HELLAS: Worlds of Sun and Stone had initially been written by Jerry to use the Omni system, the same one used by Talislanta 4th Edition. But Jerry was also a d6 License holder and because of that he thought we might be better off using d6, the system he had used for GODSEND Agenda and d6 Powers. And so HELLAS was gradually rewritten to use the d6 Engine throughout the remainder of 2007. At one point (November 2, to be exact), Jerry even pitched the idea of doing HELLAS as a boxed set. I love boxed sets, but we ultimately decided that was not the right course to take (in part because of concerns over how much a boxed set would weigh) and we dropped the idea.
We ultimately settled on the idea of a pretty standard 8.5 x 11 portrait layout book, and Jerry started putting together cover mockups. Between November 17 and the end of the year, we had a pretty good idea of what it would look like, and on January 8 of 2008, we had what would be the final design.
Of course, it wasn't actually anywhere near final.
Around the end of January of 2008 Jerry started sending me samples of a new layout idea he had. Rather than do the book in portrait layout, he wanted to do a landscape book, which seemed to better suit the scrollwork and Greek pottery theme we were going for. Then in April (one day after April Fool's Day, coincidentally), Jerry sent me an email saying he had changed his mind about the system. After some discussion, we went back to Omni and dumped d6, in part because of the then-turmoil surrounding WEG (West End Games) and the uncertainty about the future of d6 (which apparently has now died down with the whole Opend6 thing). Ultimately I think Omni is the better system, as I am not overly fond of dice pools. Plus, I really love the landscape layout and I think more books should be laid out that way (if for no other reason than retailers might stop complaining about how the books don't fit on their shelves). Both the system and the layout have their detractors, of course, as well as their challenges. For example, as I'm learning now it's very difficult to find a POD printer that can handle landscape printing. Nevertheless, despite the drawbacks, I think HELLAS is all the better for those decisions and I'm happy that we sailed in the direction we did.
By June we had all the content in place. We had a solid idea for a layout. We had all the art. Even the cover was finished. The manuscript had been edited, and we were all ready to go. All that was left was layout and printing. And so once again I flew to Vegas, this time to work on the final layout with Jerry. From June 5 to June 9, 18 hours a day, we put our noses to the grindstone and got it done.
Of course, as we began laying out the book in InDesign, we started reading the text as we were placing it, and knocking ideas around. Maybe this rule could be written better. Maybe this bit of flavor text was a little off. Maybe all the planet descriptions should have pictures of planets next to them. Little things, but inevitably the changes piled up, and if I have one regret about working on HELLAS, it's that we made a lot of changes after the editorial pass had been completed, and a number of little typos crept in. Some elements of the d6 system got missed during the switch back to Omni. Some of the core Omni system typos and errors didn't get filtered out. And the like. There are always typos, in every book on the market, but I wish we had fewer of them and that our errata was a bit smaller; many of these issues are no doubt the result of "cleaning up" text at 3 in the morning, wired on Diet Coke and Pop Rocks.
I don't think we did anything wrong, necessarily. We just did what we felt we were able to do, based on the timeline we had established. Larger game companies can afford to pay editors thousands of dollars for their skills, or else have in-house editors to help them out. They have things like "budgets" and "schedules" and they can afford to spend more time and money on editing (though sometimes even the big guys miss the mark). A small game company like Khepera Publishing or aethereal FORGE is just a few guys who dig deep into their pockets to pay artists and writers and those editors who will work for a... lower rate. Not because we're cheap but because it's what we can realistically afford. I was going to say "reasonable rate" there, but that would imply that the editors who charge more are unreasonable. Far from it. They do excellent work, just like the artists and writers who charge more than small publishers can often afford. Heck, I'm a writer and I charge more; I couldn't afford myself. With a limited budget, something has to be sacrificed. With HELLAS, a lot went into the art and the printing, and I think it paid off.
At any rate, on June 27 we finally put the finishing touches on the book, and prepared to send the files to the printer. And here begins the most frustrating chapter in the brief history of HELLAS.
