The Gaming Den

So it turns out that getting an ISBN costs $125. That's bad. On the other hand, I can apparently put it on Amazon for sale without one. That's good. But Amazon has price minimums based on how large the file is, so the price for the pdf may be $1.99 or even $2.99. That's bad.

-Username17

I can see that being annoying, but it's still only three quid - anyone who was already saying "I totally intend on buying it" (like... everyone here?) is still like to. And it would still, presumably, be cheap enough that enough people would go "Sure, I'll spend some change on checking it out."

I mean, sure, they might decide to download it for free, first, to make sure that's $2-3 well spent, but seeing as you're okay with that too... *shrug*

Unless there's something I'm missing?

And, hey, if you make a couple hundred then you can buy an ISBN.


Also, Dream Vision should be usable while dead.

http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/sword ... f/center/5

Lulu.com lets you put up a PDF for free. There may be a limitation on that, but its something I'd look into once the PDF is done.

FrankTrollman wrote:So it turns out that getting an ISBN costs $125. That's bad. On the other hand, I can apparently put it on Amazon for sale without one. That's good. But Amazon has price minimums based on how large the file is, so the price for the pdf may be $1.99 or even $2.99. That's bad.

-Username17

Do an online fundraiser to buy an ISBN number and add the names of the people that donated to the credits for the book?

FrankTrollman wrote:So it turns out that getting an ISBN costs $125. That's bad.

Dammit Frank, I can paypal you $125 like right now for the honor of having paypal'd you $125. Srsly.

OK, so I got some ISBNs. It turns out that they sell them for $125 each or $250 for ten. So I have ten ISBNs. If other people want some for something, I can give them out. In order to get them, I had to register as a publishing imprint. So now I am Blackguard Press.

I have mostly got InDesign figured out. Except that it's making me do all my tables separately because I can't get the styles to apply properly. I don't know what that's about. But in any case, the book is going to have functioning book marks as well as illustrations. Clocks in at a bit over two hundred pages. Probably be about 215 once I get the index in (and the index will be in).

If there is enough demand, I have sketchy outlines for nine other books. Yes, I went ahead and drew up a dream list of filing out my entire quota of ISBNs if it comes to that. The current outline is for three books in the Power Sources Series, which has a Dark Reflection book, a Dreamlands book, and a Mictlan book. Then there's a Historicals books. This includes "Into the Sundown: After Sundown from Waterloo to Bleeding Kansas", "Nowhere to Hide: After Sundown in the Age of Exploration", and "Long After Sundown: Raygun Gothic Roleplaying". And finally, concept books about types of campaigns: one on Crime, one on War, and one on Monster Hunters.

-Username17

consider Power Sources and "raygun-gothic" to be in the highest of demand.

I would suggest you use all 10 of the ISBN's yourself - it sounds like you have enough material.

Would you mind giving a brief description of the steps you had to go through to register your publishing imprint?

echo

Raygun-gothic?

Fuck yes.

Questions of ignorance:

Can someone define Raygun-gothic, ISBN (and why it's important), and the Age of Exploration for me?

...You Lost Me wrote:Questions of ignorance:

Can someone define Raygun-gothic, ISBN (and why it's important), and the Age of Exploration for me?

An ISBN is a really long, unique number for each published book.

It all goes into a FUCKING HUGE catalogue where you can look up the title, and from there the ISBN.

I know. I've used it.

Age of Exploration, for my money, would be Renaissance onwards. When mortals actually started going long distances. Voyages, actually finding out what the fuck the bottom of Africa looked like, Christopher Columbus, and so on.

ISBN: These are the serial numbers that published books have. If you don't have one, you aren't in the giant database, you're not in the giant database. It's a 10 digit number and it is international. Your ISBN in Florida is the same as your ISBN in Hamburg. The ISBN uniquely identifies your publication. And by uniquely, I mean uniquely - there is a different ISBN for a hardcover publication than there is for a softcover or e-book publication of the same manuscript. When you order by ISBN, you get exactly what you're looking for, and nothing else.

Anyway, the ISBNs are maintained by Bowker, which is a private (I think for-profit) agency. And to get an ISBN you have to register with them. It's a fairly simple process, where you go over to www.myidentifiers.com and register an account. For that, you'll need to give them a publishing imprint, which is just a name you make up and put it into a blank space. But part of the registration process is that it goes and checks against all the other people who have publishing imprints, so you have to pick a name no one else has. Also: you're kind of stuck with it, since as far as I can tell the publishing imprint you bought the ISBNs under appears attached to whatever books you publish with those ISBNs (there may be a way to change that information, I haven't looked into it).

