Interest in a physical copy of the Wario Land 4 book?

July 24th, 2012

Hello Readers,

A quick update on the Wario Land 4 book. I did a page count today and the book is 342 pages long. Include all the visual references (diagrams, screenshots and video), and the final tally should be around 450 pages. There will be a total of around 30 long-form game design essays, 20 long-form level design essays and a handful of topical essays. I currently only have 3 more articles to finish editing. My plan is to release in October.

I have one dilemma though, and I’m hoping you can help me. I’ve been contemplating scrapping the physical release and just selling an e-book (PDF) through the website. The main problem is that the book includes a wealth of reference material (pictures, video, hyperlinks) which I can’t put in the book. That is to say, Amazon’s Createspace service doesn’t offer mixed black and white and colour printing. And even if they did, the book would probably be at least $USD20. As for a full colour book, I’d have to charge upward of $50 just to not lose money. Black and white printing of video game screenshots is unsatisfactory at best. My plan is to provide a reference guide which the reader can download off the site for free. This way, when they come to a reference in the printed book, they can load up their computer and look at the image or video. Again, this is less them ideal.

Personally, I would make more profit from the book (not that I’m expecting to make any money), if I were to sell it direct as opposed to going through Amazon which takes a decent cut. I would also need to spend another week or 2 creating the reference guide.

In an e-book format, I can embed all the images into the book, like a webpage. Videos would be hyperlinks located at the bottom of the page, as you see with in-page referencing. For readers reading the e-book on a computer, smart phone or tablet, it would only take a simple click to load the video in a web browser.

I still haven’t confirmed on price yet, but I’m considering charging $8 for the e-book and, if the demand is suffice, $12 for the physical copy.

So, that’s the situation. If you’d prefer to purchase a physical copy of the book, then please leave a message in the comments or you can email me at danielprimed @ gmail dot com. If I were to print the book, would you want me to include the images too? This would increase the book’s price.

As always, I apologise for the constant delays. I’m certain that you’ll be pleased with the improvement in quality. Expect excerpts to be posted in late September.

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