Novel about the death of Adventure Games

[Hakujin]

Hi all!

This week's chapter (7: the almost-as-big meeting) is a little early because, as of tomorrow, i'm taking off for 7 weeks to Japan and India. Wheeeeeeeeeeee! I'll miss you guys, though. Seriously.  :'(

Chapters will still be going up every Friday, but this'll be my last post here until I get back. In the meantime, I thought you guys might want to see a sneak preview of the book, so I've uploaded chapters 1 to 7 in pdf form for you to take a gander at. It's even got an illustration!  :o

As usual, it's all up at www.gamequestnovel.com. I hope you guys are still following and continue to follow while I'm away. But, whether you do or don't, have a great summer.

Leopold

[Hakujin]

Whoa. I'm back. It's been about 10 weeks since I posted here. In Internet time that's like eons. 7 weeks of that was spent in Japan (always fun) and India (crazy, crazy place...). The rest moving to a new city, looking for a job and getting my life back in order.

Think I'll post a bit about my vacation here, if anyone is interested:

One of the most interesting experiences I had was sleeping in a Capsule hotel in Kabuki-cho, one of the sleaziest areas of Tokyo. They're just like they sound - as one Japanese friend said to me 'they're great if you want the experience of sleeping in a coffin!'. But they're more roomy than a coffin and made of 70s off-white plastic (you know, the colour they used to make kitchen appliances out of 35 years ago...), plus it had a radio and TV with pay-per-view porno on it. There were like 3 floors of capsules, just stacked on each other. It was like the matrix - but in off-white kitchen-appliance techno-colour. But the place was nicer than it sounds b/c on the top floor was an onsen with a hot bath, a cool bath (my favourite after a day of lugging luggage around +35 celsius super-humid Tokyo), a steam room and a sauna. I must have spent like an hour there jumping back between the hot and cool pool. I felt so relaxed, after a somewhat crummy mental day, that I imagined all the emotional/physical wear and tear on my body since birth had been completely washed away and I was starting fresh. It was really, really that nice.

Then I got back to my 'capsule' and realized that I forgot my notebook full of my writing on top of a phonebooth in Shin-Yokohama station. FRIG! So much for restarting! Not even 5 minutes of starting fresh and I'm getting damaged! How quickly life jumps in to wear on you. Normally this would have kept me up all night, but I was so relaxed, I went to sleep right away anyway. I went all the way back to shin-yokohama the next day but it was nowhere to be seen. Alas.

Ok, this is turning out long. I'll just stop there, since that was one of the most interesting parts of my trip - besides India which was ALL interesting.

Anyway, I'm back to updating Game Quest myself now (regular updates again!) and wading through the mess of crap I've neglected over the last 2 months to make breathing room to getting the book out. Chapter 17: 'Butt Zits Never Die' went up last night, for anyone who's interested. It's all about DeathMatching.

Deathmatch lit! It's a new genre! Be the first to check it out!

Anyway, it's good to be back. Glad to see you guys haven't changed in my absence!

[esper]

Butt zits? Damn, I just lost the complete desire to read this...

Anyway, I figured I'd stop by and say that I know of a solution that might be much better, although in the end, it will cost more to then end consumer (it costs you nothing)... www.publishamerica.com

Now like I said in my post about how to get published, these guys suck, and everyone, including myself, hates them. however, if you are planning on selling the book yourself, this is premium. They do everything, including make it available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobles, they give it an ISBN and copyright info, etc... The only problem is, being a POD, subsidy publisher (they really aren't but bookstores aren't very discerning in this matter) most bookstores will say "You suck, get out of here" when you approach them about a booksigning or something. However, if you plan to fully self-market the book and sell it on your website, this might be the answer.

[Hakujin]

Hey, thanks for the advice. Sounds like you've looked into this stuff before.

I've looked into a lot of those options, but I decided they probably weren't for me. If I'm going to do this, I want to do it right. Part of the reason I've decided to do it all myself is because I have publishing/graphic design/illustration training and work experience, so I think I can do a better job myself than some POD organization that's just doing it for a job. I've seen some of their design and marketing on those books and while not bad at all, I KNOW I can do a better job. I think they're very reasonable for most authors who want to self-publish because most authors don't have the graphic design/publishing experience and knowledge that I have.

Anyway, this is sort of a test project. I've been running a lit website for about 4 years (it's doing pretty well - www.redfez.net ) and know a lot of good, unpublished authors. I'm toying with the idea setting up a small press after this (assuming the project doesn't totally bomb). I've already got the ISBN, the cover designed, and about a 1/4 of the book laid out. I also have connections with a (somewhat crazy) group of underground authors/zinesters called the Underground Literary Alliance, so I will have help in promotion with that, I hope. I've already made 50 copies of a novella I wrote and hucked it at a few small press fairs, I've almost sold out, so that gives me a bit of confidence.

But, basically, in the spirit of the adventure game and all the cool DIY-ers here, the best way, I think, for me to do this is on my own. Of course, I'd really appreciate any advice from people here. If anyone knows anything about getting things into Amazon...or places/people/reviewers who might be interested in a book like this...  And it sounds like you know a bit about getting things into bookstores. I figured they wouldn't be very open to anything self-published, POD or not. Even small presses (which I will be doing this under - not my name.)

Anyway, chapter 17 has very little to do with Butt Zits, actually. It was just kind of a gimmicky title to interest people in reading. I guess that didn't work too well! 

[esper]

Here's the deal: Bookstores don't want to spend money. If you want to do a booksigning and you have a book that is done by a POD, the publisher has the bookstore pay for every single copy, and normally don't have return policies, which means that the bookstore eats the books they didn't sell. What you have going for you is that everything you are doing is out of pocket, which means you don't have to be quite such a bastard about it (although, if YOU don't want to wind up eating the books, you kinda do)... Call a local bookstore (try a smaller private store first. I started out in a small town that had a tiny bookstore that focused on local authors) and try to set up a book signing. Sell your books to them at a discounted price (I'm not sure what publishers sell their books for pre-consumer... you might need to look into this yourself) and promise a refund on any non-sold items. Try at the library too... In which case, you can sell the books yourself and make full profit. Once word of mouth gets going around and i seems that people are buying your books, a bigger bookstore will gladly accept you on the same terms (discounted price, full refund on unsold product)... That is the ONLY way to get into a bookstore.

Amazon, on the other hand, is IMPOSSIBLE for nonindustry people to get into. The only thing to do would be to pay a marketing company to take care of that for you. You MUST have industry connections in order to have a bok put on any of the major online houses.

Hope this was helpful to you.