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From:
KevinSours
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Posted on:
2/1/2003 4:49 am
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To:
ALL
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While I like hardcovers, something has always bugged me a little about the hardcover for Blood & Sand. I never said anything before because I really can't put my finger on it. I still can't. But today I saw a copy of "Will to Power" at my FLGS. It is about the same size as Blood & Sand (actually a few pages shorter), hardcover, and it's a beautiful book. I can't articulate the difference, but if future AM releases look like that I will be pleased. Kevin
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From:
John Nephew
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Posted on:
2/1/2003 11:15 am
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To:
KevinSours
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Thanks for the tip. I'll keep an eye open for that book, and take a close look at it. Something I think we'll be doing on 128 pp books is using a thicker paper than Blood and Sand. Some books too may wind up being thicker. (Land of Fire and Ice is 144 pages, but the same price as Blood and Sand.)
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From:
SirParn
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Posted on:
2/2/2003 11:16 am
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To:
John Nephew
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I was wondering did Blood & Sand only get released in a hard cover format, as all the copies i have seen have been hard covers, and too date i am yet to see anywhere a copy in the normal soft cover format? Many Thanks
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From:
John Nephew
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Posted on:
2/2/2003 12:49 pm
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To:
SirParn
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Yep, only hardcover.
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From:
SirParn
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Posted on:
2/2/2003 5:38 pm
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To:
John Nephew
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Is this the new way that Atlas Games is now releasing the Ars Magica line, and possibly, your other titles, which i can't comment on seeing how i don't collect them, or is this a once off or is Atlas Games planning for a soft cover version of the book sometime down the line for Blood & Sand? Seeing how 99.99% of all my Ars Magica books i have are all soft cover books, the hard cover version of Blood & sand i don't find very appealing, as the only hard cover book i have is an old 3rd Edition book, & i only got as it came with a collection of books i bought. As i found a guy selling up his collection, as he no longer had the time to run or play Ars Magica, so i was lucky enough to score a whole pile of books in mint condition for next to nothing, as he wanted the books to go to someone who would get the enjoyment out of playing the system, & at that time we were playing Ars Magica nearly every night!!:) Many Thanks Sir Parn of House Tytalus, Prince and Knight of the Great White Oak, Dragon Knight of the Order of Hermes!!:)
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From:
Al3xWhite
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Posted on:
2/2/2003 7:41 pm
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To:
SirParn
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I wasn't that keen on the hardcover; and IIRC, John said a while ago that the Blood and Sand hardcover was an experiment. So its possible that we won't see many more hardcover Ars books of B&S's size. ~Alex
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From:
John Nephew
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Posted on:
2/3/2003 2:22 am
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To:
SirParn
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The experiment seems, from the data I have available to me, a success. So at this point, my plan is to publish future sourcebooks as hardcovers. (Any adventures, like The Bishop's Staff, will still be softcover.) We will not release a softcover of Blood and Sand (unless something unusual and surprising that I can't presently imagine happens). The reality is that almost no ArM books get reprinted, besides the core rulebook, and there is even less reason to do so now that we have PDF as an option (we can make a book available to the fans who really want it and can't find a copy in circulation, and the economics of putting up an out-of-print title as PDF are much better than the economics of reprinting). We have a pretty good idea of how many copies an Ars Magica sourcebook can sell in 2-5 years (depending on how popular it is), and we print accordingly. Books that are important enough to reprint often are the books that also can do with revised editions (which isn't outrageous if it's been 5+ years since original release). So in the future you can expect that we'll do one hardcover printing of a sourcebook; when that sells out, we will most likely make it available as a pay-per-download PDF. If it's a really strong seller, we might consider a reprinting (something like the Wizard's Grimoire might qualify), or a new edition (if it's justified). The time between print publication and PDF publication is likely to be something between 2 years and "never," depending on how many books we happened to print and how well we forecast the rate of sales.
