Cafe Press has gotten into the print-on-demand game. That means, like their other products (t-shirts, mugs, mouse pads, etc.), you submit your work to them and they create as many of the product as desired/ordered. Also like their other products, there's a base price that each book must be, but you can charge anywhere from that price on up.
I checked out their Cafe Press Publishing "Learning Center" last night. You submit a PDF for the (black & white) interiors and JPG or PNG for the (full color) cover and give them some time to do their magic. You don't seem to create an accessible-from-the-web "store" like you do with other Cafe Press products, but they still somehow handle the fulfillment end of things.
I ran some numbers, and here's what I got:
| Cafe Publishing Guesswork | |
| Book Type Example | Base Price |
| 24-page comic | $5.20 |
| 96-page RPG supplement/module | $9.88 |
| 296-page RPG player rulebook | $15.88 |
| 360-page paperback book | $17.80 |
| 12-page 8.5x11 flip calendar | $5.72 |
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Jonathan commented at 1:25 AM on July 18, 2003:
Ah! You're still the best, despite the distance. I was wondering what the real costs of that were, but didn't want to tax my brain. And I go here, and viola! you've crunched the numbers. Thanks!
Okay, so the comic book is too much (it'd be black and white, right, except for the cover), but the 300 page RPG rule book is down right cheap! The paperback book is about 2.5x more expensive than a regular paperback book, but it is on demand. Not too shabby.
Hurm Partners