CafePress seems to be a mite closer to launching their book printing arm. I just got an intriguing email offering me the chance to beta it; alas, I don’t have a book all ready to go. C’est la vie. However, the email does have some hints about formats.
They want page sizes of either 4.18 × 6.88 (mass market paperback), 5 × 8, 7.5 × 9.25, 8.5 × 11, or 6.625 × 10.25 (comic books). That’s inches, one assumes. They offer saddlestitch binding for lower page counts and wire-o for full fledged books. Maximum page count is 600 pages.
That’s kind of interesting, since people were expecting perfect bound books. Then again, maybe the perfect bound books work, um, perfectly and they don’t need to beta test those. More to come, I’m sure.
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If I remember correctly, White Wolf consists of one company which owns all the intellectual property and another company which handles printing and distribution. The advantage is that White Wolf won’t lose its intellectual property if it can’t pay its printing bills.
I wonder if CafePress.com’s service will encourage this kind of disaggregation in the gaming industry. Might be a good idea – one company handles the printing, another handles marketing to retailers and distributors (like Tundra Sales Organization or The Sphinx Group) and the game designers get to do their thing with one less business hassle to deal with.