Convention!

[seawasp]

I will be at Genericon in Troy, NY (RPI college) this weekend (Friday and Saturday; sunday, maybe or maybe not). Who knows, I may be on a panel, as well as offering to sign my book to anyone I can rope into buying one. If things look boring, I may run a game, too.

Pete Abrams of Sluggy Freelance (www.sluggy.com), Ian of RPGWorld (www.rpgworldcomics.com), and the terrifying author of Something Positive (www.somethingpositive.net) will be there too.

Comments

publishing

[(Anonymous)]

Good luck promoting your book. I think going to Genericon is a great idea.

I think publishing is in a flux nowadays. Despite what publishers like to scream about I think obscurity is a much bigger threat and draconian publishing systems. What it actually shapes into is another question.

There's a famous technical author, Bruce Eckel, whose written many programming books over the years that has an interesting comment.


http://www.mindview.net/FAQ/FAQ-010

I think we're clearly in the brave new world of the Internet here, and as far as I know I was one of the first to do what I did - publish the book as I was developing it, and leave it as a free book in perpetuity, after it was printed (Eric Raymond is most likely the first person to have actually done this). Personally, I was prepared to have low sales but the book brought people to my web site and to the CD Rom and seminars, so I felt it was worth the risk. Prentice Hall did a low first printing because they were worried about the online book cannibalizing sales. However, this book has done better than all the other books I've written — for the first time I've gotten royalty checks that have made a difference (book publishing in general is a pretty high-risk business; the figures I've heard are "10% break even, 1% are profitable).

john

Re: publishing

[seawasp]

Baen's Free Library has demonstrated that fears of electronic books stealing sales are just that, fears with no foundation. In fact, so far it appears that the effect is to INCREASE sales of the book.

I doubt, personally, that this will hold once electronic book readers reach the point that they actually equal or surpass real books in reading quality experience. That won't happen for another several years yet, though. Hopefully the book publishers will have learned from the music/video industry and won't end up doing the idiotic "bail back the ocean with a fork" maneuvers that the RIAA and MPAA are trying now.

speaking of music

[(Anonymous)]

An interesting viewpoint on the whole music and copying problem is at:

http://www.bubblegeneration.com/level2.cfm?resource=musicrisk1

john