Mystic Eye
First Post
Perpetrated Press said:
Thanks bud,
I was glad to help you when you needed and am thrilled to see a second book from you on the way!
[PR MEG] Mystic Eye Games Cover 2 Cover publisher services
Thanks bud,
I was glad to help you when you needed and am thrilled to see a second book from you on the way!
Fee structure?
You haven't mentioned the fee structure. When researching to get fiction published the one piece of advice I've always seen in NEVER pay to have your work published.
How is your service different? Yes you have a distribution network in place, better publishing rates, in house staff... but where do I make my money? This sounds very much like a vanity press kind of deal. Not to say I don't think it can work, I just am very leery of paying some one for what other people will buy. And if it's not good enough to sell to a publisher why should it be good enough to sell on the shelves of my FLGS?
I'm all for making it easier to get my concepts in print, but I still don't see where I benefit besides the ego boost of seeing my name in print.
Respectfully,
Edward J Kopp
You haven't mentioned the fee structure. When researching to get fiction published the one piece of advice I've always seen in NEVER pay to have your work published.
How is your service different? Yes you have a distribution network in place, better publishing rates, in house staff... but where do I make my money? This sounds very much like a vanity press kind of deal. Not to say I don't think it can work, I just am very leery of paying some one for what other people will buy. And if it's not good enough to sell to a publisher why should it be good enough to sell on the shelves of my FLGS?
I'm all for making it easier to get my concepts in print, but I still don't see where I benefit besides the ego boost of seeing my name in print.
Respectfully,
Edward J Kopp
MEG Hal
First Post
Re: Fee structure?
I respect your feelings and the bottom line is we have three imprints already, and at the moment with the licenses we have we are not taking any more imprints, so in that respect if you took the total package you would be paying us to get you in the marketplace but what if you just needed help with layout and a good print quote? We only give you the services you need, only need a printer and want a great price, we can do that for you without any other part of the service. So the advantage is it is customizable to fit your needs, not forced into something we want/need.
Hope that answers your question.
Ceresco said:
I respect your feelings and the bottom line is we have three imprints already, and at the moment with the licenses we have we are not taking any more imprints, so in that respect if you took the total package you would be paying us to get you in the marketplace but what if you just needed help with layout and a good print quote? We only give you the services you need, only need a printer and want a great price, we can do that for you without any other part of the service. So the advantage is it is customizable to fit your needs, not forced into something we want/need.
Hope that answers your question.
Mystic Eye
First Post
Re: Re: Fee structure?
Let me clarify a bit more. One of the reasons the fees are not posted is there are too many variables. We have been responding to individual requests for information that show some cost assumptions. Currently that is the best way.
As to the "vanity press" statement. How do you think most of us got started in this business? We published our own work. Then, as we grew, contracted out to others, writers, artists, etc and grw our team. It would have been nice to have someone to help us avoid the pitfalls of all of this though. There were friends we made in the biz that helped but not officially.
Also, to give you a better understanding, Hal said we are not taking other imprints but that is not 100% accurate. We are simply handling our imprints in a different manner than we were before.
We will be very selective about who we take as an imprint on these deals and why we take them. There will be a very tough approval process for each product we choose to work with in this manner. Your right, if it is not good enough to sell to a publisher it is not good enough for you FLGS but see below. Of course, this is only a portion of what we are offering as Hal noted.
I will address your last questions comments:
There is tremendous benefit if we were to take on your product in this manner (as it is not automatic). First off, if you sell to a publisher you may get paid or get a royalty. In this case, should MEG have taken on the project, you keep the rights and we pass through all the sales minus fees, etc to you, we will not go into details on that here though. You retain all the copyrights but at the same time, if you qualified for this process, you would have an established company to work through. MEG would handle the selected product as if it were its own and your hands would be free to create.
What if you want to produce your own material using what you sold to a publisher, lets say a setting (not that a publisher would take on a new setting these days)?You would probably be out of luck as they would own the rights to the material. You might have to buy back rights your own product.
Also, Lots of people have a few grand to put into producing a game. That is the easy part. What is hard is the resources required to bring it to fruition. Contracts need to be created, Art selected and approved, Rates need to get quoted, ISBNs bought, logged, and assigned, plus lots, lots more. It is a business. You may want to retain your product rights and even have some level of creative control but not really want to manage the rest of it.