As I mentioned above, smaller companies need to save money where they can. For a larger print run, especially of full-color hardcover books, that can often mean going overseas or to Canada. Jerry had sought quotes from some printing companies in the USA, and in some cases had gotten quotes as high as $30 per book for print run of 1000 books; yes, that's $30,000, more than most people make in a year! With a typical return of about 44% on cover price (more on that later), that would mean we'd have to charge something like $70 per book just to break even on printing. Insane. Wisely, Jerry sought other quotes, and ultimately he decided that HELLAS would be printed in Taiwan. This didn't seem like a huge problem: we wanted books for Gencon (August 14-17), and that meant getting files to the printer, getting a proof back, approving the proof, getting the books printed, and then loading three cases of them onto a plane, which would express deliver the books to Indianapolis for us. It all seemed quite doable... as long as everything went exactly according to plan.
It did not.
The files were sent easily enough sometime in early July, and a proof was soon winging its way across the ocean to us via overnight mail. Supposedly. Though we were repeatedly assured it had been sent, we continued to not receive it. On July 28, we were told that a typhoon of all things had delayed the proof. By August 1, we began to suspect that something had gone wrong. Yet the proof had been sent, we were told. And in fact it had been. But due to a miscommunication at the printer and an employee trying to save money, it had not been sent overnight but via normal surface mail; ultimately, we would not receive the proof until August 21.
It was gut check time -- we had a big decision to make. On August 7, Jerry emailed me to say "This is our Damocles moment." We basically had to decide whether or not to approve the book printing without seeing a physical proof, or to miss our Gencon premiere. See, with print-on-demand printing it's fairly easy and low risk to just print off 50 or 100 books; if they get messed up, you're only out a few hundred dollars. But when you're printing over a thousand full-color hardcover books, you don't do POD. You work with an offset printer.
With POD, the costs for the printer are higher on the paper and ink side of the equation. Setup is easier and cheaper, so it's financially viable to do short print runs and make multiple, quick edits if something's wrong. With offset printing, the setup is much more expensive because plates have to be made, whereas the paper and ink costs are much lower, especially as you print more and more copies. This means that it's the way to go with larger print runs (over 500, generally). If you catch an error on the physical proof and make the change early, it's often somewhat expensive, but doable. However, with offset, once your files are approved and transferred to plates, they press the button on a big machine and stand back. If there's a typo on page 5 or the image on page 11 is backwards, well, you're getting a thousand copies of that. For a major screwup you can negotiate with the printer for some reprints but in general you get a bunch of messed up books.
Another interesting thing to consider with offset printing is that there's almost always some "spoilage" (bad or torn sheets), so they generally print some extras to make up for those that will be wasted; sometimes, however, they don't print quite enough to cover the waste. Thus, sometimes you get up to 10% fewer than you wanted, and sometimes you get up to a 10% overrun, which means your final cost or quantity might be a little off from the initial price they quoted. The important point here is that once you say "Go," they go, and unless you happen to be onsite at the printer, you can't do anything else at that point. There's no turning back, no time to "Stop the presses." They don't print 100 books, and then ask you to check them, and then print 100 more. That's not economical; it would waste press time. No, they press that button, and then you cross your fingers and hope for the best, because whatever you're getting, you're getting, all at once.
Jerry and I weren't worried about missing commas or anything; we were worried that the landscape layout would come out portrait, or that the background images on every page would come out pink, or something of that nature, something that the printer might not notice. However, we weighed the odds and in the end we both agreed that it was worth the risk. Then we did some shots and OK'd the print run, based on a digital proof only. We were committed now. Needless to say, we didn't sleep much that night... or the next... or the next... But on August 11, just a few days before Gencon, we at last received some degree of relief. Since we didn't have a physical proof we had asked -- nay, begged -- the printers to get hold of a digital camera and take some pictures of the finished product, just so we could be sure they weren't printed upside-down and backwards. The first image was a huge load off our minds.
HELLAS was real, and it was beautiful. But the greatest challenge was yet to come.
