"Can I get a POD service to print a PDF I bought (UK)" Topic

Background: I've been trying to complete my collection of original Traveller LBBs, and I am just missing the 4 special supplements that originally came with JTAS.

I can find them as commercially available PDFs. I've been through the FAQs on DriveThruRPG and Mongoose but can't find an answer to my question, before I email Mongoose I was wondering if the answer might be found quicker here.

Can I legally send them to a print on demand outfit to print A5 with a card cover, replicating the originals? Just one copy for my own use.

If I can, any UK based recommendations for print on demand services?

Apologies to non-UK respondents, thank you for your help but I only want the UK legal position.

Thanks in anticipation…

It will depend upon the conditions of the licence you bought for the pdfs. For almost all digital products you buy a licence, a right to use the digital version in certain ways and with certain restriction. The licence specifies whether you can produce a physical version and what you can do with it. Most licences do not allow for the transfer of ownership of the licence, and its rights, to another party. It may permit the copying for private use by the licencee. You need to read the licence agreement that Mongoose sold you.

this might help, but does not directly address creating a printed copy of a whole publication you have as a pdf:

link

Doxdirect

Thanks both. The response from Mongoose "With Traveller you can do what you please as long as nothing is sold 🙂"

You can pint them off yourself: print the pages in landscape mode, on A4 sheets, arranging them properly for printing.

I self-published my own war game rule books by double-sided printing them on paper, at an office supply store. For the covers, I printed these, double-sided, on 110# cardstock, landscape mode,folding these in half, stapling the interior pages within, using a deep-throat stapler. It worked well. I sold more than 150 copies, without any complaints from customers.

My rule books clocked in at 96 pages, as anything beyond that will likely fail because they would be too thick. As I recall my 1977 Traveller books were far less than 96 pages, so this method should work just fine.

Doing it yourself, there are no legal issues that I am aware of. By printing them at an office supply store, you need not worry about maintenance on the printers (double-sided printing causes a lot of wear and tear on the fuser units inside the printers/copiers) -- when one printer/copier has issues, you move to another machine which doesn't have issues… It is far less money to use their printers/copiers, than to own and maintain your own.

POD services usually do not offer stapled, cardstock covers. All of the POD services I've seen only offer perfect bound (pages glued to the spine), as well as hard cover bindings. Check with your POD service to see what the minimum number of pages they accept for perfect bound books. Cheers!