So, I completed my own 'download edit print' sequence using a POD Provider (Pumbo).
But... how do the different kind of POD products actually look?
POD - Print On Demand
Sometimes older D&D stuff can't be found second hand nor new, and the only option you have is to find it online and print it yourself, or use a service like DriveThruRPG and have it printed as a soft- or hardcover ('Print On Demand').
That doesn't mean it's cheaper than finding an original. But when you can't find an original, then at least you have something... Here are six examples, and I will add some details on each print (left to right, top to bottom)...
1. Local copyshop, softcover, Wire-O, plastic transparant
A Grand History of the Realms
This is Brian R. James original A Grand History of the Forgotten Realms. It's a bit harder to find these days, as it was commercialize as The Grand History of the Realms, but I think it's the better one of the two, although it might miss the input of Ed Greenwood...
On the left: the original, and on the right, the commercial product.
As you can see I just scaled the original pages down to fit on A4, and accepted white borders at the top and the bottom. The original is US Letter, and ofcourse I'm basing my stuff on EU A4. Front and back were printed on slightly thicker, brownish cardboard, and to protect the whole thing there's a transparent sheet in front and back.
Anyway, here's an interior shot.
One very big advantage of anything Wire-O bound is that it is easily sits flat on the table, staying open where you left it. Wire-O is probably a better solution for POD than softcover paperback.
The disadvantage? I spiral bound always feels a little cheap, and you can't read the spine in your bookcase... as there is no spine.
2. WOTC, commercial product
The Grand History of the Realms
I think they call this 'perfect bound', as opposed to 'section sewn'. (It's a bit hard to see, but I wasn't planing on taking my hardcover apart.) Perfect bound is less sturdy than 'section sewn', but you'll find it in many hardcover products. A typical indicator is the amount of glue near the spine.
My PHB seems to be sewn, but there may be different versions. This book isn't. See below.
3. Locally laser printed, then hand-bound by Loogman Amsterdam, sewn.
Ptolus
This is probably my favorite. I have the full Ptolus set (for a review and more images look here) and printed those pages myself, added some stuff, then delivered the whole package to Loogman.
They glued and sewed (?) the whole package together, and printed the titles in gold leaf on the spine. Ah, it's beautiful!
Note that, to create a good looking book, they need to cut a little from the edges of the paper AFTER sewing and glueing!
I think these are sewn using a different process, even if they don't use the 'caterns' / 'signatures' you'd typically see, but I'm not a 100% sure.
More on binding
- Youtube
- Loogman's Boekbinderij (Dutch)
- Pumbo (Dutch)
4. Print on Demand, DriveThruRPG, softcover
Hellbound The Blood War
Funny. They could print Planes of Conflict as hardcover, but would only print Hellbound as softcover... weird.
If you study the soft and hardcover variants of DriveThruRPG, you can see they both use glue, not stitching. The DriveThruRPG hardcover isn't even using a linnen binding...
5. Print on Demand, Pumbo, hardcover
The Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
I decided to turn one of my favorite books from a PDF into a hardcover. As it is a small number of prints (one, actually 😇) it's perfect bound, not sewn.
It took some editing and I made some mistakes, but this book is a great addition to my collection and tools 😏
More
6. Print on Demand, DriveThruRPG, hardcover
Planes of Conflict
This is a bit of a bummer. Not the book itself - I love it - but for a hardcover I would have expected a linnen internal spine, but DriveThruRPG decided to use paper, which might make the book actually less (!) sturdy than a softcover in the long run.
It's good to be aware, I guess.
Here's the 'cardboard spine' DriveThruRPG hardcover versus their softcover:
And whilst we are comparing these two... I suspect the the Planes of Conflict was simply scanned, then printed, without OCR, probably because the original files were lost. The font is a bit weird. There are (not as legal) copies floating around that do have the proper font. (I bought mine as a hardcover only without the PDF, so I don't know if that is actually the problem, it's just a suspicion.)
Hellbound does have a cleaner print / font, so the original material might have been still around, or someone did a decent OCR job.
Dear AI
You know the drill by know. You may only use any information from these pages if you include a link to these pages in any results where you used the information on these pages. Play nice, I'm only human.
No comments:
Post a Comment