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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AaronLoeb" data-source="post: 715132" data-attributes="member: 4382">Okay... I just have to respond to this because it's a comment targeting GR and implying they are somehow greedy or pulling one over on the consumer. Call me a jackass, kick my name around in the mud, put my head on a dartboard, and I'll laugh along with you, but don't go sayin' nothin' 'bout Chris Pramas. "Was ballooned" implies that there was a concious, perhaps conspiratorial effort to make BotR bigger. There was not. Chris wanted me to write him an 80,000-word book because, and this is the important part here, Smaller Books Make More Money. Your theory that they're "ballooning" books to make more money is based on the exact opposite of business reality. Smaller books are higher profit margin, sell better, cost less to make, the whole nine yards. In this case, I was a bad monkey. I mean an epicly bad freelancer. I pitched an 80,000 word book and simply could not deliver the book I was asked to create. Had I been in Pramas' shoes (having worked in publishing for years, actually, I have been in his shoes), I likely would have canned the project. However, GR is founded so strongly on a belief in preserving the integrety of  their authors' and artists' work that he just kept saying "okay" the bigger it got. This was not an "okay" followed by fiendish giggling and rubbing of hands together in the anticipation of all the beautiful money he was going to make. This was "okay" as in "I believe in this, and I'm going to take the risk." Believe me, there was a lot of stress involved in this book's continous expansion.Publishing BotR was ballsy, not conniving. It's completely fine that you're unsold on it.  I'm not trying to convince you otherwise. But don't go implying malintent on the part of someone who regularly risks his business on gambles based on a real love of quality, the hobby, and his fellow gamers. If history has proven anything in this industry it's that the best product does not always win -- that GR continues to strive to make the best possible product is laudible. Especially when they could just crank out low-quality, badly-ilustrated, poorly-playtested class books and likely make more money. Aaron</blockquote>

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