The Age of Exploration covers a period between the 15th and 17th centuries where people started making long ocean voyages combined with systematic mapping efforts that brought pretty much everyone in the world in contact with each other. This is when the Portuguese map the Hon of Africa and bring Europe in contact with India, the Spanish sail to the New World, and the Russians reach the ends of Siberia. The period involves literal lost cities as well as a lot of adventurers killing brown people.

Raygun Gothic is a form of "retro futurism". It's a modern take on the future as imagined by people in the 20th century. Laser pistols, rockets with fins, invading aliens, space suits with shoulder pads. The whole bit. The year 2160 as imagined by people living in 1960, as told by people in 2011. That sort of thing. For an After Sundown period piece, it would draw on source material like Jason X, Leprechaun 4, Event Horizon, Hellraiser: Bloodline, and Predator. So there would be spaceships. And rayguns. And demons.

-Username17

Is that different from "retro-futuristic"?

The Bagheera's basic Clout should probably be Clinging. They're already fucking strong in War Form, and cats are well known for acrobatics (more than raw strength, anyway).

---

Based on Kaelic's questions, is there going to be more explanation of how power dice pools are calculated? I'd like to know if a luthier can use her Artisan specialization when playing the song of Missing Voice on a violin. Or if Magnetism's bonus can apply to a Willpower-based Command. If you give me the basic shape of your intent, I'd be happy to write a first draft.


Oh, and Dream Vision should be usable while dead. I'm not going to shut up about this until you tell me to.

FrankTrollman wrote:So there would be spaceships. And rayguns. And demons.

-Username17

So... Doom?

Guyr Adamantine wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:So there would be spaceships. And rayguns. And demons.

-Username17

So... Doom?

Doom or something like it should be canon in the futuristic setting.

Also, Plants vs Zombies needs to be canon (well, the plants need to be made scarier). All that needs are evil plants with built-in ranged weapons, though.

So I'm currently walling on trying to get the epub version up on iBooks. Steve Jobs is a raging asshole who insists on me having a new Mac before I can upload a book to his store. I think my sister has one. Maybe she can get it up. It's supposed to be purchasable from Amazon in a day or two. The Kindle format makes it really small and maybe not as pretty - but I can get it out for 99 cents, which is a plus.

The torrent of course goes up immediately. It is Here.

I'm going to sleep now, but I'm seeding. And I'll try to figure out how to put it up on other ebook sellers when I wake up.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:So I'm currently walling on trying to get the epub version up on iBooks. Steve Jobs is a raging asshole who insists on me having a new Mac before I can upload a book to his store. I think my sister has one. Maybe she can get it up. It's supposed to be purchasable from Amazon in a day or two. The Kindle format makes it really small and maybe not as pretty - but I can get it out for 99 cents, which is a plus.

The torrent of course goes up immediately. It is Here.

I'm going to sleep now, but I'm seeding. And I'll try to figure out how to put it up on other ebook sellers when I wake up.

-Username17

Right below the credits:

All photographs remain the property of their respective creators and may be reproduced or modified only with attribution. Text may be reproducd in whole or in part with or without attribution for any purpose.

No specific comments on the content at this time, but I'll happily seed the torrent for an indefinitely long period of time. I like the idea and I'm completely on board with the information communism approach.

You really shouldn't have "Empty Ones" and "Hollow Ones" be different organizations. That is straight fucked.

What color is Gloom? Maya is blue and green, Limbo is Grey, Gloom is currently sounding like probably also grey. You should make it white or red or something.

Limbo is red.

How do you figure? As far as I can tell, Limbo is made of ashes, concrete, and broken glass-- all of which are white, black, or grey.

Orion wrote:How do you figure? As far as I can tell, Limbo is made of ashes, concrete, and broken glass-- all of which are white, black, or grey.

Limbo is "on fire". So a lot of it looks like this:



But a lot of it looks like this:



If you're in an area where it is too misty to see far, and everything is gray, you could plausibly be anywhere. Things in Limbo mostly glow orange and red, things in Maya mostly glow blue and green, and things in the Gloom mostly glow silvery pale blue like moonlight or TV ghosts.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:So I'm currently walling on trying to get the epub version up on iBooks. Steve Jobs is a raging asshole who insists on me having a new Mac before I can upload a book to his store. I think my sister has one. Maybe she can get it up. It's supposed to be purchasable from Amazon in a day or two. The Kindle format makes it really small and maybe not as pretty - but I can get it out for 99 cents, which is a plus.

The torrent of course goes up immediately. It is Here.

I'm going to sleep now, but I'm seeding. And I'll try to figure out how to put it up on other ebook sellers when I wake up.

-Username17

Looks good. The Troglodyte illustration is especially evocative. Seeding as we speak.

My only complaint is with typesetting: the 'sidebars' can be confusing when they exceed the width of the column and edge into unrelated text. Pages 100 & 101 are examples. Oh, and I just noticed that Bagheera get clinging and Dream Vision can be used while dead.