Bay 12 Games Forum

I honestly don't remember. I remember stumbling across it a long time ago (2D!) and not understanding it at all, and just kinda tossed it aside as 'stupid crap'. Then a few years later I was searching for good roguelikes, and found DF once again. I felt like it seemed familiar, and I thought about my horrid experience with the old 2D version, but gave it a go anyway. By that point, it was fully in 3D. Adventure Mode hooked me in, but I've entertained myself with Fortress mode a few times since.

Between real life screwing me over the past few days and a headache, I only just managed to finish chapter three and end the day at around 9000 words. I wanted to pound out that last 1000, but I just can't do it tonight. NaNo is starting to stress me out a little.

7830 words at the end of last night. Exhausted myself mentally from playing Magic the Gathering today (my LGS does tournaments on Sunday as well as Friday). Not sure if I'll get much, if any, writing done tonight before midnight. At least I'm ahead of the curve, but I'd like to get over 8333 by the end of the night so I'd have a day's worth of buffer still.

I'm stuck.

I'm not sure how our hero will react accepting the summon from the fantasy world only to be told that only women can be the savior.

Will he react with sarcasm about the symbolism of that claim or will he just call bullshit and make snide comments about the world being doomed?

Both are equally in character for him so I can't decide. This is only the start of chapter 2 as well.

This is important because this will set the tone of how he acts for the rest of the chapter.

Why not a little bit of both?  Maybe even have him monologue about it in a rant? Good way to pad word count, at the very least.

Ehh, it's just how I write dialogue. It's not exactly intentional, but it ends up inflating my word count anyways.

Seems like I'll be hitting one of those scenes myself now, so I can't really say anything. 

Quote from: inEQUALITY on November 03, 2012, 02:21:36 pm

Quote from: JanusTwoface on November 03, 2012, 01:57:51 pm

And so far as the profit, is it really less? From the research I've done, publishing through a traditional market will get you 10-20% royalties. On Amazon, you'll get 70%. Granted, you don't get an advance which could be painful. Still, most royalties are in the sub $10,000 range, so if you really do think that your book could do well, I think I'd personally rather go for a higher percentage over time.

And I don't know about removing it from Amazon, but one advantage that they have is that you keep the full license. So you can sell it on the other eBook sellers as well, such as iBooks / Google Books.

It probably says up to 70%. A 350 page print book (a normal sized book for the adult SciFi/Fantasy market) priced at as high as 12.99 (too high to be competitive), would only make $2.83 royalties off of Amazon, according to the CreateSpace royalty calculator. Maybe you're referring to a different publishing strategy, such as with e-books, so you'll have to clarify that for me.

Ah yes. I was talking about ebooks RE: Amazon. So I guess it is sort of an apples to oranges comparison, as I'm not actually sure what royalty a traditional publisher would give on ebooks (if they even offer that in all cases). In most countries, non-public-domain content on Amazon's ebooks is a flat at 70%.

Part of that is a personal bias, I read a lot, but I don't actually remember the last time that I read a paper book. They have a nice traditional feel to them, but I already carry around my Kindle / phone pretty much wherever I go, so the convenience factor of just randomly reading a chapter while waiting for something else to finish is too much to go back.

Mind, I was talking about self-publishing; a traditional publisher will typically only net you 20% - 30% royalty at most, but they also do their best to sell thousands, if not tens of thousands, of copies. It may just take a long time if it's not well-received or marketed well.

I don't happen to have a Kindle or iPhone, so I have to rely on print and internet. I do read ebooks on my computer using a Firefox plugin, but I can't sit in one place long enough to read unless it's very compelling. Most of my reading, I have to do by borrowing books from a library, unfortunately.

I think that there's a pervasive idea in society that self-published authors are ones that weren't good enough to go the traditional route and thus are somehow worth less. But when you look at some of the utter crap that gets published nowadays, I just can't believe that. It's even worse in genres like scifi/fantasy. Granted, there's also quite a lot of crap in the self-published market, but so it goes. (And no, I'm not trying to imply that this was what you were saying, just that that's the feel I get most times people talk about self-publishing. )

Christopher Paolini is first on my list of reasons why the self-publishing market has such a bad rep, even if his parents publishing it for him isn't quite the same thing and it was a long time ago that Eragon saw publication. I agree that there is absolute rubbish on the standard market, but that's because it sells. There's a few publishers I respect highly enough that publish novels of at least "above adequate" calibre, that if I can't be published by then I have no doubt that I need improvement. I'm sure that self-publishing =/= poor quality, but I'm very weary of most self-published fiction. I'd rather not fall into it. I'm tempted to read into it more, however. It just seems more work and attracts more stigma than it's worth.

That sounds neat! I've thought about the same, but I have a hard time writing short stories. I think it's that I tend not to plan where I'm going until I'm at least a half dozen or so chapters in which doesn't really work so well in a short story.

I've never been able to finish long fiction before, only short stories, so NaNoWriMo is a huge first for me assuming I finish. I know what you mean about planning, however. The same method can work with a 'short story serial' though, I imagine, if they're very tightly interconnected.

So far as my own blog, there are links in the forum signature. I'm serializing a novel I've already finished on Tuesdays and Fridays (it's on Chapter 20 out of 24 right now) and posting my NaNo progress each day. It's... interesting.

I'll check it out!

I think I'm even more intrigued now. I like a lot more Science Fiction, less so traditional Fantasy (although I'm a fan of Modern / Urban Fantasy). I'll PM you my Google handle shortly.

I have privacy set up so that anyone with the link can read it. If you want, I'll send you the links. No need for you to bother with your Google handle. 


EDIT: I did a little reading about Amazon self-publishing. It seems like it would take more work on my end, for less profit, but without rejection by a publisher getting in the way. So long as the contract allows me to retain all rights to my material, including the ability to cancel the availability through them at any time, I'm sold. My only issue is that even though I can end the publishing through them, I have a feeling most major publishers won't publish a book that's already been published in any other form, so if I go through a major publisher later, it would be with new material. At any rate, this is getting ahead of myself; I need to finish the novel first. 

Quote from: inEQUALITY on November 01, 2012, 10:35:06 pm

Ended Day 1 at 4090 words. I feel rather accomplished. And exhausted. Mostly exhausted. But it's well worth it. Shooting for my personal NaNoWriMo goal of 85,000 words!

Dang. 85,000 within the month or stretching over into December?

I'd like to finish it in November, but at this point that means somewhere between 2800 and 2900 words per day. I don't know if I'll be able to crank that out consistently, but if I don't make that by the end of November, then I'll just continue on into December. This novel is something I'd like to further refine when it's finished and seek publication, even if it's unlikely to ever be published.

EDIT: Forgot to mention my progress! Currently at 5951 words and two chapters under my belt. The 'prologue'-ish first chapters are done, and on to...
PART ONE: Of Armored Devils, and Fallen Angels