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Post by asterix on Feb 11, 2021 21:01:24 GMT
Well, a quick conclusion must be, a waist of good money and time to buy that book. So the focus is back on track to get a copy of the other compendium book 😉
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Post by segamasterdude on Feb 11, 2021 22:04:12 GMT
Well, a quick conclusion must be, a waist of good money and time to buy that book. So the focus is back on track to get a copy of the other compendium book 😉 The other one is worth buying 👍
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Post by flatapex on Feb 12, 2021 13:14:08 GMT
To be totally honest, a much better book could be made relatively easily. All you need is someone with knowledge of indie publishing on Amazon (to which I would sheepishly raise my hand), a list of all the games that you want to cover (and their various regionally different names) and then methods to obtain decent quality images. Bit of formatting later and away you go.
It would be a massive undertaking for anyone else, but if anyone could, we could
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Post by ian on Feb 12, 2021 14:40:00 GMT
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Post by flatapex on Feb 12, 2021 18:05:55 GMT
The question becomes one of licensing. There are options: 1. basically say its an ebook, as such it is designed for devices such as kindle e-readers, they can’t handle images well enough, it is all text and set expectations right from the start. 2. Engage with Sega, no permission means no book.
I personally would go the route of number 1.
Getting the idea off the ground would actually be surprisingly easy. Certainly more so than writing novels. If there is a desire to put something together as a collective then there is certainly ways it could be done
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Post by mrsmith89 on Feb 12, 2021 20:00:14 GMT
To be totally honest, a much better book could be made relatively easily. All you need is someone with knowledge of indie publishing on Amazon (to which I would sheepishly raise my hand), a list of all the games that you want to cover (and their various regionally different names) and then methods to obtain decent quality images. Bit of formatting later and away you go. It would be a massive undertaking for anyone else, but if anyone could, we could It would be like handbags at dawn trying to achieve this, after hearing the shenanigans that has gone on in the retro gaming world in the last year, it makes mumsnet users look amicable. 🤣🙊
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Post by Sinistral on Feb 12, 2021 20:27:03 GMT
The question becomes one of licensing. There are options: 1. basically say its an ebook, as such it is designed for devices such as kindle e-readers, they can’t handle images well enough, it is all text and set expectations right from the start. 2. Engage with Sega, no permission means no book. I personally would go the route of number 1. Getting the idea off the ground would actually be surprisingly easy. Certainly more so than writing novels. If there is a desire to put something together as a collective then there is certainly ways it could be done I guess the other option to it is just do it for fun and give away a pdf for free and let people get their own copy printed. It depends what your goals are I guess. This gets around the copyright / permission problem and nobody has to worry about publishing / profiteering etc. 🤷♂️
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Post by flatapex on Feb 12, 2021 20:35:46 GMT
To be totally honest, a much better book could be made relatively easily. All you need is someone with knowledge of indie publishing on Amazon (to which I would sheepishly raise my hand), a list of all the games that you want to cover (and their various regionally different names) and then methods to obtain decent quality images. Bit of formatting later and away you go. It would be a massive undertaking for anyone else, but if anyone could, we could It would be like handbags at dawn trying to achieve this, after hearing the shenanigans that has gone on in the retro gaming world in the last year, it makes mumsnet users look amicable. 🤣🙊 Ah mumsnet, my author account is followed by mumsnet madness because one of my reply tweets got hundreds of likes 😂 Took me ages to work out that DH stood for darling husband and not something else 😂
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Post by flatapex on Feb 12, 2021 20:47:00 GMT
The question becomes one of licensing. There are options: 1. basically say its an ebook, as such it is designed for devices such as kindle e-readers, they can’t handle images well enough, it is all text and set expectations right from the start. 2. Engage with Sega, no permission means no book. I personally would go the route of number 1. Getting the idea off the ground would actually be surprisingly easy. Certainly more so than writing novels. If there is a desire to put something together as a collective then there is certainly ways it could be done I guess the other option to it is just do it for fun and give away a pdf for free and let people get their own copy printed. It depends what your goals are I guess. This gets around the copyright / permission problem and nobody has to worry about publishing / profiteering etc. 🤷♂️ The dilemma is what the end goals are/would be. I’ll have a look how big my paperback’s pdf is as reviews of everything will be likely 400+ kindle normalised pages, based on 250-300 words per review. Royalties are tiny, basically pocket change
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Post by mrsmith89 on Feb 12, 2021 20:48:16 GMT
It would be like handbags at dawn trying to achieve this, after hearing the shenanigans that has gone on in the retro gaming world in the last year, it makes mumsnet users look amicable. 🤣🙊 Ah mumsnet, my author account is followed by mumsnet madness because one of my reply tweets got hundreds of likes 😂 Took me ages to work out that DH stood for darling husband and not something else 😂 Hahaha judging by the man haters on there, I'm sure you are right with your first assumption! I thought a DS was a Nintendo console 🤔
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Post by flatapex on Feb 12, 2021 20:53:04 GMT
Ah mumsnet, my author account is followed by mumsnet madness because one of my reply tweets got hundreds of likes 😂 Took me ages to work out that DH stood for darling husband and not something else 😂 Hahaha judging by the man haters on there, I'm sure you are right with your first assumption! I thought a DS was a Nintendo console 🤔 “I sent my DS to school” Just put it on charge like everyone else 😂
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Post by asterix on Feb 13, 2021 8:43:11 GMT
I do not have the skills to do much help , but I gladly give a donation to the costs of the project if needed 👍
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Post by rupert on Feb 13, 2021 10:32:57 GMT
I wrote a review for the recently published Blast annual vol 1. However they managed to edit my review in such a way that I don’t believe it represents my thoughts on the game really. Still not sure if I’m really annoyed or not really bothered as nobody has seen an actual book yet. Last I was told is they were stuck somewhere because of Covid.
I’m just saying this because a joint effort is probably full of potential issues and clashes. Not sure it’s worth it.
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Post by meu2 on Feb 13, 2021 15:53:35 GMT
Yeah a joint effort is unfortunately likely to lead to a lot of issues. You certainly require a strong editor at least to help bring a degree of uniformity and control to proceedings.
I'm also not sure I see the point in a community based eBook either. Why not populate content for the website instead? A big part of a compendium book, for me at least, is to have it printed.
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Post by flatapex on Feb 13, 2021 18:10:38 GMT
As has been mentioned it can be done quickly or well, choosing the latter isn’t an easy path to take and we don’t need low quality publications taking up room and costing fans money.
The other issue is making everything fit, making everyone’s reviews either consistent enough in style or distinctive enough to be able to be unique to that person, that’s before you decide word count and the like.
Publishing itself isn’t that bad, but any money invested is unlikely to be made back, a 99p ebook means about 30p per sale to whoever collects the royalties.
There are plenty of ideas I have thrown around that could be easier and cheaper, including a master system podcast where each guest talks about their ms nostalgia and their five favourite games for example. It could be easier to fill in gaps in the reviews section of the website so more games have reviews, it all depends what suits the site admins
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