Sorry for the massive gap since the last entry, life has a way of happening. I've been working on the digital and physical proofs of my upcoming novel, Days Too Dark, and there have been some interesting complications. Beyond that there's been a massive spanner thrown into my plans in the form of a new girlfriend, so I've been trying to get to know her while also trying to figure out just what the hell I'm going to be doing with myself next year. With all that's going on, I haven't really had much time to do much of anything remotely video game related, which is just...
For those who've been following, my book, Days Too Dark, will be released next month - just in time for Christmas, so why not buy it as a gift for the post apocalypse fanatic in your family? But seriously though, I have been putting some serious time and effort into it, and it's proving to be a really interesting and challenging project. I've had a great team working on it though, so even though we've encountered more than our fair share of hurdles we always managed to find a way over, or around, them. The biggest hurdle, that we're all going to have to deal with though, is how much I'm going to have to sell it for.
The thing with Amazon is that they're a business and they're looking to make a profit. Shock horror, I know. I'll give you a minute to collect yourself. The point is that they're happy to print my book and sell it for me, but they're going to make damn certain that they'll make a profit on it. Now, this set up isn't that big of a deal for most books - they're simply a cover and a word doc with some fancy formatting. This is an easy sell because because the amount of effort and costs involved on Amazon's part are relatively low, which means they can sell it for a relatively low price as well, but this just isn't the case with Days Too Dark.
My book is an epistolary novel, which means that it's laid out like an actual real world journal and that each page is made to look like an actual hand written journal. Now, some epistolary journals, such as Warday (thanks again Evan C. for the great recommendation) are epistolary novels but set out like a typical book - which is fine. But I wanted something that was more than a normal book, I wanted something that readers could pick up and engage with in a way that revealed more to them about the world they were reading about than just words alone could. Days Too Dark has a story, obviously, but it's also cram packed full of artwork and other artifacts from the world that have been crammed in there. If you just read the story on it's own, you'll get a pretty great story... if I'm allowed to be so humble, but you'll be missing out on a lot of detail. There are details that are placed in the drawings and inserts that give hints to the narrators state of mind, or of the truth of a matter that he's unaware of or simply not willing to write about.
So I didn't fork out thousands of dollars for artists and graphic designers just for shits and giggles, I actually paid all that coin to create a deeper and more enriching experience for those that read the story. The downside of all this is that I'm not going to be able to charge the same sort of prices as others who sell eBooks and print books on Amazon - not even close. Even with the price differences between eBooks and print books, there's going to be a massive difference. For Amazon to make money on this goliath of a book, which has a full color picture for every page and comes in at over 600mb for the eBook, they're going to have to sell it for a pretty steep price.
Now, straight away that means that I'm going to lose out on some readers - which is fine, I get that. There's going to be a large percentage of people who will see the price of this book, which is published by an indie author, and just refuse to even think about it, and that's cool. It's stupid, but it's cool. If you're comparing this book to *just* a text-based book, then yes - the price does seem absurdly steep. But if you take into account all the artwork and other visual elements that're included, you'll realize that you're getting more than *just* a text-based book.
So you'll pay more but you'll also get more - which always makes sense. I'm also working on a competition with some mates over in the states to give away a few copies of the book as well, but we're still finalizing all the details there so I'll have to keep you posted on all of that. Beyond that, everything is progressing as it should and I'm already looking at the next project that I'll be working on, which thanks to an over enthusiastic fan, has been decided for me. I'll have to tell you about that next time though, because this post has already spiraled into much more than I'd originally intended.
I was going to write about the new girlfriend, but then common sense came up and beat the shit out of me - who wants someone writing about them on the internet when you've only been dating a month? Madness...
Until next time!