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From:
haakonolav
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Posted on:
2/5/2003 9:40 am
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To:
John Nephew
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If Blood and Sand was a success it was because you have a whole lot avid ArM fans that buys (almost) everything. I know I do, the only thing I don't usually buy is adventures (although I have RotS and FotD). As a relatively poor "working stiff" I simply can't afford to buy many hardcovers, the few I do must be of good quality. When it comes to Blood and Sand I feel that neither the binding nor the content justified the price. The cover (at least on the one I got) wasn't straight it was rather curved outwards though the pages seemed securely bound. All of those I saw in the two shops I have in my vicinity had that same problem. Blood and Sand was one of those releases I had looked most forward to for ArM in years, sadly it fell through. What I had expected when I heard it would be in hardcover was a tome, what I got was a leaflet with bent covers. It is sad to say that I've never been as disappointed when it comes to a roleplaying supplement in my life. Most of the 4th edition line has been great! But I'm sorry to say that if the rest of the line is going to be hardcover I won't buy unless it says Genest, Bank, or Chart. I know I can trust them to come up with something good. Those are great authors that has given me not only new ideas for an ArM campaign, but their writing is good as well. Haakon Olav Thunestvedt
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From:
Hindmarch
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Posted on:
2/5/2003 12:38 pm
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To:
haakonolav
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Hi there, Haakonolav; thanks for your honest thoughts! I don't have any creative power over Ars Magica, and I can't speak officially about some of your concerns, but I do want to ask you to clarify something for me. You said you won't buy Blood & Sand because of the binding, but that you'll buy other books solely because of the quality work your favorite authors produce. I'm not sure I see the correlation, there. Niall Christie's work on Blood & Sand is excellent; it's vivid, it's lively and it welcomes players and readers to the setting in a way that's sometimes hard to do in ArM books. Whatever unfortunate problem caused the books at your local retailer to become bowed could very well happen to a book by David Chart, too. I suppose what I'm getting at it is this: your criterion for automatic purchase (author) and your criterion for automatic rejection (physical condition of the book) can come into conflict. If your local retailer's copy of the next Chart ArM title was bowed, would you buy it? Which of the two criteria is more important to you as a consumer? I'm honestly curious. word, Will Hindmarch Atlas Games
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From:
John Nephew
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Posted on:
2/5/2003 2:37 pm
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To:
haakonolav
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No doubt some people are not buying Blood and Sand, because of the price. However, the price and format more than makes up for the loss of those sales, in the budgetary big picture. My hope would be that we'll nail print runs just about right to have hardcover books sell out in a couple of years. Then the people who were kind of interested, but not ready to pay full price, would be able to buy the book as a PDF at a far reduced rate (like $10 instead of $30). And, of course, there will always be eBay and similar outlets where used books can be acquired. In the meantime, as you say, "hardcover I won't buy unless it says Genest, Bank, or Chart," -- well, then we just need to get those guys to write more, or show you how other writers live up to the high standards those guys have set. :) (IMHO, Niall's book certainly does, but YMMV.) What I'm hearing is that you ARE willing to pay a premium price...for a book that you really believe will be useful to you. Our goal then should not be to make marginally useful books that are cheap enough that you're willing to buy them, but to make all new books ones that are useful and compelling enough that the most people possible are ready to step up to the cash registers with cash in hand.
