Seeking Advice On Page Size For Publication

#1

Hey Everyone,

I have designed and RPG and have a couple ideas in the works for ICRPG content so I though I would ask for advice on page size for publishing these things. My plan is to release this stuff in PDF form through DriveThruRPG, with my RPG making it to book form at some point in the future. Out of the many options of page size it looks like 6 x 9 or 8 1/2 x 11 (A4) are the two most popular sizes. Where I personally like the A4 size for both PDF and printed because it has more space and the ability to fold reasonably more flat I am not sure if I would be shooting myself in the foot by going that route.

Does anyone have any advice or thoughts on what size would be best to go with? I thought with so many content creators here it may be a good place to ask.

Thanks!

#2

Up until this point, almost everything I design is done in that classic 8.5x11 format because I know that I’m really just aiming for PDFs. I think it’s plenty of space and makes printing easy, but the more I’ve thought about actually formatting stuff in a book, I lean more towards 6x9. So if it was me, I would say stick with Letter(A4) if the product will be purely PDF, but lean towards 6x9 if you ever intended to print in something more substantial than a pile of papers from my home printer. Just my two :herocoin: :herocoin:

#3

That’s great advice, I appreciate your thoughts on that! I intend for the ICRPG content to stay in the PDF format so I will go 8 1/2 x 11 for those. This is sort of uncharted territory for me so I have a bit of learning to do with producing this stuff.

#4

To me, there would be three reasons to use A4/letter

  • product is aimed at home (office) printing, or
  • product includes large maps, illustrations or diagrams that cannot be reproduced properly at smaller size, or
  • product becomes disproportionately thick if printed in smaller page sizes.

If your text isn’t very long, or aimed at tablet viewing, go for 6x9 or A5 instead.

#5

This is helpful, thanks!

The ICRPG content will be focused on unique settings with a low page count (probably not more than 4-5 double sided A4 pages). There may be a map but that was not going to be the focus. Keeping these PDF in A4 makes sense to me though for online play and that they will not have enough content to make an actual book out of. If printed they could be put into a sleeved binder/folder easy enough.

The RPG I have designed is going to be not more than 40 A4 pages long (probably more like 30-35), I’m not sure how many pages that would amount to if printed out in 6x9. There will be no maps but there are a number of tables that would be more legible in the A4 size. I like the A4 size because of more space and legibility, as well as the ability to fold out better on the table (and because I grew up with D&D books that were that size). I think this would work out great for folks who are ok with keeping it in the digital space for VTT (I don’t care for 6x9 PDF format because it feels squashed). However, I am concerned that if I wanted to make an actual book out of it an A4 book would be very thin. The 6x9 format seems popular for physical books but I’m having a hard time deciding if I should move in that direction.

#6

Melissa and I faced this same problem when we were deciding on our books. We cut printer paper into the different options so that we could hold it in our hands. We ended up going with the 8.5x5.5 and it wasn’t until we had that size in our hand did it feel right. Also heads up incase you haven’t gotten that far in what is the black hole of printing on DriveThruRpg your page count will have to be divisible by 6. So that may have a bearing on your page size.

#7

That’s a great suggestion! So, you went with quite a small book, very compact and good for travel!

I have started in on the black hole of DriveThruRPG printing…scary experience! I didn’t get far however. I think I remember reading something about the page count having to be divisible by a certain number. Thanks for the heads up on that!