Gamebooks & Amazon Publishing What I Don't Like

[@wlg2677]

I have the Kindle version of some of them they are fun, certainly they have nostalgic value for older men like myself.

[@gamebookcollector]

Is that the Tin Man version of the books?

[@thuikl]

Amazon Australia all printed in Sydney are even worse than the ones you've shown. When they use the plain white printer paper for the book they will print and bind the book with the paper grain in the wrong direction, so the books end up wavy (do a google image search for 'wavy book due to paper grain in wrong direction' for some photos of what these look like). This is most visible on the larger format books like Fabled Lands and the larger size paperbacks. They probably don't do it all the time, but I'd say more than half the larger books I've gotten have this defect.

[@sambradley1256]

Never judge a book by its cover

[@Milianaire]

Cheap is usually the most important factor to big companies, I'm grateful for lone wolfs definitive hard books, they are worth every penny

[@craigcochrane2284]

Parchment coloured paper certainly suits better for any type of fantasy book, though arguably not sci-fi. Not entirely sure the glossy covers are vastly different from classic Fighting Fantasy covers although there is seemingly an additional layer of waxy glare that seems a bit distracting. Wondering if that is a 'silk' vs. 'gloss' distinction to use some printer parlance.

[@hariszark7396]

If the glossy cover is the only problem with a gamebook I say gloss all you want Amazon. Just lower the shipping cost because that's the real problem and reason No1 for me to not buy anything nowadays.

[@katieblackmore2004]

Thank you so much! I am 44, love anything like this. I am very lucky with my job, as i work from home, painting miniatures too order for several different table top gaming systems, so my head is always in ''that world''. When i was younger, i played the original Steve Jackson, Ian Livingstone books, and i think when it comes too those books, i'm backward haha, by that i mean, i seem to love all the ones people dislike and am not a fan of the ones people rave about. For me, Robot Commando, Freeway Fighter, Battleblade Warrior, Sky Lord, Starship traveller and Rebel Planet are amongst the most fun, but even though they are deemed not so great in the grand scheme of those particular books, you are still looking at spending upwards of £70 for good condition ones. Seen an absolute mint condition Sky Lord and it has bids of £104! Crazy. But i didn't even know these books existed, just looked on Amazon and there is so many. Great video and subbed.

[@gamebookcollector]

Thanks for watching and subscribing Katie. Starship Traveller and Rebel Planet are on my favourite lists too. Prices are still high for most VG condition books. In my last video I done a price overview of the most expensive titles. 👍

[@s10digital]

I think the amazon printed books are 'print on demand', unlike other publishers who print a batch of books at a time. This means the quality is never as good because the printing machines have to be able to print off many different titles in a day. And I think it is the author or publisher that chooses what type of cover and paper their 'amazon print on demand' has. I don't think there is much choice and the cheaper covers are the glossy bendy ones and the velvety ones cost a bit more, etc. It all depends how much the author wants to charge for each book and how much profit they want to make. Not 100% sure but that is what I reckon.

[@craigcochrane2284]

I think either you go the Print on Demand route and take what you are given or do a Kickstarter and then use the money to fund a decent print company like Mixam or similar.

[@jdmartinho]

I have a few of the books you showed and FWIW the author is in charge of choosing all of what you mentioned except the print quality. I agree that the print quality is not the best though. I see it mentioned in other places that Lulu is a bit better with their print quality. To clarify, I have a few books on Amazon and I can choose the cover style (glossy or matte), the paper style (white or cream), and everything else is designed by me or someone I hire. If the font is too big, or the margins are too small, it's on the author or designer really. I'm saying this because I have first-hand experience with the margins being too small after printing. What would be better for Amazon to improve its tools to preview and help with the design. Better printing quality of course wouldn't hurt too.

[@gamebookcollector]

Thanks for commenting João and very insightful background to the print process. It would be interesting to hear the thoughts of other authors on their publications after printing. If they were happy or not? Some of the books mentioned aren't cheap. Its only my thoughts on the matter. It's like a movie in a way... Poor production quality with a great design and story I suppose. Thats not taking anything away from the authors hard work and time of course. It's just the overall package; I feel needs to be complete.

[@jdmartinho]

@@gamebookcollector I agree it should be better. The matte covers take fingerprints very easily and the glossy ones I think you already covered them enough, I don't need to say more. In the RPG space, a lot of authors prefer to go with Lulu and DrivethruRPG for print quality, although it's hard to beat Amazon on the customer side (it's available in more countries and/or has lower costs for delivery). For me, as a customer in the EU, DTRPG is way too expensive most of the time while if you have the book on Amazon, I'll probably buy it if it looks interesting to me or has a nice review from people like you, which means a lot as a barrier so I make that same exercise as an author. If you're in the US (and DTRPG has a UK center I believe so you're probably good to go on that one too), you're spoiled for choice. But anyway, this is the larger RPG book ecosystem, my feel for gamebooks is that most are still available only on Amazon probably because they are either from larger publishers (Scholastic, etc) or they will be authors looking for the biggest market available. I wonder why are gamebook authors not exploring other PoD providers? DTRPG has tons of Tunnels & Trolls content which is an RPG with lots of solo adventures in paragraph format that are basically gamebooks (these predate FF so I imagine Jackson and Livingstone took inspiration from it too) and Lulu I've no idea about (an author that has books on both Amazon and Lulu is Andrea Sfiligoi, creator of Four Against Darkness, so those would probably be a fair comparison of both PoD providers).

[@gamebookcollector]

@@jdmartinho Thanks for reply João. Very interesting indeed and great comment. One of the most important aspects of RPG Books is that they're still very much alive, being played, enjoyed and published. 👍

[@shadowgaminguk8624]

Omg your grumpy over glossy book covers 😂😂 grow up

[@gamebookcollector]

I’m very grumpy over glossy covers. And will continue to be. Thanks for watching and commenting 👍