One Book or Three?

[ffutures]

I'm putting Forgotten Futures X together as a single PDF that'll be about 150 pages long excluding table of contents. That's quite a big book for a PDF. But it breaks down into three sections fairly easily. Excluding table of contents etc.:

Pages 1-34 describe the world of Tooth and Claw
Pages 35-94 are a rewrite of the game rules for dragons
Pages 95-whatever are the adventures

I may move a couple of things from the game rules to the worldbook part, but I'm still thinking about that.

The single volume approach is the way I want to go, since I'm pretty sure that writing hundreds of links from one PDF to a particular page in another will be a total pain, but I'm beginning to think that it may be a good idea to provide a separate file containing alternative covers and tables of contents for people who want to print it as three books. Does that seem a practical way to go? The cover logo would be

Forgotten Futures X - The Tooth and Claw Role Playing Game for all three, then author / artist information, then a different wording at the bottom for each:

The World of Jo Walton's World Fantasy Award winning novel for the worldbook
Roleplaying in the World of Jo Walton's World Fantasy Award winning novel for the rules (as the existing cover I've used as my icon)
Adventures in the World of Jo Walton's World Fantasy Award winning novel for the adventures

To keep things simple the page numbering would be 1-34 for the worldbook, 35-94 for rules, 95-whatever for adventures. I really don't want to have two different page numbers on each page or something!

Possibly a different cover illo for each too, though I'm not sure about that since I need to keep an eye on total file size.

I'll definitely split the HTML version into three files; no reason not to, and the full size document might slow some browsers to a crawl.

Anyone got any thoughts on this?

Comments

I'd do it as one book

[johnreiher.livejournal.com]

I've had this discussion with Richard Tucholka and his upcoming Bureau 13 d20 Modern book. He wants to do it in two parts, and I said do it as one book, even if it is 200+ pages. As long as you have a decent hyprlinked table of contents and index, size doesn't matter.

At 150 pages, you're only looking at 75 printed pages double sided printing. I've printed out longer PDFs for other games.

I'd say your plan of internally dividing the book into three sections is a great idea. I may have to suggest that to Richard.

Re: I'd do it as one book

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

It's breaking into three sections fairly naturally - and since referees may want to print out a couple of extra copies of the rules part especially I think that providing an optional front cover and TOC for each may be the way to go.

[timill]

You might want to number the pages in their sections as A1-A34, B1-B60 and C1-Cnn or something similar.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thought of that but it always looks a bit ugly and technical, numbers alone are less obtrusive somehow.

[timill]

Yes, though I'm happier with I-1 to I-34, II-1 to II-60 and so forth. Avoiding IV, which always makes me think of Up Pompeii, which dates me...

Or one could always go Roman lower case, Roman upper case, and Arabic numbers.

Or some other numbering system. Yan, tan, tethera...

[draconin.livejournal.com]

I assume you're working from a Word document? Have you had experience in producing large documents and converting to PDFs? For example, are you aware that if you use Word's styles for your headers then you can insert an automatically generated table of contents, and that the PDF converter that Adobe puts onto the Word toolbar will then automatically convert this ToC into hyperlinks and bookmarks in the PDF? Plus you can insert hyperlinks in your word document to particular headers (choose from list) and these too will automatically convert to hyperlinks in the final PDF.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'm aware that Word can make tables of contents, but actually getting them to look the way I want them to look, include the things I want and exclude the things I don't, is another matter - it's generally easier to do it manually. Takes about two hours and it's usually the last thing I do when I complete a book.

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

Seems pretty reasonable to me.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I think so - If I do this I may move the cutout dragons / Yarge and some of the stuff about Yarge from the rules to the worldbook, also the thing about currency and recommended reading.