Wizard of the Coast asking fans to scan old books
support.dmsguild.com
support.dmsguild.com
They're accepting a container format (PDF) that's just a wrapper around a JPEG, PNG, TIFF or other rasters. Or they'd like a lossy format (JPEG) with no suggested compression settings.
They'd like you to use the enhancement features/filters of your scanner software which is like Instagramming your photos. Presumably because they don't have a processing workflow in place to perform this themselves.
They want you to convert what will natively be captured as RGB to CMYK, something you generally don't leave up to amateurs if you have any interest in maintaining an accurate conversion.
That all tells me they don't care to have quality master scans they can go back to, they just want something passable they can sell to others.
I empathize a lot with what they're trying to do. Imagine if you're a passionate employee, who cares about the books you grew up with. They're fun to read, and you really want to give more people access to them.
After months of pushing, your bosses give-in - Sure, sell the only stuff online.. But this isn't likely to make much money, so we're not giving you a budget for the project.
This gives them a way to get started - If the titles sell, and are popular, they can go back, and argue that it's worth improving their quality. If not, at least they're legally available at ALL, and that's better than letting them be forgotten.
For example, if a graphic has a mosaic pattern in it having the page slightly askew when scanned can result in artificial artifacts especially when scanning at 300 DPI. Scanning at a higher resolution, 600+ DPI, then downsampling after clean up can avoid issues with graphics.
The RGB to CMYK is true as well. Scanning black and white pages then converting to CMYK can result in black colors that are not rich and/or do not match the touch up colors.
Source: I have previously interned doing manga book translation which required cutting books apart and scanning them.
I find it hard to believe that you believe that scanning a work (even if rare) that they own the rights to means that you deserve a cut of future profits. You could argue that $50 may not be enough money, but a fixed rate fee seems pretty reasonable for doing what amounts to manual labor.
There's no official definition of "digital sharecropper", but Atwood's is as good as any: "Digital sharecroppers typically get nothing in return for the content they've provided, and often give up all rights to what they've created." https://blog.codinghorror.com/are-you-a-digital-sharecropper...
$50 for your labor, no?
But there's no way I'm going to destroy them, and I have to think that the kind of person who hoards these things (including me) is NOT the kind of person who would then turn around and dismantle them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizards_of_the_Coast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasbro
Unfortunately, they recommend that the books be stripped and scanned page by page for "acceptable" results. That's where I lose all interest. :(
You could pretty easily meet their requirements with a DSLR on a copystand. I'd do the left and right pages separately (unless you have a two-camera setup) so that everything is nice and flat.
The one oddball requirement is that users convert to CMYK. I'm not sure why they think that's a good idea. Most home scanners are purely RGB devices and they're just going to convert (shoddily) to CMYK in the driver or in a conversion program downstream. Seems like they're asking for color issues. I'd have asked for sRGB-colorspaced RGB, or "don't touch the knobs you don't understand". shrug
They're not looking for high quality archival scans, they're asking users to perform some basic workflow tasks necessary to ready the images for distribution.
It all sounds very sketchy to me. That or they're just completely incompetent.
Anyone know how to connect with them??
Wizards should also reach out to this team with this request...
I never was too much into gaming but my friends have tons of good memories from many'a'Saturday spent with a good DM. It'd be great if the next generation had the same resources to play around with.
Also, WotC has been selling classic (pre-3.0) D&D books through DriveThru for at least a year (but I feel like it's been longer).
I ain't gonna speculate on motivations, but the timing of these events sure does line up with certain publishing decisions that Wizards was making.
And then they're telling people to cut the spine off their 30-year-old collector's item for best scanning results. In exchange for $50. Good luck with that.
That said, this definitely sounds like "We'll give you $50 bucks so that we can start reselling it since the rights are ours anyways. Thanks Chumps!"
[0] - http://www.monkeyinthecage.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Ta...
I dunno, how much do you think they'll make off of a random adventure from 30 years ago? More than $50, sure—but it's not like this is highway robbery.
1.) Make a derivative work for the new D&D version (everyone loves retro)
2.) Make a new video game off of the old content.
3.) Rerelease books are part of an XXst aniversary edition.
The key here being that "they" (since it wasn't really WotC, but TSR) lost a lot of physical assets (both written and visual IP), and are basically paying pocket change for people to give that back to them. Indeed, they are even having the end user do the hardest part of the work, which is the scanning. Rather than just buying the books at market prices, and then doing the work themselves.
The real question is, "Why would they ask for scans of old books and pay $50 for them", with the only commercially reasonable answer being, "Because they think that they will obtain much more that $50 woth of value, or the work required to obtain and scan it themselves is worth way more than $50".
If you think this is a ripoff ("Thanks, chumps!"), the only possible conclusion is that any time anyone gives you money for anything, you're getting ripped off.
The alternative, sane model is known as the gains from trade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gains_from_trade
It's a normative argument about the appropriate distribution of the gains from trade.
> You will get best results by cutting the spine off the book and by using a sheet-fed scanner for interiors and a flatbed scanner for covers.
Ack. no way, sorry.
Or so I've heard :^)
The digital plantation OTOH knows no limit to cheapness and shoddiness. The rights owner doesn't want to rent equiment for preservation, they don't want to acquire the material they have rights to, instead they ask someone else to do the work for them, including post-processing. For USD 50. Wizards of the Coast, go away and die.
The reality might just be that it just isn't worth it to do it any other way.
As someone who loves old D&D modules (and has actually bought from DriveThru), I think it's really great.
My guess is that there was someone who works for these guys who also loves old D&D modules that couldn't convince anyone to make this happen unless they did it this way.
I think I speak for most hardcore D&D fans when I say that most players will be perfectly fine continuing to torrent these books for the foreseeable future. In fact, unless I missed something, I'm kind of surprised this company didn't just do that since people have gone through the trouble of converting them to PDF already.
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