Publishing my D20 stuff questions

[Ace]

I figured I would hit this forum with my questions

I am just about finished with some D20 products I am working on and am in dire need of "how to get published" information

The items I have are quite close to ready and rather substantial. I think they are publication grade or closer but I'm not too familiar with the current D20 market

Can anyone give me hints on either PDF publishing or approaching existing publishers

The items are YAGW (Yet another game world) that is very fleshed out. I am leery of this I think the market may be overloaded but you never know and there is a lot done.

A compilation of spells and magic items-- just more cool cruchy bits basically. I may go with D20 Weekly or Dragon for this

A "realistic" D20 game designed to plug into any stuff out there. Its more than just rules or a tool set, it includes a horde of new archetype PRC's and a few new classes. It is pretty well done except for Flavor Text and some of the PRC's. I like this best of my work as it allows those who want to to plug in stuff and use it in a "less heroic" game

There are a few other things-- A cool NPC collection and more that are not quite ready.

What i need to know is how do I go about urm peddling my wares as it were.

Some hints on PDF publishing would be keen too.

Thanks

 

[cthuluftaghn]

Last night I discovered that Adobe has an online .pdf publishing service at https://createpdf.adobe.com/index.pl/2462633848.0821?BP=IE

You first 5 pdf's are free, so it's great for a trial run. I'm pleased with how mine turned out.

 

[Maraxle]

Check out pdf995.com.

 

[jmucchiello]

Can anyone give me hints on either PDF publishing or approaching existing publishers

Go to their websites and look for submission guidelines. However....

The items are YAGW (Yet another game world) that is very fleshed out. I am leery of this I think the market may be overloaded but you never know and there is a lot done.

Very few companies are going to buy a game world and just publish it since no one is going to buy your game world unless you seem like you are going to support it.

A compilation of spells and magic items-- just more cool cruchy bits basically. I may go with D20 Weekly or Dragon for this

Sounds awfully short. Depending on the themes there may be publishers looking to publish those themes but again you would have to look at their websites to see what they are up to.

A "realistic" D20 game designed to plug into any stuff out there. Its more than just rules or a tool set, it includes a horde of new archetype PRC's and a few new classes. It is pretty well done except for Flavor Text and some of the PRC's. I like this best of my work as it allows those who want to to plug in stuff and use it in a "less heroic" game

As with the game world above, the company would have to love this idea and make a real market push for it so that people would be willing to buy into it.

Some hints on PDF publishing would be keen too.

Going your own way is one way to show that you are behind your product. You should search through this forum since "how do I make a PDF" has probably come up many times before.

In summary, it will take some work on your part. (Or some company, like mine, will just post and say tell us what you've got and we'll talk. I would have emailed you if your profile allowed it. I'm mildly interested in your unfinished NPCs....)

Joe Mucchiello
Throwing Dice Games
http://www.throwingdice.com

 

[Darrin Drader]

If you've got a layout put together and can give me the file you want converted to pdf, I could be persuaded to pdf them for you, or others. I remember when I first decided to get into the pdf market, the most daunting thing was figuring out how to generate the pdf. I noticed that a few minor things didn't convert quite right when creating the files through the Adobe site. Shortly thereafter I invested in Adobe Acrobat and everything went well after that. If you're interested, just shoot me an email at darrin_drader@hotmail.com.

 

[Maraxle]

The quickest/cheapest option for creating PDFs is pdf995.com. It's a free utility that looks like a printer to your system, so you just select the print option in whatever program you're using and it can print to PDF.

Adobe Acrobat probably has more features, but pdf995 is FREE (or $10 if you can't stand the ad) while Acrobat will run you a couple hundred bucks.

 

[jmucchiello]

If you've got a layout put together and can give me the file you want converted to pdf, I could be persuaded to pdf them for you, or others. I remember when I first decided to get into the pdf market,....

Didn't you just retire? LOL Can't get away from it, eh?

Another near-free PDF mechanism is Aladdin Ghostscript or Gnu Ghostscript. This requires a bit of work on your part including some knowledge of the DOS command line but it isn't very hard.

Joe Mucchiello
Throwing Dice Games
http://www.throwingdice.com

 

[Grinning Loony]

From what I understand, you can publish anything (in PDF) on http://www.rpgnow.com. They take 20% of sales, but other than that it's all you. Check out their guidelines for more info.

-Luke

 

[Malessa]

My pdf dilemma...

Okay... I tried several things, and this still isn't working...

I have an 8 1/2 x 11 background image for my document with the fancy border and textured paper look, etc. How do I ditch the "unprintable area" when I .pdf my document so the image goes all the way to the edge?

I've got that PDF995, and an MS Publisher document. Help! I'm getting frustrated!!! Do I need a new Apple print driver? What? How? grrrrr!!!!

 

[HellHound]

I'm not a know-it-all in this department (although I am a PDF publisher), but the first thing they say at the Print Shop I go to is that MS Publisher is NOT a real layout program. They wholeheartedly recommend the use of Quark XPress or Adobe PageMaker or InDesign.

Personally, I use Quark XPress 5.0 and Adobe Acrobat 5.0 to get the full effect I want in my products (just look at my first release to see what happened for a release using other "publishing" software.