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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When it’s done?

April 28th, 2012

Hey guys,

Another book update. In the next month I should finish the final edit of the book. From there I still have a number of articles to add, a visual reference to put together, formatting, book art and all that business. I’m hoping that everything will be finished in 3-4 months, although I have been wrong before…

I know that it’s been a long wait. Originally my plan was to write a short 60-120 page book on Wario Land 4 as preparation for a 300-400 page analysis of Metroid Prime. I reasonably assumed that the Wario Land 4 book would take about 8 months to complete, 4 months writing, 4 months editing. As I started editing in August last year though, the Wario Land 4 book evolved into the planned Metroid Prime book in terms of size and scope. This expansion has been the source of the constant delays. Despite the wait, the final edit is much more fleshed out than the drafts you can find here on the site.

Once I’ve finally completed the book, I’m planning on doing a bit of promotion. So interviews, podcasts, pitching excerpts and so on. I’m not expecting the book to sell very much, but as a radical advocation for games analysis, I’m hoping that I can use it to challenge some of the issues in this space. I hope to talk more about this later.

I’ll also be back to my regular schedule too and have already prepared notes for another 30 posts. Until I’ve finished the book though, it’s still gonna be hush hush around here, so hold tight just a little longer.

I almost forgot to mention that I made a few modifications to the site a few months ago. I installed the Disqus commenting system, redid the tags on each post and changed the categories. Let me know what you think. ^_^

Probably about another 3 months of this…

February 2nd, 2012

Hey guys,

It’s been a good 3 months since my last update here. The good news is that I’m basically on track with the plan I laid out last post. I came back home to Australia in early December and have spent from then until now labouring away all day, almost every day for the past 2 months. I’m one agonising article short of finishing the double edit and have finished all the topical essays. After this I’ve got to re-do much of the first segment of the book, add a handful of extra articles and review everything else. I’m guessing that it’ll take me another 3 months before I’m ready for release. It’s a bit hard to tell since I’m not sure how my free time is gonna pan out when I get back to China next week. The good thing is that I’m fortunate enough to have found a job which offers favourable working hours. I’m thinking that, once formatted, the book will stretch out to 350-400 pages–much more than the 120 or so I assumed this project would take.

I’ve been contemplating what to do after the project is completed and have settled on a return to blogging and to start another book. Actually, I have plans for several books, all of which should be shorter and more topical. I think that I’ll keep hush on that until I’ve actually finished them….For now though, I need to struggle through more editing.

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Tags: blog

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