So, today I got an e-mail telling me that a d20 book I wrote was finally published today - in PDF format on RPGNow. I'm not here to push the sales of the book (that's being taken care of in the d20 Publisher's Forum). Rather, I thought it might be interesting for people to know how it all came about (kind of like a quick "after-the-fact" version of Eosin's "From the Ground Up - Building a Game Company" threads).
Interestingly enough, I got the idea for the book by visiting the forums here at ENWorld. This was way back in August of 2002. The discussion was about how there weren't any "class books" for the NPC classes like there were for Fighters, Wizards, and all of the other PC classes. Somebody suggested a book on Experts, and someone else as a joke suggested a book on Commoners.
That got me to thinking, "Why not a book about how to play an Aristocrat?". I drew up a short one-page proposal and e-mailed it, unsolicited, to a publisher.
To my surpirse (and delight), the publisher wrote back about two-weeks later with a lot of helpful suggestions and a request that I rework the proposal and actually write a section from each chapter. Since I had no publishing credits to my name, this seemed reasonable - he wanted to see how well I could write and to analyze my grammar and spelling as well as the design mechanics.
I took another two-weeks and reworked the proposal into about 16 pages. Then began the long wait.
During this time, I continued working on ideas and research, and also made sure that the publisher knew I was involved in the industry as much as possible. I purchased their products and sent messages noting that I saw certain ideas that could be relevant to my book and also participated in chat-room discussions with the publisher here at ENWorld. I frequented their publisher's message boards and made comments.
During this three-four month period of time, the publisher and I kept in contact via e-mail. Finally, in January of 2003, he asked me to wait and check back in with him in six months. I set myself a little computer calendar reminder and went off to other projects...
Then in July 2003 I e-mailed him again and asked for input (at this point, the book was with the editor awaiting comments). He wrote back with an idea to publish the book in electronic PDF format instead of print. This being my first book, I was very happy. I revised the proposal again, and this time he also asked for the completed first two chapters before we "sealed the deal".
Rewriting the proposal this time was a bit of a pain, because by this time the revised 3.5 Edition was out, and yet the book had been written using the 3.0 rules. So, I had to go back and change all of that and send out the revised proposal in less than two weeks. I waited again...
During all of this time, I was sending out my ideas and the parts I had written to all of my friends in my game group to look over, and also wrote to a very prolific d20 author to ask for advice and if he could look over some of my stuff and provide comments.
I also frequently visited Monte Cook's "Writers and Editors" forums for inspiration and to bounce ideas off of people, particular on things such as rates for writers, writing cover letters, etc.
Right after GenCon 2003, the publisher wrote me back with the final confirmation - they would publish the book! They sent over their formatting requirements and asked for my thoughts on when I could finish the book. I promised to have it done in around two months, at the end of September 2003.
Right after this is when my carpool partner at work announced that she got a 20% "carpool buddy/listener" fee for listening to me ramble about the book on our 45 minute commute to work every morning for the past year.
So, I got to writing. During this time, a short book on "nobles" was published by the same company, and another one was announced by another major d20 publisher.
As time got down to the wire, I found myself really crunched during my regular "day job", trying to write at night, during lunch, and on weekends, and also trying to maintain a good relationship with my wife! I was doing a lot of visits to the library and the bookstore to look up books for inspiration (all listed in the bibliography of my book). I spent hours and hours doing research and then got crunched for actual "writing time". I started to get really nervous.
I spent all weekend before the project was due locked in the house. My wife was great - helping me edit when she had time, and also doing all of the cooking and cleaning (we both share these duties normally). I was getting pretty exhausted and finding it hard to concentrate and come up with new ideas.
Luckily, work slowed down a few days before September 30th. I spent all day 9/29 writing and using the computer at work (my boss knew and was cool with it the time) and I stayed at work until about 3:30am for the 4th day in a row. Then I went home and started to try to edit my work. I had three friends also reading various chapters for spelling and grammatical mistakes. I would e-mail them the individual chapters as I finished them so they could edit on-the-go. They just did this out of the kindness of their hearts - two of them don't even playing RPGs!
