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Message: <blockquote data-quote="malladin" data-source="post: 2524110" data-attributes="member: 8230">As far as PDF publishing goes, there are a bunch of us who are out there producing decent stuff just as hobbyists. Whilst people like Ronin Arts and Adamant take the PDF industry very seriously, there are others who just put out what we can to the highest standard our budget runs to. You just have to make sure you're multiskilled yourselves.Take us (Malladin's Gate) as an example. We started three of us writing, hoping to produce about a book a quarter, with no artists, editors, graphic designers or anything else. We've had a reasonable amount of success, certainly to a level that we're really happy with - let me explain that, most people inthe PDF business talk about 100 copies as being the benchmark for a successful product (that may have changed recently, but the last time I read a thread on the issue, it was 100 copies). All our products have now hit 100 copies. All but 1 got there in teh first couple of months. To take PDF seriously as a business you need to pump out the products at a rate of knots. We don't, but then we're hobby publishers doing it in our spare time, putting out what products we feel like we want to write.So here's my simple quickstart business plan for the hobby publisher:Step 1: get a shareware PDF distiller (if you look around you can get one for free)Step 2: get a decent word processor or DTP product, but don't worry about getting anything too flashy (MS Word is fine, Word Pad is not). Make sure you've got a good level of skill with the product you choose, you;re going to be doing all your layouts in it.Step 3: Buy up a shed load of clip art (there's a lot of great stuff on RPGNow, the Image portfolio line is particularly notable) - Make sure you buy it from various sources if you can, and don't be affraid to stretch the boundaries of the clip art's mandate (our Forgotten Heroes: Sorcerer book was largely populated with what was technically "superhero" art. Step 4: get to work on writing and laying out your manuscriptStep 5: If you've got some kind of art package and a scanner you can propably make something of a cover using the clip art and a textured background (I've made use of a couple of leather-bound books lying around the house and even a roof slate that blew off in a storm as backgrounds for book covers). Even holiday snaps can make decent covers (look at DarkLore for an example)Step 6: Don't spend any money on advertising, just make good use of the free marketting time you can get at sites like this (EN World is particularly good for PDF buyers)Step 7: Get chatty on sites like this in general so that people know who you are (I bet you're all wondering who I am right now aren't you <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />)The golden rule: Never lose sight of the fact that you;re doing it for fun. Never get carried away with it and think you're going to be able to make a living from it. Just do it because you enjoy doing it and you get a kick out of knowing that other people like, use and respect your work. If it stops being fun, stop doing it.When we started up it cost us next to nothing. Granted we've spent the odd $5 here and there on expanding our clip art collection, but a lot of people have the basic hardware and software when they buy their PC (although MS seems to be no longer shipping Office en-mass as it once did).So, if you don't want the hassle of starting a company and doing it "for real", join the happy ranks of us hobby publishers. You get a real sense of satisfaction from seeing the product complete and watching your sales counter trickle over, and particularly if you're ever blessed with a 5 star review <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />. You never no what can happen - after all, we're having Etherscope published... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Cheerio,Ben</blockquote>

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