. That's not a "Freedom of Speech" issue (since I'm assuming that's what you're on about), because nothing in there has anything to do with the government making laws to abridge any of your rights.



And, one last thing:

Now I having a hard time convincing the reviewer that we did switch up thumbnails.

[...]

The reviewer says they are both one and the same to him.

[...]

My question is how can I convince him nicely that they are different.

The problem is that they're not different. You really didn't address the problem -- All you did was change the artwork. The cover is still terribly amateurish. Read the section on "covers" in the Standards Guide.

 

[nightprowler4321]

I'm going to have to agree with both Phil, Felon and the English Majors.

An inability to express and present an idea clearly in an e-mail is a warning sign of other writings you may create. Perception is everything, and only you control it.

Graphically, I'll agree with Phil. Those covers don't look as good as they could. You're right that the B&W looks better. It's a good drawing from what I can tell. However, the title is hard to read, and this detracts from the cover. This is what a good graphic artist can take care of. They should be able to arrange things and choose text stylings that work together with the art.

This was brought up in an online meeting about the title. The black and white was the first thumbnail submitted and all the reply in the email was "Tweak your thumbnail and or your text and resubmit", that quote is almost verbatim. So we did and resubmitted the 2nd one, which still needs some tweaking but the reply was and I taking this directly from my email was
"What changes did you make? The cover appears the same and the text does as
well"

-sage
Now come on even I could tell the difference between the two, to me it almost sounded like the reviewer said, what another scene of a forest, flag it real quick. This is part caused my rowl the other day. We are working on our graphic title to make it stand out but not make it stand out so much it overpowers the scene.
I don't think the artwork is bad neither one, I prefer the black and white to the color but they didn't think so. I know they quality assurance but it peeves me when I scan through products, they may not be d20, but I see their artwork that looks like a 12 year old did it and then look at the date they were submitted to the company and come to find out it was last week. I had an local artist in my house the other day, I have never used him, he is not my style and he was shaking his head at some of the artwork, He said the samething that our artwork, the title was not up to par and looked rushedbut at least the artwork of ours was 10 times better then pointing to a puke green cover that you couldn't tell what it looked like-I mean you had to really squint and another black and white that looked that looked like one of those pictures you get when your at the county fair. Geuss some people get lucky.
When the thumbnail can only be 200 pixels wide, it doesn't give you alot of room to work with. Personally as much money as rpgnow makes, I think they ought to increase their pixel width some, an 264 x 264 or 300 x 300 wouldn't hurt their storage space and then maybe none of us would be here messageboarding, but what do I know. So we are working on that aspect of it.