Mongoose Hiring Printing Out Again

[TheAuldGrump]

Ran across this on the EN World Forums -

Press - New Printing for Mongoose Books
For the past ten months, Mongoose Publishing has been developing its own printing facility in order to take advantage of digital printing systems. Unfortunately, various problems in the system have resulted in too many books that were of below acceptable quality. While it was an ambitious endeavour, it has regrettably proved unworkable.

As of last week, Mongoose Publishing has switched production of all books to established printers based in the United States. This means that all books now ordered from Mongoose Publishing will be of the highest quality possible. We wish to apologise to all of our customers for any inconvenience caused over the past few months, and wish to assure you that our previous levels of quality should be expected at all times. Our guarantee to freely replace any faulty book remains in place.

Many of our original hardback titles have been converted to softback titles, with a corresponding drop in the cover price. The first of these titles is Magic of the Young Kingdoms, of which we have just taken delivery. It is in stock in both the UK and US right now, and is a good example of the new printing.

Other titles, such as the Bestiary of the Hyborian Age, currently being printed and expected for release in March, will remain as hardbacks.

Once again, our apologies for the disruption of the past few months, but both our printing and distribution systems have returned to their previous efficient states.
__________________
Matthew Sprange
Mongoose Publishing

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com

I am really very sorry that this did not work out for them. I had very high hopes that they would be able to switch to a POD format, which would make it a lot more flexible for them to customize releases.


The Auld Grump

[Krensky]

The question that comes to mind is how will this effect Crafty.

I'm not expecting an answer right away or even in the near future guys, just voicing a question.

[NezMaster]

This is sad but not for the reason you might expect. THey were still in experimentation. Every problem i heard about was binding related. All they had to do was bind the books properly. It had little to do with 'printing' per say. And binding is not that hard. Hell, I could do it if they could pay me enough to move to england
the training i took to properly bind books took 1 week in the public library system. The equipment was fairly simple. This was of course for rebinding, but still, come on guys. Your scrapping the whole operation for something you could fix in a week?
Sigh.

[TheAuldGrump]

Actually, I suspect that the binding machine itself was faulty. Mongoose was not binding the books by hand, but rather they were relying on an automated system that was not up to the task. An automated system is actually harder to work around than one that is a staged process - it does what it does, no more, no less.

I have seen a POD printer that took the raw stock, printed it, collated it, and perfect bound it, all within the one machine. (And gods, did ever I suffer from techno-lust....) As far as the user was concerned all that was necessary was to make sure the machine had a stock of paper and card stock, and put in the CD that contains the material to be printed. But there is not a whole lot that the user can do to modify the results.

If you need to spend time on each step of the process then it being automated is not an advantage. And when a significant percentage of the bindings fail it reflects poorly on your company - at best you have to replace a book and answer complaints, at worst you lose both the customer and those that the customer talks to - word of mouth can work against you in a big way in an industry as small as RPGs, and Mongoose has already had its share of negative word of mouth, from a few years ago.

Make no mistake here - I like Mongoose, an awful lot of my D20 collection bears their imprint. Some of my most used D20 books are by Mongoose, and I own more Mongoose than WotC books. But the editing for a while was absolutely atrocious. The editors were eventually fired, but not before the company got a lot of negative press that they still have not lived down. Heck, my Steampunk/Spycraft game has its roots in an OGL steampunk campaign I ran for quite some time - if my players were more interested in creating their own marvelous machines I would never have left the system. (I really like the tech creation rules in OGL Steampunk.)

The binding machine may not capable of producing a high quality binding in a price frame that makes it worthwhile. As bindings go the one on the SC2.0 2P was not great - it was essentially a perfect bound text glued into a hard cover.... I had the same problem with the WH 40K rulebook a few years back. When you pay $50 for a book you should be able to reasonably expect a decent binding. In the case of WH40K I decided not to buy the book, purely because of the lousy binding. I like a stitched binding on my hardcovers, it makes them a much more durable investment.

The Auld Grump
*EDIT* I used to work in a print shop, and even further back I worked in my school's press room. Gods the tech has come a long way! No more razor blades, light tables, linotype machines, straight edges, and beeswax....

[OverNinja]

This could explain why my FLGS has had trouble getting a SP for me (and one other guy).

[Crafty_Pat]

The only way it'll affect us is that our books will improve with the rest of the Mongoose catalog. Our deal with them remains viable and we're currently working with them to get up and running with their new printers. We don't anticipate any delay with any of our books, nor do we expect price hikes. There may be some fluctuations here and there as things shake out, and it'll certainly take a month or two for the new printers to get up and running with everything Mongoose makes, but otherwise we're in good shape.

We're pleased that Mongoose made the hard call. It was the right call, but not an easy one.

[Mister Andersen]

Does the move to external printers mean there will be be the ability to put some colour into future books (say chapter pages)?

[TheTSKoala]

Although they've outsourced the issue right now, I would imagine (and hope) Mongoose is going to work on fixing the procedure and get their own process up and running at some point.

[TheAuldGrump]

Although they've outsourced the issue right now, I would imagine (and hope) Mongoose is going to work on fixing the procedure and get their own process up and running at some point.

That is my hope as well - the possibility of POD supplements, tailored to the customer, sounded very, very good.

The Auld Grump

[NezMaster]

Next Question: Do I report my second book having fallen apart or not. I mean I feel odd about it. They never asked for hte first book back (Which i found odd) so now I have two books without binding, for the price of one book with binding. Am I even?

[Slippery_jim_digris]

I'd report it. You paid a fair price for a book that shouldn't be falling apart. I worked long enough in retail to know they won't feel your taking advantage of them if you think you are getting sub-standerd merchandise.

[NezMaster]

I work in retail too. I work in a video store though, and if someone brings back two products, we figure they are burning copies or something. I'm trained to be suspicous of people who return stuff. So i feel awkward saying
"hey, it happened again" especially since I got to an overworked independent game store.

[Crafty_Pat]

Does the move to external printers mean there will be be the ability to put some colour into future books (say chapter pages)?

No idea yet. It's a question we're asking as well.

[Crafty_Pat]

Next Question: Do I report my second book having fallen apart or not. I mean I feel odd about it. They never asked for hte first book back (Which i found odd) so now I have two books without binding, for the price of one book with binding. Am I even?

You should ask. The main reason for the replacement book without claiming the damaged one is that Mongoose would simply pulp it anyway. Why pay for shipping two ways?

[TheAuldGrump]

Next Question: Do I report my second book having fallen apart or not. I mean I feel odd about it. They never asked for hte first book back (Which i found odd) so now I have two books without binding, for the price of one book with binding. Am I even?

You should ask. The main reason for the replacement book without claiming the damaged one is that Mongoose would simply pulp it anyway. Why pay for shipping two ways?

They did not require a return of the first printing of the first edition of the Conan RPG either - though they did ask for a word from a random page (chosen by the company rep over the phone) or the corner of one page (though the mail) for confirmation.

They have alwaus been very good in that regard.

NezMaster - is there a book rebindery in your area? You might want to find out about the cost of having your book(s) rebound. The last time I had a book rebound it cost $12.00 U.S. but that was a few years back.

The Auld Grump