ATTENTION: Story Hour in Print? (Authors and Readers, come in!)

[Wulf Ratbane]

Hello folks,

During my last ENworld chat I mentioned that I'd like to publish some of the Story Hours here. I've been giving it more serious thought in the time since.

I thought I would open it up for discussion among the authors and readers here, to get an idea of interest here first.

Let me get it out of the way first that it's not my intent for Bad Axe to make money from this, though I am willing to organize and provide some financial support where needed, provided I can recoup my costs!

Authors
Would you be interested in seeing your Story Hour in print? Would you only be interested if you felt you could make a decent profit for each book (though sales numbers are expected to be low)? Would you do it for the love? Would you not do it under any circumstances?

Readers
Would you be interested in a print version of your favorite Story Hours? Would you be willing to pay more than the retail price of a standard paperback to have it; or do you consider the work to be less than market value-- or even free!-- because these are not "professional" authors and, hey, you can read it here for free?

Those are my basic questions, reflected in the Multiple Choice poll above. I encourage discussion here in the thread!


Wulf

 

[Piratecat]

On the poll above, note that "standard price" is around $8.99 US for a good sized (300 page) paperback novel.

I think this is a great idea. Assuming that people were interested in them - never a given! - I would probably split my story hour up into two volumes (political and underdark/ghouls) in order to keep the page count reasonable. I'd have to see how it came out.

Wulf was telling me earlier that with an isbn number they would even be listed on Amazon. Now that's vanity press material!

Note that authors would have to keep a strict eye on product identity issues; I'd run into problems using the names illithids and kuo toa, for instance, and might have to work around that.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Wulf was telling me earlier that with an isbm number they would even be listed on Amazon. Now that's vanity press material!

It's ISBN, Kev. B 'N'.

BM is something else.


Wulf

 

[arwink]

Interesting idea.

Personally, I'd pay for the storyhour - as long as what I was getting was a storyhour rather than a DnD story being packaged as a novel.

For me, half the interest in reading a storyhour is seeing the mechanics behind them - character notes, DM commentary, monster stats, new spells and interesting ideas.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I don't really have any illusions about the literary quality of my storyhour, especially compared to many of the others here. If I thought anyone would be interested I'd gladly contribute towards something in print though (heck, I've got little enough to be vain about ). Realistically though, even though I've been a storyhour author for a very long time (it starts with a threadid of 122!) I wouldn't expect to be included.

More significantly then, as a reader. I'd be prepared to purchase a book which included some of the great storyhours on here. A lot of them are great reads for one reason or another, and would be well worth having. My guess is that one of the big problems is that the storyhours tend to be longer than people realise, probably coming out at several hundred A4 pages in many cases.

Good for you, Wulf, for even getting to the "considering" stage of this.

Cheers

 

[el-remmen]

Personally,I would love it even if I did not make a penny off of it.

Like P.Kitty, mine would have to be two or more volumes because of its length, but unlike him I would have very little to tweak in way of names - as I tend to name things for my own setting.

Hmm, though I guess 'quaggoths' would have to change - but what about flail snails?

As for who would buy it? I can't speak for my readers, but I am sure my players and the associated circle of gamers I know would all proudly shell out some cash to have an official Aquerra book of any kind. . .

 

[Lela]

BM is something else.

And someone else. But that's a whole different story.


As a matter of fact, one of my players mentioned this idea to me after Saturday's game. I commented that I might post it. But never did.

I know I'd definitally be interested and I know at least one of my players would be. Other members of my group also tend to read the Iconic novels WotC comes out with and it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to move over to quality D&D work (uh, I mean other D&D work, yeah).

Generally, that's only if it's in book form though. Not .pdfs; even printed ones. The reflective white paper just isn't conductive to enjoyable reading, unlike the darker background we have here. And it seems too much like a huge research paper anyway. For us college students that inspires nightmares. us many of them don't have internet access or prefer not to be online all that much.

I'm betting there is a large untapped market who'd love these stories but get caught in the online trap and never get to them.

As another note, should Amazon pick it up we'd also have that Customers who shopped/browsed the D&D rule books and novels also shopped/bought these books.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Interesting idea.

Personally, I'd pay for the storyhour - as long as what I was getting was a storyhour rather than a DnD story being packaged as a novel.

For me, half the interest in reading a storyhour is seeing the mechanics behind them - character notes, DM commentary, monster stats, new spells and interesting ideas.

Interesting you should say that.

With enough game mechanics (ie, 5% Open Content) we could even put the d20 logo on them.

It's an option... all ideas are welcome here.

The real trick is in the logistics. I note an early surge in, "Standard Prices only" which is unfortunate, since everyone must realize we aren't printing several hundred thousand books to achieve an economy of scale... In most cases we'd be lucky to sell 1000...

Wulf

 

[Len]

I didn't vote because I'm somewhere between "standard bookstore price" and "nothing, no way, no how". I'm not going to rule out paying anything, but I have to admit that I'm used to reading Story Hours for free (or rather as one of the benefits of being a Community Supporter).

Despite my wishy-washy-ness, I want to mention a couple of things. First, I don't consider my favourite Story Hour authors to be inferior because they're "not professional". When I choose to spend my time reading a Story Hour instead of a "real" book it's because that's what I want to read.

Second, I was going to say this, but arwink already said it, so I'll quote him:

Personally, I'd pay for the storyhour - as long as what I was getting was a storyhour rather than a DnD story being packaged as a novel.

For me, half the interest in reading a storyhour is seeing the mechanics behind them - character notes, DM commentary, monster stats, new spells and interesting ideas.

I'm not sure which you have in mind, Wulf, [edit: I hadn't read your last post] but the difference between a novel and an ENWorld Story Hour will certainly affect who'd be interested in buying it and how it should be marketed.

 

[Zad]

I think it would boggle my mind so much to be published that the money would be irrelevant.