Introducing Press Run, the Limited Run Games Book Imprint

September 29 2022

Introducing Press Run, the Limited Run Games Book Imprint

By Jeremy Parish, Media Curator

If you stop to think about it, video games and books really have more in common with each other than with any other form of entertainment. After all, they’re the only two mediums in which you, the user, have full control over the experience. You watch film and listen to music in the sequence and at the pace at which its creators chose to present them to you. But with both games and books, you get to choose how you enjoy the work before you. Is lingering over a page to savor some perfectly crafted words any different than wandering off the critical path of an open-world RPG to drink in the details? What is skimming a dull chapter to get to the good stuff but simply the analog version of speed running a game to reach the boss as quickly as possible?

What I’m saying is that it makes perfect sense for Limited Run Games to publish books in addition to games. In fact, we’ve been doing it on and off for a few years now. In addition to the huge retrospective books that came packed in with deluxe editions of games like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Monkey Island Anthology, and Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1, we’ve also produced a handful of standalone publications like Limited Run: The Complete Run Vol. I. Those releases turned out to be so popular that we’ve decided to make a habit of it. Beginning today, Limited Run will be publishing new standalone books on a monthly basis. We’ve even created a dedicated imprint for this effort: Press Run.

Why “Press Run” and not “Limited Run Books”? Well, despite their similarities, books aren’t games, and we don’t intend to approach them the same way that we do games. We’ve learned a lot with the books we’ve shipped over the past year or two, and perhaps the most important thing is that they need to be presented and delivered on their own terms. That means no limited printings outside of special one-time collector’s editions; our plan for the standard editions of our books is to keep them in print for as long as demand exists. If a book sells out, we’ll reprint it; in fact, two of the three publications we’re launching today along with the Press Run imprint (Super NES Works 1991 and Virtual Boy Works) are second editions of books that debuted a year ago and promptly sold out. Those books’ deluxe slipcover editions won’t be reprinted, but we plan to keep the standard editions of these books on sale for as long as you want to read them.

Some other differences: We generally won’t pre-sell books. Rather than offer preorders for upcoming releases, Press Run will only begin taking orders once we have a book in-hand at our warehouse for rapid dispatch. That includes collector’s editions, too! So, this November, you’ll be able to order the standard and deluxe edition of NES Works 1987 and (barring some sort of shipping crisis) have your purchase in hand in time for the holidays.

The name Press Run has an additional meaning: It’s the term for a production run of printed publications. Actually, it’s a triple entendre; “Press Run” was the instruction you saw on the title screens of TurboGrafx-16 and PC Engine software, prompting you to press your controller’s Run button to launch the game. In other words, it’s the perfect name for a book imprint that connects the worlds of print and gaming.

Naturally, the Press Run label will focus on books about video games and game-related topics. Although the line will be frontloaded with books about the medium’s history, by the end of next year you can expect to see a much wider selection of approaches represented: Books on collecting, personal memoirs, and even a novelization. Oh, and you can expect to see a quarterly magazine kick off soon, too.

We’re putting our all into this label. Creating books has been a lifelong aspiration for me. As a kid, I wanted to write comic books and novels; as a fresh college grad, I wanted to create books of any kind, even though everyone kept talking about how print was dead and the internet was the only future that existed. I’m happy to say they were dead wrong, and Limited Run has given me and Jared Petty the opportunity to prove it with Press Run, the same way that Josh and Douglas proved the appeal of physical games with Limited Run.

Even better, Press Run gives us an opportunity to allow other aspiring authors to bring their own books to life. Our third and final launch title today brings Stefan Gancer’s meticulously researched passion project The History of Sunsoft into print; in the coming months, you’ll see more books from a variety of authors ranging from former games journalists like Chris Kohler (Collecting Squaresoft Games) to ex-game producer Mark Flitman (It’s Not All Fun and Games). Although Jared and I will certainly continue writing and publishing our own projects through Press Run, the bulk of our efforts for the imprint centers around reviewing, editing, designing, and printing other authors’ work.

I believe that just about everyone has a book inside of them waiting for the chance to get out. We want Press Run to be an avenue to help make that escape possible—to do whatever it takes to help polish, perfect, and print authors’ dream projects. And, of course, we hope to make it easier for interested readers like you to find them. As Press Run’s line grows, we plan to bring these works to you in as many different ways as possible—through mass market editions, digital versions, perhaps even audio books.

We love video games, and we love books. Books about video games? Yeah, obviously. Buckle up. It’s gonna be a literate ride.