One of the tasks I have as Publisher Relations Manager at DriveThruRPG.com is working with publishers to get their books into the Now in Print program.

One publisher that has embraced this program as part of their new publishing model is White Wolf. Not only are they releasing all of their new titles in both PDF and Print, they are working with us to add all of the out-of-print World of Darkness and Exalted titles back in print and available again. The process has certainly had some challenges and taken much longer to get rolling than everyone involved had hoped, but the books are great and the fans have (mostly) been excited about these developments.

Some of the challenges with a project of this size include formatting issues. Some of the books are rather old and access to the original production files is hit-or-miss, meaning some of the books will be built from high-quality scans rather than digital production. Other books have design issues. Our print partner does not do full-bleed on black & white books, which means some of the interiors need to be altered slightly to accommodate this. This has already come up with some titles, such as Mage Noir, which was originally a PDF-only product. It had full bleed on the PDF edition and the Now in Print edition does not. The solution agreed on by White Wolf and the DTRPG prep team was to add in a small white border on the pages of these titles. This seemed like a smart compromise to get these books into production without having to enter them in as “color” books (color books can have full-bleed, such as the Vampire Translation Guide) and thus raising the price quite a bit. Of course, this solution did not please everyone, no compromise ever will. Still the overall response has been quite positive and I’m happy to have had a small part in it.

The process continues with more books in various stages of development and testing of new ideas on how to make them even better. Many of the books are even being offered in previously unavailable formats. For example you can now get World of Darkness: Book of the Dead in both hardcover and softcover formats. I had the opportunity to activate a decent batch of titles for print this morning and that sparked the idea for this post. I’d also be happy to answer questions as much as I’m able to about the program and process of getting these books in print at DriveThruRPG. The recent batch of titles include:

New World of Darkness:

Hunter: the Vigil
Witchfinders
The Pure

Classic World of Darkness:

Chaining the Beast
New York by Night
Lair of the Hidden
Ventrue Chronicles
Archons and Templars
The Red Sign
Werewolf Storytellers Handbook Revised
Bygone Bestiary
Players Guide to Garou
Savage Attack: A Player’s Guide to Rage

Exalted 2nd Edition:

Manual of Exalted Power: Infernals
Compass of Celestial Directions: Malfeas

The Now in Print program is also bringing out new books that have never been in print before like Glimpses of the Unknown for World of Darkness, Forsaken Chronicler’s Guide for Werewolf: the Forsaken and Dust to Dust a new adventure for Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition.

You can follow the latest additions to the Now in Print program at DriveThruRPG, be sure to click the Follow Your Favorites! box on the left column of the site if you want e-mail updates of new books added to Print. Of course, White Wolf is only one of the publishers I’ve been working with to get their titles into the Now in print program on DriveThruRPG. There are currently over 460 titles in print and available now. My own FR Press has HAUNTED: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror available in print and the Queen of Crows will be as soon as I’ve had the chance to look over the proof copy. Other publishers with books in print include Nocturnal (Pendragon RPG), Dork Storm Press (Dork Tower comics), Posthuman Studios (Eclipse Phase Quickstart) and Pinnacle Entertainment (Deadlands fiction), just to name a few.

The program will continue to grow and evolve over time. I’m sure there will be new challenges that crop up and it might not work right for every book (or publisher), but I think it is a very cool thing for both new titles and classics that were once hard to find.

Tags | drivethrurpg, white-wolf