Search results

That is a false impression of the market. Because a small number of authors can publish more than a book a year, that does not make that output the standard or worth noting as more than an aberration. At TSR, there were some authors through the early 90s who wrote quickly, but the pace wore on...

How the omnibuses of a work-for-hire series or trilogy are handled would be dictated by the individual contracts. New contracts for authors whose work the IP owner is likely to release in omnibus (Margaret and Tracy, Bob Salvatore, etc) will contain specific terms for omnibus editions, if the...

Absolutely. And many publishers and IP holders exploit this enthusiasm. The rise of social media has made that exploitation more difficult or at least more visible. It's harder to hide the inequity of a studio raking in billions in box office and a comics creator upon whose work the lucrative...

Book royalties are typically tracked by individual book, and that was the standard practice at TSR by 88. An advance is assigned to a specific book, even in a series, with subsequent sales of the individual book tallied against that advance. The alternative is to basket the three books in a...

You were the one who quoted me and then challenged my comments about the typical timeline. Typical. Margaret and Tracy are exceptions. Attempts to cast them as somehow typical for TSR or fantasy in general are misplaced and simply, factually wrong. Your point now seems to be Margaret and Tracy...

Bob is one of the rare authors who is comfortable producing two quality books a year, and has done so for a long time. For most authors that pace is unrealistic. There are other authors who are even faster than Bob. Dan Parkinson, who wrote some later Dragonlance novels, was a machine. His...

Fiction authors are considered above average in speed if they produce one 100,000-word book a year, year after year. A really fast pace is two books in one year. That pace tends to be unsustainable for more than a few years. Sanderson is the exception as a single author, not the rule, and he is...

A typical TSR novel in the 80s and 90s was 90,000 to 100,000 words. Writing a novel a year is a very good pace for an author. Each book requires not just the time to write it (four to six months for the first draft if you are fast), but the time required for multiple revision passes based on...

Fiction publishing deals generally include an advance and then royalties, which you get if the book sells well enough to earn back the advance. The royalty rates TSR paid the fiction authors improved significantly in the late 80s, well after the original six-book Dragonlance deal, but even then...

Getting the books in the trilogy shelved together was one of the reasons management cited for the Awlinson name, which made some sense. But we knew it was a test case. I mean, TSR fiction did not include author names on the spines at the time and the books were already shelved together as a...

Margaret and Tracy came back to work on Dragonlance fiction starting in the late 1980s, with the Tales anthologies. That was a half-step back to the company, not a full step. Freelance editor Pat McGilligan worked well with Margaret in particular and handled a lot of the liaison efforts on those...

TSR management tested out the "house name" idea in the late 1980s with Richard Awlinson (All-in-One, get it?!), on the Forgotten Realms Avatar Trilogy. House names for company-owned series are nothing new. The Stratemeyer Syndicate, for example, had been using them with series such as the Hardy...

It didn't have to be wholesale cheating or financial shenanigans. The company was paranoid about suits from Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, for example, and from other people who had been screwed over in various ways since the company launched. So they wanted to keep all information locked down...

If design or editorial staff asked for sales numbers in the late 80s and early 90s, they were frequently stonewalled or flat-out told by upper management the numbers were not their concern. But then, most information at TSR was handled that way. Communication from upper management to staff was...

Lots of great ideas on your list. If you are looking for more resources on Mezro and Chult, Rich Lescouflair and Will Doyle have a terrific book up on the AL, Lost City of Mezro. Artus Cimber and Nsi (pre transformation) are covered in some of the older fiction, if you want to get a fuller...

The discussion is about a lot more than pay and raising the problems is not "complaining." It's warning people about landmines that may not be obvious--the kind of thing that helped you make an informed decision. It's saying things aloud that others in the industry might have observed but might...

Most RPG designers have degrees or advanced degrees they could monetize. Many have worked in other industries where they were successful and did make more money, even significantly more. You seem to view everything through the lens of pay. You were right to bail on writing for the tabletop...

TTRPG game design is not a public service job, though it has some things in common with a public service job given online accessibility. Owen is highlighting the mismatches between the perception of a TTRPG job and the realities of the industry--which are significant, even within the ranks of...

All the larger and mid-sized companies and many of the small and indie houses deal with creators all over the world. (Chaosium has line editors in the US, UK, Germany, Australia, with creative contributors even more scattered.) Some issues, such as healthcare, are major problems for American...

Great point. That is a serious concern, especially if all parties do not buy into the process or if the organization does not have a clear code of conduct, which would help guide resolution for some issues. The current model for these types of GriefComs are organizations such as SFWA and HWA...