On September 30th 2003, I sent the mostly completed book off to the publisher, and then followed up about a week later with a few additional pieces (fiction elements, not the "meat" of the book).
Then began another long wait...
I checked in with the publisher roughly once every two months or so to get an idea on timing. I wanted to make sure that I would have time to make any edits or changes. We communicated a few times and I was heartened when I saw another e-book in the same series published a few months ago.
Then, today, BAM! I'm published.
Lessons I've Learned:
1) Don't spend so much time doing research that you don't leave yourself enough time to actually write.
2) Don't over-promise what you can reasonably deliver while still maintaining your health.
3) Have a patient and understanding partner/significant other.
4) Don't wait until you're finished writing to have people look over your work for spelling and grammatical errors - let them edit for you while you write.
5) Be persistent! I was probably a *little* annoying, but when the publisher said, "Check back with me in 6 months" I would literally set a reminder to check back with him.
6) Keep up on what's current in the industry. I found myself buying products that I normally would not have purchased and reading a lot more reviews online. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't duplicating things that had already been done in other books. This also constituted a large part of my research.
7) Keep all of your gaming receipts for tax purposes. I separated the receipts for things I would normally have purchased for the games that I play in and the game I run from the stuff I bought specifically related to writing this book. I was able to write almost all of it off as "start-up expenses" for starting a new business as a freelance writer. I also bought a bunch of non-fiction books on writing and books I used as "inspiration" for concepts in my book, and took a Science Fiction & Fantasy writing extension course at local university all during the two years that I worked on this book. I wrote all of those expenses off as well.
8) Talk with people in the industry, publishers and players. I scoured the message boards (here particularly) looking for topics related to my book and read all of them and posted in some of them as well. I read what people wanted out of a book like this and also what they didn't want. That helped a lot when I crafted the book.
Okay, it's late and my wife is waiting on me for dinner (already 9:51pm!). So, I'm off.
Hope this was somewhat helpful to aspiring writers like myself, and enlightening to read some of what goes into making these products we all enjoy.
Cheers,
Martin
Interestingly enough, I got the idea for the book by visiting the forums here at ENWorld. This was way back in August of 2002. The discussion was about how there weren't any "class books" for the NPC classes like there were for Fighters, Wizards, and all of the other PC classes. Somebody suggested a book on Experts, and someone else as a joke suggested a book on Commoners.
That got me to thinking, "Why not a book about how to play an Aristocrat?". I drew up a short one-page proposal and e-mailed it, unsolicited, to a publisher.
To my surpirse (and delight), the publisher wrote back about two-weeks later with a lot of helpful suggestions and a request that I rework the proposal and actually write a section from each chapter. Since I had no publishing credits to my name, this seemed reasonable - he wanted to see how well I could write and to analyze my grammar and spelling as well as the design mechanics.
I took another two-weeks and reworked the proposal into about 16 pages. Then began the long wait.
During this time, I continued working on ideas and research, and also made sure that the publisher knew I was involved in the industry as much as possible. I purchased their products and sent messages noting that I saw certain ideas that could be relevant to my book and also participated in chat-room discussions with the publisher here at ENWorld. I frequented their publisher's message boards and made comments. During this three-four month period of time, the publisher and I kept in contact via e-mail. Finally, in January of 2003, he asked me to wait and check back in with him in six months. I set myself a little computer calendar reminder and went off to other projects...
Then in July 2003 I e-mailed him again and asked for input (at this point, the book was with the editor awaiting comments). He wrote back with an idea to publish the book in electronic PDF format instead of print. This being my first book, I was very happy. I revised the proposal again, and this time he also asked for the completed first two chapters before we "sealed the deal".
Rewriting the proposal this time was a bit of a pain, because by this time the revised 3.5 Edition was out, and yet the book had been written using the 3.0 rules. So, I had to go back and change all of that and send out the revised proposal in less than two weeks. I waited again...
