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Message: <blockquote data-quote="2WS-Steve" data-source="post: 408984" data-attributes="member: 3289">My guess is that the way the current industry works very few authors actually sell a book. This is largely because publishers either don't give cover credit to the author or publish books compiled by more than one writer. Some caveats of course, Green Ronin and Atlas have always been great at giving cover credit and I'd bet that the readers of these boards are more author aware than much of the customer base.However, even those who don't pay attention to the author do notice the quality of writing and ideas and I think if they looked back through their single-author books they'd notice a strong correlation between who the writer was and whether or not they thought the book was good. This even applies for compilation products where they'd notice that some of their favorite sections of books were written by just a few authors.The Mongoose product line (cyclopean beast that it is) is a great example. Mongoose has done a good job getting good writers like Sam Witt, Mike Mearls, Alejandro Melchor, and now Patrick Younts to do its writing and the books those guys have written have always received at least solid reviews if not great reviews. The books without those writers have been more of a mixed bag.Currently you can put Monte's name on a book and that will sell it. I don't think you can sell it for more but the customer-base isn't used to paying more for a book by Stephen King either. The advantage of using a good author is selling copies. I think Matt Forbeck and Robin Laws will also help sell books but less so in the d20 market since much of their fame comes from non-D&Dish books.I think the industry would be a better place if we moved to a greater focus on the game writers. Publisher starts out giving an author cover credit in fairly large lettering below the title. The inside back cover then has an author photo and bio and perhaps something extra (a little open content from the author's home campaign perhaps). There's a reason they put photos in fiction books; it probably helps the reader to identify with the person and start thinking of the author as a person they can trust to write well. Then the writers who do consistently well eventually get their name moved above the title of the book and perhaps in an even larger font so we end up with Mike Mearls' "Guide to Aerial Adventuring".This will make the good writers more expensive to hire, but it will also mean that we might not see such horrid attrition. We've already lost Aaron Allston and John Tynes and who knows how many other great game writers to fiction and computer games.</blockquote>

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