Self publishing

[rswanson]

All,

I'm looking to self-publish a role playing game book. Anyone got any experience here? Specifically looking for feedback on epublishing through outlets like CafePress or Lulu.com. Thanks.

[artkitty]

Check out the forums at rpg.net
They have a sub-forum dedicated to that particular topic and the folks there are very helpful :3

[Mr. Pale]

There are numerous companies out there that will do small print runs, a simple google search will find many of them, however, suggest a lot of research in this area. You'd be amazed how much a difference in pennies between publishers adds up.

I don't think cafepress does books, but even if they did the percentage of profits you would get from them would be terrible at best. Here's a great article link to merchendizing on the web. It's about web comics, but it's pretty applicable to what your doing as well. http://www.inktank.com/coach/articles/article-mugs01.cfm

I don't want to discourage you or anything, but just from personal experience, unless you have a huge amount of investment capital, and I mean huge!, don't quit your day job. Doing this is very expensive to start, takes a long time to build up a fan base, and you won't see a profit for quite a long time if at all.

Hope this helps

[rswanson]

Thanks Carter. We aren't doing it for (much) profit. Unfortunately, my day job is in no danger of being obsolete. I like your site!

Oh, and artkitty, thanks for the suggestion on RPGnet. Great resource.