The Story of Gamer Zone book released

Well, my little blogging project ended up being complete with an 81,000+ word book instead of a blog. I don't mind at all :-) In *MY* opinion, it's a horrible book - the editing isn't great, etc. Then again... if you ask me, my first video game was horrible, my first episode of the World of Gamer Zone TV show was horrible, and... well, every "first" that's a creative matter is horrible to me.

For a while I was going to shoot for publication under normal channels - but the indie spirit just wouldn't let me. I wanted to control it all this time around - marketing, design, editing, and all the good stuff that goes with it. Just like writing indie games the job isn't done when you've written the last line. That's just the beginning. Now you've got to get the word out (that is, unless you're doing it JUST for you.)

I ended up with some interesting bits of help here and there along the way. For instance, I ended up making friends with a couple of publishers. They had nothing at stake with the publication of this book, and I told them all I wasn't using them. That didn't prevent them from doing things like providing me assistance with the cover design or what font to use (don't laugh - I had never considered the question before, but quickly realized after flipping through some books how much a good choice in fonts made in readability. And I've been informed that "Times New Roman" is never an option for print.)

I turned on the marketing machine for it earlier this morning - though the process will be ongoing for quite a while! One of the cool upcoming things is March 21st I'll be doing a book signing at the Clifton Square Arts & Music Festival in Wichita, Kansas (if you're in the area, stop on by - the festival will be a hell of a party with 18 bands playing in four different venues at the place, tons of artists, and beer to be swilled. And full disclosure, I'm part of Fountain Street Productions, the initiators of the festival, and yet another VERY indie sort of thing I'll be posting about some other time! :-)

In about a month I'll be doing my podcast / blog on the whole small time writer thing, contrasting it with the indie game development field. I've already seen a number of parallels, and given the number of creative folks on here, I'm sure that more than one person has considered writing a book :-)

Oh, and for anyone who's ever impressed by someone who's written a book, I've been repeating this saying of mine over and over (to anyone who tells me they are impressed I've written a book): Writing a book is easy. You start writing the first line, then continue until you've written the last line. There, you've written a book. Now a good book is a totally different subject! ;-)

(Quick edit) Forgot to mention that The Story of Gamer Zone website is still up and all the original content is still there. BUT... only the first two chapters are going to be released for free now. Why? Well... to tease people into buying it of course! After the next business book gets published (and there will be another business book in 2009 sometime, and a fiction book sometime after that), I'll probably open the floodgates and release all the content for free. The website got a major overhaul in appearance and functionality, but everyone who purchased the "Read Ahead" accounts still has access to all of it (and you can still buy online and read the whole thing for $5.) Much easier to navigate, much easier to read. Cool. Now I've got one ugly task left to do - copy all the edited versions of the chapters and sections back onto the website (and the final print version ended up with extra content in it, so that's going to end up on there too of course.) Probably going to be a couple weeks before I do that though!

Davis