This way, you have a company entity of your own and keep your products rights but have access to our resources through us.
It goes way beyond the ego of seeing your name in print.
I am going to go back to the most important thing Hal noted though. This imprint thing is only one very small bit of what we are offering. We will be so very careful with the management of imprinting (in this way) that we do not see doing very much of it but we do see helping folks with lots of printing needs (which we are doing a lot of already) and project management of thier own projects.
Even larger companies get tight on resources and they too can turn to us at that stage if they wished. They may want us to direct the art for a project or need a layout person in a pinch, so on and so on.
I hope that helped ya out with understanding this a bit more. I will answer questions in more detail via email to info@mysticeyegames.com
Thanks,
MEG Hal said:
Let me clarify a bit more. One of the reasons the fees are not posted is there are too many variables. We have been responding to individual requests for information that show some cost assumptions. Currently that is the best way.
As to the "vanity press" statement. How do you think most of us got started in this business? We published our own work. Then, as we grew, contracted out to others, writers, artists, etc and grw our team. It would have been nice to have someone to help us avoid the pitfalls of all of this though. There were friends we made in the biz that helped but not officially.
Also, to give you a better understanding, Hal said we are not taking other imprints but that is not 100% accurate. We are simply handling our imprints in a different manner than we were before.
We will be very selective about who we take as an imprint on these deals and why we take them. There will be a very tough approval process for each product we choose to work with in this manner. Your right, if it is not good enough to sell to a publisher it is not good enough for you FLGS but see below. Of course, this is only a portion of what we are offering as Hal noted.
I will address your last questions comments:
There is tremendous benefit if we were to take on your product in this manner (as it is not automatic). First off, if you sell to a publisher you may get paid or get a royalty. In this case, should MEG have taken on the project, you keep the rights and we pass through all the sales minus fees, etc to you, we will not go into details on that here though. You retain all the copyrights but at the same time, if you qualified for this process, you would have an established company to work through. MEG would handle the selected product as if it were its own and your hands would be free to create.
What if you want to produce your own material using what you sold to a publisher, lets say a setting (not that a publisher would take on a new setting these days)?You would probably be out of luck as they would own the rights to the material. You might have to buy back rights your own product.
Also, Lots of people have a few grand to put into producing a game. That is the easy part. What is hard is the resources required to bring it to fruition. Contracts need to be created, Art selected and approved, Rates need to get quoted, ISBNs bought, logged, and assigned, plus lots, lots more. It is a business. You may want to retain your product rights and even have some level of creative control but not really want to manage the rest of it.
This way, you have a company entity of your own and keep your products rights but have access to our resources through us.
It goes way beyond the ego of seeing your name in print.
I am going to go back to the most important thing Hal noted though. This imprint thing is only one very small bit of what we are offering. We will be so very careful with the management of imprinting (in this way) that we do not see doing very much of it but we do see helping folks with lots of printing needs (which we are doing a lot of already) and project management of thier own projects.
Even larger companies get tight on resources and they too can turn to us at that stage if they wished. They may want us to direct the art for a project or need a layout person in a pinch, so on and so on.
I hope that helped ya out with understanding this a bit more. I will answer questions in more detail via email to info@mysticeyegames.com
Thanks,
Thank you for the clarifications. Please don't be offended by my "vanity press" refrence. Most of my research in getting published has concerned fiction, mostly non-gaming fiction. As far as RPG publishing I understand that it's an entirely different ball game. Yes, many RPG companies started with a group of gaming firends saying "Hey... let's publish our own stuff, it's as good as anything else out there." It's no where as easy getting mainstream fiction published.
As I am currently working on a project with a couple of other writers we will definately be looking at what you have to offer us. I see the benefits of being able to go to MEG and have your expertise where mine may be laking in areas like layout, or finding artists or what have you. As I have more questions I will contact you... thaks again.
Respectfully,
Edward J Kopp
As I am currently working on a project with a couple of other writers we will definately be looking at what you have to offer us. I see the benefits of being able to go to MEG and have your expertise where mine may be laking in areas like layout, or finding artists or what have you. As I have more questions I will contact you... thaks again.
Respectfully,
Edward J Kopp
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