As long as Gameprinter makes it easy... I'll go with it! As long as the business never gets in the way of making maps! (for me that is, or course he has to work on his business!) Me, I just want to crank out maps. Finished another last month (nice small world, humans are on the decline, forced inot a large river valley in the cold north, with advanced civilizations of other races pushing on all sides), and have a great one in the works now, really working on a true racial melting pot theory, trying to make a world where there is no dominant race, where interbreading has created numerous sub-types, and humans are not a race so much as the ultimate mongrel mix of many other races, and most of the world is emerging from tribal status, with a few powerful empires forming and driving across large swaths of land, disrupting great tribal nations.
I think POD's are a great service by the way, and think that the time will come when the industry comes to differentiate POD (the technology and the ability to reach niche markets) from the vanity press concept (dumping junk on the market with no selectivity based on making money by collecting fees from the author).
It looks to me like Gameprinter has the right idea here. The RPG industry stuggles with the financial side, and the small publishers have to make serious decisions about what material can go to market due to the concerns they have in significant cash outlays for materials that may or may not sell well. Great stuff ends up not getting to market...
A great example was the recent re-emergence of the Judges Guild. Some of the most innovative maps and fun material of the late 70's and 80's came from the Judges Guild. They come back, so a few really great re-do's, but just can't make the financials work well enough to keep the bigger publishing houses interested, because the materials are nichy, or just not publicized enough (which is also expensive). POD provides the way to reach niche audiences that may number in the hundreds, or a few thousand. The financail risk is minimized as costs are incurred only as a function of taking an order, not as a large pre-investment. A traditional publisher would really struggle making a living taking a risk putting out products for which there may be 1,000 buyers or less.
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