Browsable Books on Your Itch Page
How I did it and where I got the idea/tools
The entire Songbirds ttrpg is now viewable, explorable, and readable *on* the itch page. I think that’s cool, and it’s something I’m excited to do and will continue to do for different projects. HTML is kinda cool, who woulda thunk?
Hey everyone. I’m someone who strives for a good presentation. Do I always succeed at that? Hard to say. But I strive for it and am always looking for new ways to present things as a solo-creator. I don’t have a lot of skills outside of writing. I can’t draw, paint, or create much with my hands. I have minimal coding experiences, I learned graphic design/layout by browsing pinterest and recreating things that excited me. And I learned game design by throwing things at the wall until something stuck and then by drilling into that spot only to find that behind the wall was a space that shouldn’t exist, and now I’m lost in there. Help, please. I NEED TO GET OUT OF THE WALLS.
But I’ll save the yapping for after the really quick tutorial. So, I got the idea from the Manifesto Jam 2022. Which you should check out. Really great zines.
You need to use this EZM reader. The itch page has a great tutorial on it. So just go there and download it and read the zine.
And then you’ll also need this EZM hack turotial. This shows you how to add custom page counts. For your smaller zines/books, what’s available in EZM when you download it will be all you need. But for bigger books you’ll have to do some HTML editing using notepad (it’s really easy and not scary at all, I promise).
Export your PDF as PNGs, rename them according to the EZM tutorial, edit the HTML according to the EZM hack tutorial, zip it all into a file, upload it to itch, and viola.
That’s it.*
*you can also fiddle with background colors and things like that for the EZM reader, but all of that is covered in the first tutorial <3
Like making gifs to enhance the original The Wizards and the Wastes itch page, it’s not complicated stuff, it just requires time (THE CRUSHING COGS!!) and the patience to use that time.
And well, photoshop, for the gifs. It does take that or another program like it. But the beauty of HTML is you just need notepad, which comes free with your Windows PC. Mac probably has something like it too. I’m sorry, I don’t know much about Macs.
If this kind of thing is cool to you, I implore you to check out the manifesto jam, read as many as you can, and rate them. Rate the tutorial zines too. Then experiment! HTML is ridiculously robust and a coding language that has TONS of turotials. HTML is what I used to make The Sun King’s Palace “game.”
With these tools, you can really push presentation to ridiculous levels. Look at what Char is doing with the Daisy Chainsaw itch page! It’s a legit website page! Like, idk, I’m so inspired by the amazing art other people create and as a fan of presentation that also includes how I *get* to that art. When I look at a website or a store page and get jealous before I even read the book? That’s the good stuff.
If you made it this far, go download Songbirds and rate it. Sub to my newsletter/blog here. And then treat yourself to some candy or something. You deserve it. If you’re feeling extra generous, I’ve been running a little sale on itch to raise funds for laser hair removal. I’ve been transitioning for almost a year and this is a very exciting step in that journey. It just happens to be very expensive, which sucks. But, such is life.
Until next time~
This is sick. I love seeing new ways of distributing and presenting TTRPG content. It's such a flexible medium, I think we don't appreciate how much more we can do with it.
Hi Snow,
I'm not sure if it's due to the large book size (BIG OL' FILE), but when I full screen it (it's a little hard to read normally, kinda small - I can do it, but it's not *easy*), it gets a lil wonky, chunks of pages stick together (screengrab: https://imgur.com/a/ckoyRRn). Maybe it's just me, but I thought I'd give you some feedback =)