That's a good question. I can't imagine, seeing as how bookbinding and the library system have nothing in common.

*peer*

Well, the two kinda go hand in hand.

But yeah.

As for your changes, I like the additions, but I'm confused on the necessity of combining come of the abilities... Is there an actual limit as to how many abilities a skill has or some other reason that the additions you've suggested can't just be added to the current list? I don't mind the idea of printing press being lowered at all, before my character Transed bookbinding, finding someone to make copies was an annoying hassle. I'm not sure the page lowering is necessary, I think with the much lower suggested outlay, that demand for bigger books will go up all on its own with no further incentive.

Maybe a little bit, but not much. People simply don't write that much to fill 100 pages of a huge book.
(Speaking in generalities, I know that SOME people do)

There are at current 23 abilities in Bookbinding from Inept to Trans, and I used that formula and how many lessons it takes to get each ability as my formula. I wanted my version of the skill to have the same number of abilities. So I combined some for that reason. I also combined some of the books in what I consider logical ways because, in my mind, the books were spread out too far, and by the time you reached the bigger books, you were putting in too many lessons for something too simple without adequate reward for the effort you put into it. You'll notice that all of the books that are combined have the same number of pages as the other books they are combined with-- I have paired the personal and organizational books based on page length.

Lowering the page numbers was an idea along with lowering the gold outlay. If I had to choose one I would certainly choose a much lower gold outlay, but I thought I'd include both ideas anyway.

This is certainly partway to the revision I was suggesting, but as I said in the other thread I think it still needs to address the underlying problem of having very little that bookbinders actually create.

Teaching is a nice bonus skill, but I'm not sure that we need to water down language further by allowing the majority of characters to know all the private racial languages. It still doesn't really add anything tradewise, even with the influence bonus (which is yet another in a long list of duplicate bonuses).

I wonder if it is because text is so integrated into every aspect of a text-based game that there's just not enough room left for a text-oriented tradeskill. If everyone can write fluently, and there are already free news postings to be made, free organizational scrolls that don't require payment to write or access from any location, (relatively) free letters and in game mail to write correspondence, and a free book that every character gets on creation to record whatever they like and in as much depth as they like, the 'trade' aspects of a bookbinder are already incredibly marginalized. The customization of fancy books is nice, but quite often it seems to me that it does not work to provide much expression of individuality or identity, when the book is conceptually simply a container for the much more personally expressive words you're writing, and doesn't really extend your own character concept that much. That might be going a bit far, but it does have that feel to me in not being terribly appealing because I'm not going to going around wearing the book, or dropping it in a room for people to come across, or using it, and I suspect in most cases the title is more important than the look of the book.

I don't know what the answer is, but maybe it has to be to move away from scholarship/papercraft and towards... something else, that includes books but isn't defined by them.

Everybody can read any published book just by getting a copy from their local Library.

Why exactly do you think the author should be able to deny me a copy for, say, my order library - and not even on purpose, but just because they've quit the game.

What purpose does that serve? Protecting their right to have their book private? Pft! It's published and even the mechanics point to when I'm getting a copy from the library, I'm getting a copy.

Maybe if they stopped putting the 13 day decay thing on there and let me steal books from the library like I can in real life...

+ Change magic tome into an item that can be worn. I think it's lame the transcendent item doesn't function well for warriors, monks, etc.

+ Allow the tome to be focused on a specific type of scroll wherein it had infinite charges. You would, of course, have the option to keep all scrolls with limited charges versus one scroll with infinite charges. I think it'd add some flexibility.

(The other thing just equals infinite healing scrolls, which is fine but not really "variety")

I still need time to process and haven't spent much time as a bookbinder myself, but I do have a possible solution on the sealed book and copy procedure.

Why not add it so that the author essentially designates a library the custodian of the original?

Make the necessary changes so that librarians may do whatever is necessary to provide a book that can be copied from the library which they have invested powers.

Essentially, this would ensure that works by those who have left the realms may still be copied. It can be made optional so that an author need not give away control over his/her work, but perhaps whatever org is rewarding the work will only reward those works which the original is given to the library's custody.

Another quick thought regarding the skill and sale of bookbinding items.

I think that books should be able to be sold from shops and the author should be set to the individual buying the book. However, there should be a low level skill in Bookbinding where a bookbinder may reset the author of any *empty* book. Since the book would need to be empty, there would be no fear of setting a new author to a written work.

What if the author doesn't want there to be extra copies of their book floating about?

Well, according to HELP GREATLIBRARIES, we are supposed to be able to sell books in shops:

I wish we could. But I'm not sure who would buy them, outside of people already heavily into books. I'm still of the sad belief that with the libraries, not many people will want to dish out the gold for their own copy of a book unless it means something to them.

And I'm still unclear about whether a book is automatically sealed after publication after the 13 mandatory days are up. Since I don't know how it goes, I'd like to reiterate the request that books NOT be automatically sealed after the 13 days. Authors can choose to have it sealed, because as Noola suggested, some authors may not want their books copied. But if they choose NOT to seal it, I'd like for the Librarian to be able to make other copies of the book at request. I know that the Librarian can already make a second copy for the Library itself, but what I'm talking about is the general copying for distribution throughout the basin.

Also, I'd like as an author to have a choice whether my published book goes into the public section of the Library. That way, I can choose to offer my book only by selling copies of it.

Why would the org do that? I mean, for the org, the benefit comes from the culture weight gained when the work is published. Why should the org care if the author wants to let a thousand copies of his or her work be handed out willy-nilly? Or wants to control how they are distributed?

Which thing are you responding to?

That was to Tandrin.

As for your suggestion:

Books are not sealed after the 13 days, but only the author (or the editor one is assigned) can checkout the original and only the original can be copied.

Now, I don't have much of a problem with some sort of mechanic that allows the author to deny or allow general copying rights to the Librarian after the year long lock is over. I just don't want any such thing to be automatic.

I also don't see why ( as I stated in my reply to Tandrin ) such a thing would be monitored on the org level, and if it was, I just wouldn't ever publish anything and the org would miss out on any culture weight I might have contributed. Forcing folks to let their books be copied willy-nilly is wrong, IMO.

There kind of is a choice already as far as publication and distribution goes. If a book is archived only, then it stayes in your library. It doesn't go out to the rest of them. Then the Librarian can put it on the restricted access shelves and only folks with restricted library card acess can get to them. That said, the Library would lose out on the culture weight that publishing your book would have granted and I can't see too many Librarians being willing to spend the 10,000 gold to archive books that don't benefit the Library at all. If you don't want your book distributed in the Library, best just not to give it to a Library in the first place.

Unless they add a mechanic or something, which I just don't see happening. Most libraries only have one copy of any book and the purpose of owning a copy is that you always have access to it.

I am not suggesting that the publishing process or reward to culture be changed at all.

My comment about some orgs perhaps requiring that they be granted custodian over the work is if that org wished to have the power to copy a work as a condition for its rewarding the author with credits or gold prizes as some orgs do. However, it would be the org's choice for the conditions it set for rewarding authors and the author's choice with whether they were willing to let their work be freely copied at the library's discretion.

No, I get that. I just, personally, would never publish anything in a Library that only gave rewards if you give up your rights to control how copies of your book are distributed. So, that Library would lose out on whatever culture weight I would've generated for them.

Not to mention it's extremely annoying to pay 1000 gold for a healing scroll, then accidentally use the one charge on it, and have to buy another.

My bookbinder tries to sell hers fully charged. They're more expensive that way, but you don't have that pesky 'one use only' problem.