Lost Arcade Classics book ?!?!?

Pleiades10

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Hey fellow KLOV'ers!

As many of you know, for the last 8 years, I wrote "Lost Arcade Classics" for the late Game Room Magazine. Prior to that, L.A.C. appeared in the pages of Classic Gamer Magazine for it's entire run, from summer '98 through winter of 2000.

As a result, I have tons of archived articles, and I'd like to compile them into a book with screen shots and cabinet images. It would feature additional L.A.C. articles unique to the book, never before printed anywhere else.

The idea is truly in it's infancy. I'm reading up about self-publishing options, and obtaining an ISBN number, and pondering how exactly I could pull this off.

I'd like to gauge if there would be any interest in this project. Reply to this post if you would be interested in a Lost Arcade Classics compendium for your bookshelf.

If you'd like to sample some of my wares before saying one way or the other, check out:

http://www.erasurewars.net/lostarcadeclassics/

Thanks!

Kyle :cool:
 
I'm be down for something.

Funny that you mention putting a book together.................

......................;)
 
Thanks for the positive feedback, guys! :)

I'm planning on including all my Lost Arcade Classic articles featured previously in CG and GR, and several new articles, including one I submitted to GR right before they closed up shop.

Screen shots I can get from MAME, and I'd like if some of the KLOV family could contribute cabinet or artwork pictures for certain games, with full name credit given in the book.

While I'd like to feature things like Ms.Gorf, I try not to write about a game unless I can play the real machine or the MAME Roms and get a feel for the game.

More information forthcoming...

Kyle :cool:
 
Hey fellow KLOV'ers!

As many of you know, for the last 8 years, I wrote "Lost Arcade Classics" for the late Game Room Magazine. Prior to that, L.A.C. appeared in the pages of Classic Gamer Magazine for it's entire run, from summer '98 through winter of 2000.

As a result, I have tons of archived articles, and I'd like to compile them into a book with screen shots and cabinet images. It would feature additional L.A.C. articles unique to the book, never before printed anywhere else.

The idea is truly in it's infancy. I'm reading up about self-publishing options, and obtaining an ISBN number, and pondering how exactly I could pull this off.

I'd like to gauge if there would be any interest in this project. Reply to this post if you would be interested in a Lost Arcade Classics compendium for your bookshelf.

If you'd like to sample some of my wares before saying one way or the other, check out:

http://www.erasurewars.net/lostarcadeclassics/

Thanks!

Kyle :cool:

Well, your options for self publishing boil down into a couple of general categories for printed material:
1) On-demand. Sign up with someone like Lulu, upload the text/images in appropriate format and point people to it. It has the distinct advantage of having pretty much NO up-front costs for you, but the disadvantage is that the per-copy cost is higher than if you printed a bunch of books at a time. Lulu does the whole storefront thing and takes the payments, etc, so you don't have to do any of that work, but of course they keep most of the money.

I seem to remember Amazon having a similar service, and I think they are fighting with Lulu and other POD publishers about letting the other publishers onto Amazon directly.

2) Organize a print run. This is much more work on your part, as you have to find a printer (China is apparently the place to go these days), pony up the cash for a pallet or two of books, put them somewhere, fulfill orders. If you do most of your sales through Amazon, then 'fulfillment' consists of sending yet more books to Amazon, but that cuts into your profits.

In addition to (or instead of) physical books, you can also sell digital editions (PDFs, Kindle, etc). I've got some experience with Amazon's interface for this (I've been helping a friend of the family get her books up) and it's really not hard to use. My understanding is that Lulu can do PDFs from the same text as your physical book.

Honestly, I think your best bet is going to be POD from somewhere, also selling digital editions - this is a VERY small niche, and so you aren't going to sell that many physical copies no matter what you do.

If you have a digital edition as well as the print edition, you'll have more sales (it's a LOT easier for some of us to 'impulse buy' a digital book than one that we have to make shelf space for), and if you keep the digital price down, you'll have some folks that buy it, read a bit, then go buy the paper edition!

I'd certainly pony up for the digital edition, if you make one in some sensible format like PDF.

And, so as to make sure you've thought about it: If you release a digital edition, there WILL be people who pirate your book. They are assholes, and deserving of scorn, and you can't really do much about them. My advice is release a digital edition in an open format like PDF (I hate Kindle because Amazon can take it away at any moment!) and don't get too freaked out about the losers who don't pay.
 
I sort of imagined leafing through a nice big book with lots of color pictures and associated descriptions and I wonder, how would it be organized, by manufacturer or by manufacturing date? Or what?
 
i'd be up for one..i would want a physical book though.. when you get things together such as estimated price point and timeframe of printing, i wouldnt mind prepaying to help move things along.
 
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