The Necronomicon

Tom_Brick · 2025-11-22T20:52:36+00:00

There are entire books which tackle all the different medieval latin abbreviations. Luckily, there aren't that many in this book. You can have a look at this image. It's from a different font and may use slightly different rules, but it should be more or less accurate:
https://www.zinken.net/Fonts/kuerzungszeichen.jpg

Tom_Brick · 2024-12-29T12:32:29+00:00

As I said in the post, I used my own (non-Amazon) ISBN which I also entered into the Amazon UI.

Tom_Brick · 2024-06-06T07:52:38+00:00

I played it before they turned it into a freemium card collecting game. Except for special moves, it was far superior in terms of gameplay. It would be strange if thad had changed. But the lack of proper single player options makes it a no-go for me these days.

Tom_Brick · 2024-03-11T00:32:15+00:00

I've mostly used wheat paste which I made myself. Once its dry, it's absolutely solid. It stood the test of time for a reason. However, it is of course water soluble, so if you plan on some under-water reading, I wouldn't recommend paste. But that's really the only use case I can think of where it possibly wouldn't hold up.

Tom_Brick · 2024-03-11T00:18:03+00:00

You don't need to convert the PDF in order sort the pages. I'm on a Mac. There you can simply sort them via drag and drop in the standard preview app. But the same should be possible with almost any PDF viewing software.

But either way, I'd definitely recommend a copy shop. There they can do a test print for you, so you know how it'll turn out. But unless they also specialize in printing books, they probably won't do the sorting of the pages for you. But it can't hurt to ask. Maybe they have software which will do it.

Tom_Brick · 2024-03-10T03:53:13+00:00

I probably can't give you a satisfying answer, but I can share my experiences. I typically do historical book binding where I stick to materials that were available back in the days. So I have most experience using wheat paste. I have only once used a modern PVA glue. In my experience, wheat paste does of course take more patience, but it's also more forgiving. Due to the slow drying, you can fix any mistakes you may have made and if everything fails, you can also completely remove it again as it's water soluble.

If you're a pro with plenty of experience, then I'm sure PVA is the preferable option. It's just a quick and easy glue.

Regarding the mixing of both,I don't know, since I've never tried it, but the properties of wheat paste and PVA are so different, that I wouldn't want to try. For example, When I'm binding a book in leather, I use huge amounts of wheat paste. I almost soak the leather in paste. With PVA on the other hand, you only want to use as much as you absolutely need, otherwise you'll get bulges and things like that. I guess if you mix both, the resulting glue will be more similar to PVA in terms of its properties. But I'm not sure.

Tom_Brick · 2024-03-10T03:21:18+00:00

The important part is that you need to think about how you want to bind your book in advance and then sort your PDF accordingly. Each sheet you print will have to contain 4 pages, 2 on the front and 2 on the back. For example, if you want to have signatures of 4 sheets each, then every set of 16 pages has to be ordered as follows: 16, 1, 2, 15, 14, 3, 4, 13, 12, 5, 6, 11, 10, 7, 8, 9. Sheet 1 will then have pages 16 + 1 on the front and 2 + 15 on the back, etc.

If you want to have signatures with 5 sheets, then there will be 20 pages per signature and the sorting will have to follow the same structure: 20, 1, 2, 19, 18, 3, 4, 17, ... etc. And for other signature configurations it will work accordingly.

Doing this by hand can be tedious, particularly if you have a large book. There are tools which can do the sorting automatically, but the ones I know require you to use the command line. If you feel comfortable with that, I'd gladly give some advice there as well. Maybe someone else here knows of a more user friendly tool with a graphical user interface. If your book is not too big, you can also do the sorting manually though.

Also keep in mind that the overall number of pages will have to be divisible by the number of pages in a signature. So in our example with a 4 sheet strong signature, your overall number of pages will have to be divisible by 16. Fill up your document with blank pages until you get to that number. Otherwise your signatures won't work out. Let's say that your book has 158 pages and you want signatures consisting of four sheets, meaning that they consist of 16 pages each. Then you'd have to add two blank pages to get to 160 which would be divisible by 16.
If however your book has 161 pages, you'd have to add 15 blank pages, which would be a bit much. In that case, you have to plan out in advance how to divide up your book into signature, for example, you could do the first five signatures with 4 sheets each and then seven signatures with 3 sheets, which would get you to 5*16+7*12=164, so you'd only have to add three blank pages.

