Depends how much like a "Real Book" you want it to look, really.

You've got everything from local copy shop (Iain did a good ashcan of Reel adventures this way) to using Lulu to print a full, but un-beautified version.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

If time isn't of the essence, then you could do a lot worse than using RapidPOD. They'll produce something of good quality, that looks like a real book. In fact, is a real book.
Depending on the size, it'll come in at about $2.00. Which is about £1.00 in real money at the moment. Factor in shipping and you're looking at no more than £2 a copy.

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

Didn't you already put out Umlaut ashcans Rich?
They were great.

I think PDFs are the best format for ashcans.

I still think ashcans are a waste of time having never got any feedback from the ones I've done.

+++
JoE
+++

Prince of Darkness Games
Rock N' Role-Play....

Isn't the idea, with ashcans, that they're cheaply done but with lots of thought into the design?

If we're talking Umlaut, I'd suggest something, I don't know, rock concertish. Put the whole thing in a plastic beer glass. Make it look like cheaply printed fliers. Something like that. I don't know. I know nothing about rock. As is obvious.

See, for Unlaut, I'd keep that for the finished version. Make it looks like grubby fliers, stick it in a plastic pint glass and so forth. That would be most cool. Not sure what I'd do for the ashcan. Keep with the flyers theme, maybe. But some sort of in-between stage.

Certainly for Okhrana I'm going for a political pamphlet kind of design, so whetehr any prospective ashcan takes this to an intermediate stage, I'm not sure.

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

If you buy into the whole Ashcan ethos (I'm figuring that it hasn't really worked for Joe from experience) then I heartily dicourage you from making it look like a finished game.

Photocopying with card covers and staples in the middle. Stickers on the front and back (for info) work too.

Think Scottish Third Division football programme circa 1998. Stenhousemuir or The Shire.

It should be done in a small run and manually assembled. Quality of print is not key, content and engaging with the reader is. You want peole to use this as a manual to play and to know what you want feedback on.

If you'll indulge me this slight tangent Rich:

You've had an ashcan out since february that I thought that was a perfectly acceptable ashcan - it was neatly put together, it worked, and people were under no illusions that it wasn't quite a complete game.

How did it work out for you?

It has not generated a single response so far.

Personally I don't think that version was really worth Ashcanning (w00t! I invented another new word!). There was just a bit too much missing and a bit too much needed to change. It was a bit too early to be honest.

To be fair, there were 10 copies made and about half of those went to people who'd already had some involvement with the project. Yourself, Joe, Malcolm and Gregor for example. You guys have all provided valuable feedback and advice anyway and I think it's fair to say that getting that ashcan copy probably didn't spur that.

So realistically, 5 copies were actually sold to people. I think that's a bit too small to really judge any sort of response.

As for the physical objects themselves, yeah, they were pretty cool. I quite like the look of them as an ashcan: it looks like something someone made in their office after hours when noone was looking. Which is great. But they were really rather time consuming (although I did kinda get the hang of it towards the end).

I was interested to see if there was going to be a cheap way to make equally amateurish pamphlets without having to sneak about in my office late at night :)

Another point: That covering note ought to just be the first page. The bit that says "this isn't a finished game, you can get your money back for it when the proper book comes out, here's my email address" kinda needs to be the first thing people see when they open the book.