During all of this time, I was sending out my ideas and the parts I had written to all of my friends in my game group to look over, and also wrote to a very prolific d20 author to ask for advice and if he could look over some of my stuff and provide comments.
I also frequently visited Monte Cook's "Writers and Editors" forums for inspiration and to bounce ideas off of people, particular on things such as rates for writers, writing cover letters, etc.
Right after GenCon 2003, the publisher wrote me back with the final confirmation - they would publish the book! They sent over their formatting requirements and asked for my thoughts on when I could finish the book. I promised to have it done in around two months, at the end of September 2003.
Right after this is when my carpool partner at work announced that she got a 20% "carpool buddy/listener" fee for listening to me ramble about the book on our 45 minute commute to work every morning for the past year.
So, I got to writing. During this time, a short book on "nobles" was published by the same company, and another one was announced by another major d20 publisher.
As time got down to the wire, I found myself really crunched during my regular "day job", trying to write at night, during lunch, and on weekends, and also trying to maintain a good relationship with my wife! I was doing a lot of visits to the library and the bookstore to look up books for inspiration (all listed in the bibliography of my book). I spent hours and hours doing research and then got crunched for actual "writing time". I started to get really nervous.
I spent all weekend before the project was due locked in the house. My wife was great - helping me edit when she had time, and also doing all of the cooking and cleaning (we both share these duties normally). I was getting pretty exhausted and finding it hard to concentrate and come up with new ideas.
Luckily, work slowed down a few days before September 30th. I spent all day 9/29 writing and using the computer at work (my boss knew and was cool with it the time) and I stayed at work until about 3:30am for the 4th day in a row. Then I went home and started to try to edit my work. I had three friends also reading various chapters for spelling and grammatical mistakes. I would e-mail them the individual chapters as I finished them so they could edit on-the-go. They just did this out of the kindness of their hearts - two of them don't even playing RPGs!
On September 30th 2003, I sent the mostly completed book off to the publisher, and then followed up about a week later with a few additional pieces (fiction elements, not the "meat" of the book).
Then began another long wait...
I checked in with the publisher roughly once every two months or so to get an idea on timing. I wanted to make sure that I would have time to make any edits or changes. We communicated a few times and I was heartened when I saw another e-book in the same series published a few months ago.
Then, today, BAM! I'm published.
Lessons I've Learned:
1) Don't spend so much time doing research that you don't leave yourself enough time to actually write.
2) Don't over-promise what you can reasonably deliver while still maintaining your health.
3) Have a patient and understanding partner/significant other.
4) Don't wait until you're finished writing to have people look over your work for spelling and grammatical errors - let them edit for you while you write.
5) Be persistent! I was probably a *little* annoying, but when the publisher said, "Check back with me in 6 months" I would literally set a reminder to check back with him.
6) Keep up on what's current in the industry. I found myself buying products that I normally would not have purchased and reading a lot more reviews online. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't duplicating things that had already been done in other books. This also constituted a large part of my research.
7) Keep all of your gaming receipts for tax purposes.
I separated the receipts for things I would normally have purchased for the games that I play in and the game I run from the stuff I bought specifically related to writing this book. I was able to write almost all of it off as "start-up expenses" for starting a new business as a freelance writer. I also bought a bunch of non-fiction books on writing and books I used as "inspiration" for concepts in my book, and took a Science Fiction & Fantasy writing extension course at local university all during the two years that I worked on this book. I wrote all of those expenses off as well.8) Talk with people in the industry, publishers and players. I scoured the message boards (here particularly) looking for topics related to my book and read all of them and posted in some of them as well. I read what people wanted out of a book like this and also what they didn't want. That helped a lot when I crafted the book.
Okay, it's late and my wife is waiting on me for dinner (already 9:51pm!). So, I'm off.
Hope this was somewhat helpful to aspiring writers like myself, and enlightening to read some of what goes into making these products we all enjoy.
Cheers,
Martin
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