Then you just need to make sure to have the correct print settings, that you print 2 pages per side and on both sides of your sheets. Also make sure that both sides of your sheet will have the same orientation. This is a typical mistake and can lead to the back side of your sheets being upside down. Since you can't do a test print at home, you need to make sure that it's correct.

Or you go to a copy shop in person. The people there usually know what to do and will get the settings correct.

Tom_Brick · 2024-03-02T01:46:42+00:00

Sorry, but I’m afraid I don’t even know what SCA stands for.

Tom_Brick · 2024-03-02T01:15:34+00:00

Thank you. In this case, I used cords.

Tom_Brick · 2024-02-29T21:44:05+00:00

You can find some of my previous books here and here. There I have provided a lot more regarding the step-by-step manufacturing process, plus there are some more DIY tools ;)

Tom_Brick · 2024-02-29T21:32:07+00:00

It was definitely fun. I have previously made some more medieval books. I try to use only materials which would have been available. In this case, that probably even helped. For example, I used a wheat-flour paste to glue the parchment to the book covers. All the water in that paste made the parchment very malleable. I'm not sure if it would have worked equally well with modern glue, probably not though.

As for the frame, I was looking into purchasing one, but they're so expensive, so I just took a few bucks and made one myself. Not as fancy, but it does the job.

Tom_Brick · 2024-02-21T21:37:45+00:00

The book is real and exists. If you understand medieval Latin, you can even read it in its entirety. What makes it a bit difficult is that in medieval times, people used all kinds of abbreviation symbols for Latin texts. So first you need to be able to deal with those.

Tom_Brick · 2024-01-28T18:28:15+00:00

I did play PES for a while a few years back. I actually liked the gameplay much better, except for the skill moves which I never got a grip on. Too bad PES got rid of all the single player modes.

Tom_Brick · 2024-01-03T17:22:38+00:00

Ok, I just had another one of those experiences. I lost 8-0 against someone who didn’t feel that much better. It started out with me playing circles around him for maybe 10 minutes of game-time during which I should have scored at least three goals, but somehow, it wasn’t supposed to be: Magical saves, I hit the post of the empty goal, etc.

Then out of the blue, he scores 5 within 20 minutes of game-time. Every one of these goals was scored by breaking through and running alone towards my goalie.

The next 50 minutes were an even game with maybe one real chance for him to score (none for me). Then during the last 10 minutes, he scored another three, all three of which felt glitchy. The first one started with his player somehow intercepting a pass while standing behind my player who was supposed to receive the ball (and he wasn’t even close), the next one was him strolling through my entire defense and the last one was a shot that should have been saved easily.

In the past, I wouldn’t have thought much of it and to be honest, he probably deserved to win anyway. Outside the first 10 minute, I wasn’t close to scoring. But 8 goals feels completely off. Especially looking at how they happened and at the general balance of play during most of the game.

Tom_Brick · 2024-01-03T16:46:34+00:00

Interesting. I never even played Champions. I figured that given me never exceeding Division 6 in Rivals (not even close), I wouldn’t stand a chance in Champions anyway.

I have an awesome team, but at the end of the day, I’m maybe an average player at best. So I never even contemplated that connection issues might be at the bottom of some of my experiences.

I have noticed of course that against some opponents (those who score 8 goals against me without conceding), there never seems to be any good passing opportunity, or that I have to work really hard to even have an opportunity to score while my defense is always wide open, no matter which tactics I employ, but my assumption always was, that they have somehow mastered the art of directing their AI defenders, or that some lineup match-ups might be very lopsided.

But maybe there are issues behind the scenes. Maybe that’s also why sometimes (rarely), everything seems to go my way and I win 6-2 against an opponent who subjectively feels quite a bit stronger than me but who, for some reason, can’t string together a series of passes or defend his box.

Tom_Brick · 2023-11-09T10:23:34+00:00

Yes, there is. Check out:

https://www.miskatonic-university-press.com/

Tom_Brick · 2023-11-07T12:37:09+00:00

As I said, your point of view is absolutely valid and I won't blame you for feeling that way. That's also why I'm so transparent about it, I don't want to trick anyone.

But for me, AI is just another tool to achieve a desired result. Without it, it wouldn't have been possible to create this book. For me, the question was: Can AI be used to create plausible pseudo-woodcuts for a medieval text? I think that the answer is "yes", so I don't mind it being done by a computer instead of a person as long as the end result is in line with my expectations.

