The Vanity Project (part 4)

My supply of "To Ur Is Human" arrived today. It is a slim volume, no thicker than an old WAB supplement, so did not come in a large box, but a simple wrap-round box.

I had chosen a matte finish for the cover, as my experience with the glossy type is that the lamination peels away too readily if you thumb the book a lot, as you might do with wargames rules.

It looks quite professional, to my eyes, and not at all self-published from the outside. The Photo-Lab cut outs make a good central illustration. I cheated a bit by multi-layering the cutout of the phalanx from the "Stele of the Vultures" to make it look bigger.

Whilst I was a bit annoyed at first at not being able to use A4, the choice of a different size adds to the professional look and feel. The interior is pretty good too. The paper is nice quality and feels good. The only slight downside is that the B&W photos could have been a bit clearer. That's something I can probably sort in future by improving the lighting when I take the shot, or using a B&W setting on the camera, rather than applying a filter afterwards. On the other hand the diagrams I drew myself look just fine.

For the text I went with Bookman Old Style in 12pt. Bookman is a big font anyway, so the text is really readable. I'm a bit fed up with small text these days in rules sets, with paragraphs closely packed so I can't see the words for the blocks when I'm looking something up.

The final thought on the production is that the playsheet on the back cover has come out really clearly, which is a relief as I had to set it up as a photo/jpeg rather than text.

Anyhow, I have a dozen (well, 11 once my copy is taken out) for the Society of Ancients conference. As the game is for 6 players I can't see that I'll sell that many, even tho' at £5 it's the price of a pint of conference hotel beer.

All I need now is to think about how I do anymore marketing. I'm never going to sell thousands, so it'll be mainly word of mouth or social media. I put a post on the TMP Ancients Discussion forum, but it got taken down within an hour, - possibly because it had an Amazon link in it. Or perhaps because it looked like a blatant plug and an attempt to get free advertising. No doubt if any one else was to comment on them, that'd be fine.

So, in a happy space at the moment. And I revised my holding blurb over at Amazon, where the rules are still for sale. It is odd writing about yourself in the third person. All very Caesar's Gallic Wars.

Now, to go and stick price labels on the back of these beauties.