Baalshamon
When I prepare a game I tend to print the house rules and details of the compaign in booklet format. With a large campaign like "Star Trek Late Night":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/star-trek-late-night I foresee needing to print several actual books. Does anyone know of companies that offer very small order book publishing?
I am also looking for a company that can print my drama decks for the palyers to use. The cheapest I have found so far will still run me close to $30 a deck for 162 plastic coated playing cards.
Last thing is dice. I need a company that can make me 6 sided dice numbered 0-5 without breaking the bank. I figure for our team we will need about 150 dice in three diffent collors. (100 black, 30 red, 20 green)
Comments
Don't forget Cafepress has a book option now. Not cheap, but since you may only want a couple that might be best. Also just printing and sending them to Kinkos to be spiral bound might be a great idea (spiral binding tends to be my preferred for gaming books as they lay flat).
Here's CafePress's info. Not cheapest, but since they'll print as few as one I'd set them as "the baseline.":http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/sell/books.aspx
As for dice, may want to contact koplow dice. Looks like they are "already set up for that.":http://www.amazon.com/16mm-Opaque-Numbered-White-Black/dp/B001EQYS48
Card printing machines are pretty heavily automated so it's better to cater to what the machines can do rather than try to pay for an oddball setup (read "even more expensive"). It may be cheaper to get three different decks x10 and have full 4 spare sets than trying to get six 162 card oddball decks made.
"Guild of Blades":http://www.gobretail.com seems to have both print on demand as well as cards. They'd probably be a good first contact as they might cut a deal for both jobs. (at 6 that's not very likely but you can always ask, the worst they can say is no)
* Deck A = your first 81 Cards x10 = $52.65
* Deck B = your second 81 Cards x10 = $52.65
* Total: $105.30 (which is $10.53 per deck, or you can consider that $17.55 for 6 decks with 4 "free" leftovers). So that's half to a third the number you quoted.
EDIT: Above numbers are for black and white decks. 4/4 full color is $60.75 per 81 card minimum 10 half-deck, so that's $121.50 for both (which is $20 for 6 decks plus 4 free leftovers).
The Book Patch seems to be able to handle your book "printing fairly cheap.":http://www.thebookpatch.com/
"Koplow":http://www.koplowgames.com/ seems to have six sided 0-5 dice as part of the math/education line. The tooling of the numbers is the expensive part, if you contact them directly I'm sure changing the color of the pad printing or dice plastic should be easy.
Part #05313 for a 100 count bag of white/black numbers.
Part #05312 for a 50 count bag ... just buy this and use miniature paint and paint the numbers red and green or contact them about doing a custom job with a different pad printing color.
The places I actually used back in my publishing days are either much higher than six as a minimum order and/or are overseas.
"Link to SuperiorPOD":http://superiorpod.onprintshop.com/p75/18-Card-Per-Sheet----Individual-Card-Design/product_info.html
18 Cards from SuperiorPOD x 6 decks = $9.24 x9 different decks to get 162 = $83.16 ($13.86 for each 162 card deck).