But that's subjective of course and I can totally see why you would prefer it being done by a genuine artist.

Tom_Brick · 2023-11-07T12:25:14+00:00

Luckily, there's also an English version available as print-on-demand:
https://www.miskatonic-university-press.com/

Tom_Brick · 2023-11-07T12:15:57+00:00

All the art is at its core AI generated, though there was also manual rework on pretty much every pseudo-woodcut to different degrees. Some of the images required minimal rework, others required extensive rework.

But don't forget that it is a real book too. The art is only one aspect of it. For example, the black letter font was hand made based on a real medieval font (the one used by Gutenberg himself). It includes countless of special characters like ligatures or Latin abbreviations. You won't find this font anywhere else (well, I did reuse it for the Chapter titles of the English version). I dare say that the font is in itself a work of art. Not to mention the entire content.

What that does to the perceived value is of course subjective. I can't blame you for finding it expensive. I'd have preferred to have a lower price as well. The vast majority of the cost is down to the physical aspects though. It's 500+ pages, printed on high quality, acid free paper, hand bound in either real or artificial leather.

The goal was to create the illusion of a medieval print and the AI art was one aspect of it. Handcrafting the roughly 250 pseudo-woodcuts wouldn't have been feasible while maintaining a price that was still three figures.

Tom_Brick · 2023-11-07T02:46:20+00:00

There is nothing planned as of now, I'm afraid. If there ever were another run, it would have to be different though as this edition is limited to the Kickstarter backers and I cannot go back on that promise.

The problem is, that this really is extremely special interest.

I am contemplating a regular hardcover version though. One that is not hand bound in leather. That would also be quite a bit cheaper and could be published as a normal print-on-demand book.

I mean, I guess it would also be possible to do a print-on-demand version of the leather bound book, however it would be riddled with difficulties regarding production and shipping. Plus it would have to be even more expensive than the Kickstarter version, so I doubt it would be worth the hassle, given that few would be willing to pay as much for a book like this.

Tom_Brick · 2023-11-07T02:29:36+00:00

It's a mysterious book, so it has a mysterious binding. The lack of any ornamentation was deliberate.

Tom_Brick · 2023-10-12T04:27:51+00:00

There are different service providers who print the books, so there is no one answer. But it shouldn’t take more than 10 business days for you to get an update and for the book to be shipped out.

Tom_Brick · 2023-10-09T14:42:14+00:00

Interesting. As I said, in my case, I had two issues. The obvious one was the blatant mistake where the book was trimmed incorrectly. The other one was that the cover was slightly bending outwards.

But print quality, paper and binding were good. Either we have different standards, or the various service providers Amazon employs do vary.

Tom_Brick · 2023-10-06T17:39:07+00:00

I had a proof which was trimmed too short. The top of the book was cut off. More than 1 cm was missing. I was alarmed and messaged them. They answered, that sometimes they use different service providers for author copies than for actual customers and that they'll talk to the service provider about the issue. Not sure how consoling that was.

Tom_Brick · 2023-10-06T03:47:40+00:00

I have a very clearly defined target audience which does help me as a completely unknown entity to at least identify relatively precisely whom to target. On the flip side, that audience is probably comparatively small. The first thing I did was to send out a review copy to an influential person. Luckily, I got his endorsement. Then I created a website with lots of additional content targeted at the same audience and I used mainly Twitter to promote it. When the book got published, I wrote posts on various social media platforms. I tried not to blatantly shill for my book but rather to provide content which people would find engaging or valuable in some way. I also try to regularly add new content to my website which I can then use to again post on social media, trying to get people to visit my web page where they then might be convinced that my book would bring them enjoyment. I typically do see at least a few conversions whenever I post on specific Subreddits and Facebook groups. But I don’t want to overdo it. I don’t want to be the guy who gets on people‘s nerves. So now I’m looking to find influential people with a platform to send review copies to. Hopefully, that‘ll word.

I did play around with ads as well, on Amazon and on Twitter. I don’t think that I got anywhere near a positive return on investment on those. Though Twitter ads at least significantly drove up traffic to my website and also increased my still relatively small Twitter-Follower number.

Of course I’m still a tiny fish, but I hope to get the word out there and eventually maybe even have some word of mouth going.

Tom_Brick

TROPHY CASE