News

A few days ago, I finished reading a novel.

(Ooh! Alert the media!)

(Shut up. I haven’t gotten to the point, yet.)

I’m not going to identify the novel or the author. What I will say is that this was a self-published novel on Kindle, written by someone who has published multiple books with major publishers in the past, and whose past books I very much enjoyed.

And I really enjoyed this book. It is, in fact, one of his best. In terms of actual content, anyway.

Formatting-wise, though? Error-wise? A disaster of brobdingnagian proportions.

Entire paragraphs were improperly centered/indented, on an average of more often than once every ten pages. (Well, "screens.") Typos–of either the "this is spelled right but it’s the wrong word" or of the "there’s a word obviously missing here"–were as copious as gratuitous topless shots in a horror movie remake.

And this is not normal for the author in question, based on his past works. All I can figure is that, since the book was self-published, he didn’t employ an editor.

I’m sorry, guys, but that is not acceptable. Sure, things like typos and formatting don’t matter to a lot of readers–but to a lot of us, they do. No, this one badly edited book won’t keep me from buying future books of his. But if the trend continues? Yeah, it could eventually reach the point where I’d stop.

Self-publishing is in a transition period right now. It’s becoming ever more common. Lots of professional writers are choosing to go that route. But it’s still also looked down upon by a large portion of the market.

If self-publishers want that to stop, if they want the same respect as authors who go through a publisher, they must–must–come across as just as professional. And that means that a self-published novel must go through all the same quality assurance steps as traditionally published novels.

Not "some." All.

You need editors. Yes, plural. A content editor and a proofreader/copy editor. They’re not the same thing. You need professional cover art. You need decent layout. And yes, that means sinking some funds into the book and paying for all of this.

I don’t care if you’ve been writing for 50 years. I don’t care if you’re a prodigy. I don’t care if you’re a Rowling, or a Martin, or a King. I don’t care if you’re Tolkien or Howard returned from the grave. (Well, actually, I do–a lot–but for different reasons.) No matter who you are, you are not an exception.

Your work needs editing. Period. So does mine. So does everyone else’s. It’s just part of the process, and it’s neither optional nor negotiable.

You want to be a pro? You want people to treat you as a pro, and the burgeoning field of modern self-publishing as a professional one? Act it. Be meticulous. Be willing to shell out some dollars at the start. And get it right.

So, George and I are leaving Kerby Lane Cafe after a late dinner. We get to her car, and George presses the button on the remote.

The car fails to respond.

The battery in the remote’s working; the little light blinks when you push the button. The alarm is working; the light inside the car is blinking. They’ve simply stopped communicating.

Sure, we can just unlock the door with the key–but the remote is the only way to disarm the alarm.

So, grumbling, we go back inside and call AAA. After a while, the guy shows up.

After futzing with it for a while (and deafening us with the alarm), all he can do is disable the alarm completely. Okay, fine. We’ll do without it for a while. It takes him a while to find the right fuse.

He pulls it out and gives it to George. He opens and closes the door multiple times, locks and unlocks it multiple times, to make sure the alarm is well and truly off. It is.

He starts to leave, we get in the car, George starts the ignition. The alarm goes off.

We turn the car off. He backs his truck back up to come look. George starts the ignition, so he can see that the alarm is still going off when we start the car.

Except this time, the alarm doesn’t go off.

Hovering in a cloud of "What the hell?" George and I drive home. We get out of the car. We close the door.

We hear the beep of the alarm arming itself.

The plan is for George to go straight to Best Buy (their auto electronics department) in the morning. In the interim, the questions are:

A) What happened to the alarm?

B) What the hell fuse did the guy pull out?!?! O.o

I mean, it did stop the alarm from going off. Except for when it didn’t. At this point, our best theory is that the damn thing is healing…

Several recent online articles and conversations have once again got people buzzing about the various editions of D&D, where they went right, where they went wrong (more, in most conversations, the latter than the former), and where they need to go from here.

The problem, ultimately, is that–at least as I see it–tabletop RPGs as a game are in diametric conflict with tabletop RPGs as a business.

Here’s what I mean. No single game is going to satisfy everyone; that’s simply a given. Some player prefer a vast array of strict, specific rules, with every possible corner case or power having its own distinct mechanics. Some players prefer an almost completely freeform game, where the rules are absolutely minimalist and the lion’s share of the power resides in the DM/GM/Storyteller/Referee/whatever. Most players fall somewhere on the continuum between the two extremes.

So, essentially, if you want to appeal to the widest number of players, you have three basic options.

1) Create a game that’s so flexible and so chock full of optional rules and systems that it is, in essence, multiple games under the same umbrella title. The problem there is that your product identity becomes diluted, and you’re printing books that you know are only going to be purchased by a specific minority niche of your audience.

2) Take it a step further and literally publish multiple games (such as the old divide between Basic D&D and Advanced D&D). Except that, once again, you’re splitting resources between two markets that only marginally overlap. Not cost-effective.

3) You create a game with the broadest and most flexible rules possible. It has hard systems in place, and specific rules, but they’re very general in nature. Rather than provide rules for 30 different sorts of acrobatic stunts, you provide a single basic type of roll for such things, designed so that it’s easily extrapolated to more specific uses.

I’m personally a fan of the last option. I want a game–a Dungeons & Dragons–in which the rules are clear, easy to build on, easy to extrapolate, but very broad and flexible in scope. I won’t claim to know what a "majority" of fans want, but I do know that I’m not alone in that desire. And while it won’t please everyone, I believe it captures a wider swathe of the spectrum than either of the two extremes (rules-light and rules-heavy).

But here’s where we run into problems. RPGs live and die on subsidiary sales. If you’re the company producing them, you don’t want people to just buy the core book (or the core three books, in the case of most editions of D&D), and be able to extrapolate everything else they’ll ever need. You want people buying supplements.

You can publish adventures, but those only appeal to a small portion of the market–people who are not only running games, as opposed to playing in them, but who don’t prefer creating their own adventures. Campaign settings run into the same problem.

So what sorts of supplements can you publish that’ll appeal to the most people? Books with new mechanical options. New powers. New classes. New races. New sub-systems.

And that’s fine, to a point. But…

A) If the core rules are too easily extrapolated beyond their initial scope, people don’t need to buy new mechanics. They can make them up easily, or even on the fly.

B) The more rules you put out, the more you restrict existing rules. If, for instance, you put out a sub-system focused on acrobatic stunts in combat, then the implication becomes that such stunts cannot be performed–or at least not well–without that sub-system. Suddenly, the more general systems from the core rules cannot accomplish what, until the sub-system was released, people were using them to accomplish. (Or at least, that’ll be the perception.)

Bottom line, flexibility and openness is best for game play; but specificity and granularity are better for a publisher.

The solution? I have no idea. If I did, I’d be selling it to WotC and/or Paizo in exchange for stock and a wad of cash. But I think that, until and unless we can solve that basic conflict at the core of it all, we’re going to continue to see edition wars, splintered audiences, and confusion moving forward.

…one of the most important events in my life occurred.

This may come as a surprise, since I was still several months away from being born on this day thirty-eight years ago. But then, we’re married and this is a community property state, so half of my life is hers, and half of her life is mine. 😉

Happy birthday, George. I love you.

If you’re interested, I’ve got a guest blog up at The Parking Lot Confessionals, discussing the relationship between the author and that most dreaded of figures known as the Editor.

If you’re not interested, I’ve still got the guest blog up. 😛