Thursday, October 30, 2014

Investing in the Future....

So I went and purchased a copy of Serif PagePlus 8 today. I had been hesitant to get any real desktop publishing software because I haven't worked with such software since I used Pagemaker to lay out my old music fanzine in the 1990's. Plus having someone else with more experience doing layout means the product looks better (like Halloween Horrors does; Walt did a fantastic job on it with the material I gave him to work with).

The main problem is with this being a niche hobby, I'm putting more into making a short pdf like Halloween Horrors than I'll ever likely make back. I'm not expecting to reap big profits. Hell, I'm not worried about breaking even just yet, as I know I still need to establish myself as a small press rpg publisher. I'm hoping to release a bunch of pdf's in the future, and if possible, make a compilation of those for Print on Demand release (at which point, I am likely going to have someone else do layout, as I'd rather pay someone I know can do a good job of that than try it myself and end up with something that isn't that good).

I started playing around with it, using my upcoming Adversaries Issue 0 as a testing ground. Took me a bit to get it where I wanted it, but I had some help from my friend Joshua Kubli, who wrote Invulnerable (another superhero rpg). The 30 or so minutes we spent going over my work via pm on FB was a big help. It's going to be a short pdf with just 2 featured villains, and as I'm using clip art for the characters, this is going to be Pay what you want pricing for it. Since I had previously written both characters backgrounds, as well as their stats for Supers!, the project is about 1/2 - 2/3 of the way done. Now to add in some adventure seeds, one of which may feature a 3rd villain.

I also went back and redid the cover, fixing some things I did half assed the first time I made it in PaintShop Pro. This version looks better, imho:

I'm looking to have this out before Thanksgiving. Maybe the end of next week if I get it finished sooner. But I'm happy with the progress I made today on this. That's about it for this blog post. Until next time!

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