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From:
haakonolav
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Posted on:
2/7/2003 4:42 pm
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To:
John Nephew
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Ok to clarify things: I have bought the book a while ago, and it seems that the reason the cover seems bent, is that there's too few pages for that binding. I have nothing to complain about Mr. Christies facts, they are as far as I know correct and I wouldn't expect less from you. His style is also good so that isn't really what I complain about. What I do complain about is that it's simply too small for what it sets out to do. There are so much more that could have been done with a tribunal book that covers the levant that it could have been twice the size easily. An example: The Nizari is a campaign idea in itself, and could easily have filled a whole chapter, but they were left with only a page. I know that you had space problems, but something more could at least have been done. As I said "I expected a tome". Ok the book is not a leaflet, but it certainly isn't a tome. That's my main problem with the book: That it isn't deep enough to bring the setting truly to life. In comparison to "Dragon and the Bear" and "Heirs to Merlin" it falls short because it lacks the content that would make it truly great instead of above average. I wanted this too to have a foldout map. :( It's the skin and bones of a setting, when I expected meat. I was disappointed not because it was really bad, but because my expectations was so high and it failed too much to live up to them. In comparing the price vs content, the price is too high. In norway this book cost 300 NOK. 1USD = 7NOK, but because of taxes and transportation the shops take 10xUSD. If the the book had softcover and cost 15-20USD it would have been worth it. As I said: I'm an avid Ars Magica fan and I buy everything (except adventures) even books I don't really need because I want to support my favorite game. Because the books have been softcover, I can afford to the book per season(!) you guys put out. But if there's only hardcovers, to the same price or more as "B&S" I will really have to buy on a need or truly want basis. The quality of binding and too little content makes me think that this book isn't worth the price. Dark Ages: Vampire is the same price and well to compare... I know that WW has a bigger audience and so can afford to take a lower price for the book, but as a customer I have to say that if we compare price and content DA:V comes best out. A few nice words in the end: All in all Christie did a good job with the space he had, and the artwork is of the better I've seen in an ArM book for a while. Especially the cover painting was good as well as the engravings and Eric Hotz usual woodblock print borders. Some of the art was recycled, as far as I remember the djinn drawings was from "the Sorcerers Slave". By the way I noticed that Eric Hotz wasn't credited among the interior artists. I guess that must have been just an oversight. All in all the reason I was dissappointed was that I felt that I didn't hold the same standards as most of the great ArM 4th ed books. The positive about that is of course that I hold most 4th ed books to be really good (with a few noteable exceptions). Haakon
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From:
John Nephew
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Posted on:
2/9/2003 11:33 pm
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To:
haakonolav
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I appreciate the feedback. I'd like books like this to be thicker, too. We may be able to do that a bit. Going to softcover doesn't save us much; in the spreadsheets I've run, we'd have needed a softcover of the same book to have been $27 or $28. (In the quantities that Ars Magica sells, a high proportion of the costs are fixed -- we spend $X on writing, whether we sell 800 copies or 8000, whereas printing is at least partly proportional to quantity.) Since you asked/mentioned... >Especially the cover painting was good as well as Credit goes to Wizards of the Coast. The cover art was one of the pieces commissioned for 4th edition by them, way back in 1995 or 1996. We had not used it yet. > the engravings and Eric Hotz usual woodblock print borders. The engravings are indeed public domain (19th century artwork), and were happily well suited to the topic (pictures of Saladin, various kings on crusade, etc.). I should point out that Eric didn't do the woodcuts (which is why he's not in the credits!) -- it was our art director, Scott, emulating the same style, since we were unfortunately unable to procure Eric's work for this book. (We do have Eric doing the woodcuts for Land of Fire and Ice however. I don't have the margin woodcuts in hand yet -- they should be on our computers tomorrow -- but some of the stuff we do have is very cool, especially the one of the trolls.) > Some of the art was recycled, as far as I remember the djinn > drawings was from "the Sorcerers Slave". It looks similar in style, but that's an original piece by Jesse Mohn. The "recycled" work in the book are all the public domain pieces by Alphonse de Neuville. Part of our cost-containment strategy on Ars Magica is to make more use of appropriate public domain artwork. I've dropped a lot of money in recent months on antique books, in fact, for this purpose (expecting to save money on the art budget in the long run). Ars Magica offers a unique opportunity for truly appropriate use of public domain artwork, from 19th century works like de Neuville's historical illustrations to actual medieval pieces. (In the upcoming book Faerie Stories, for instance, I'm using one image of a medieval ivory carving of knights jousting. The image I'm using is actually an engraving from a book about ancient and medieval ivories published in something like 1911.)
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From:
MichaelTree
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Posted on:
2/13/2003 9:19 pm
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To:
John Nephew
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*perks up* Upcoming book Faeries Stories? I thoroughly approve of using public domain art for Ars books. The pieces in Blood and Sand, and ones I've seen in other RPG books (like The Riddle of Steel) all add a certain authentic flavor to the book that most modern drawings lack.
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From:
David Chart
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Posted on:
2/19/2003 2:45 pm
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To:
MichaelTree
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Faerie Stories is a collection of adventures and settings by Neil Taylor and Phil Masters. Faeries are a common theme, and the nominal setting is Brittany, although most of them can be moved easily. Its release is too far in the future to set a date, though. David Chart Ars Magica Line Editor
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