Archive for August 3rd, 2012

Fellow publishers and people who just plain know more than me:

I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a print version of Mythender for sale, since people keep asking for it. But, there’s one catch: it uses a bit of color. One color, dark red (CMYK: 0, 100, 100, 50). That’s for chapter titles, certain game terms, demonstrating using the game’s UI, and certain dice icons (as I’m already using black dice & white dice).

If I were to do a print book, it would have art, and the art would also be duotone — the color of mortality would be black, mythic nature that same dark red, and Mythenders having a mix between the two more less or more mythic they are.

Right now, maybe 2% of the ink is this color. With art, that might approach 10%.

Here’s what the book looks like right now (screencap’d from Acrobat because I’m being a bit lazy). They’re all from the RKE edition of Mythender.

So, how do I do that?

Mainly, can you recommend a printer that handles this? I believe the process is called duotone, though I’m not certain. And getting many pages as full-color would just be stupid expensive for something that’s not actually fully utilized. (I would prefer to do printing in the States, but I’m open to all information.)

Point of note: it would be 6″x9″, 272 pages I’m guessing after padding the last signature. Perfect bound, softcover. Maybe  hardcover.

And is there something I should be doing in my InDesign documents to facilitate that? Right now, I have two swatches I use, black for the registration & that dark red.

When it comes to getting the art, is there something I can do in Illustrator/Photoshop to make sure it stays within black & that single other color (and gradients/mixtures of)?

This is not a promise

To be clear, this question is in no way a promise that I’ll actually make a print version of Mythender. But if that is to possibly happen, this is one of the hurdles I need to clear.

- Ryan

P.S. Before someone gives me the useless comment of “you don’t need to use red,” yes, I know. I could just use gray. But that doesn’t interest me at all — I learn nothing by not trying something new.