Last night I got home and settled in to work on some layout for the big Fantasy Firearms project. I know I have said it before, but I can’t reccomend enough lynda.com for training to get the most out of the Adobe suite.  I am taking advantage of styles in CS4 that let me format the text with a click or two.  You work the text once, for example I was laying out magic item entries, and once you have it the way you want it you can copy the formatting into a style.  From then on you can simply click on a style and it formats everything consistently.  The styles work on words, paragraphs, cells and entire tables.  I was sitting there with the Pathfinder main rule book in my hand checking how they did the layout for certain entries, and found I could replicate the formatting quite easily.  I got through the entire manuscript save the last fifteen pages.

To be sure, there still needs to be some art inserted, and the text has to be massaged to make if fit nicely, but the basic formatting is done.  The project is really starting to come together, and is proving a great learning experience that will make future projects better.

I’ll also be putting out some more Adventurer’s Wanted posters this week, along with a couple Traveller releases later in the month.

The iPad announcement has generated a lot of discussion in the publishing field as a whole, as well as our little dark and dusty corner of it.  As I said on a forum post I am not a PDF publisher; I am digital content publisher.  PDF is just a format.  There are and will be other formats.  All in all I am very excited about the prospects for the future.  Which brings me to the idea I just had.  I was talking about a movie idea with a co-worker, and hashed together a throw-away plot for a generic action movie to make a point.  But that got the wheels turning and the germ from that throw-away idea was mixed with another idea or two I had rattling around in my Grey Matter Junk Drawer and I was off.  Inspiration had struck and I jotted down some furious notes.  Until this week all I had was a title, a cool sounding name that I knew I wanted to turn into a project.  Well, now I had the flesh to go over the bones of the idea.  I won’t bore anyone with the details just yet, but I will drop the title I came up with a few years ago.  I thought it sounded cool and knew some day I would do something with it.

Daughters of the Arcane Blade

It’s just five words that I thought sounded neat.  Now I had a cool idea to go with the title.  I was tossing the options around in my head on how best to get this idea “out there”.  Option one was to write it as a novel.  As I would be the writer this seems the least collaborative option and probobly the easiest and cheapest way to see the project finished.  Then I thought a comic book format would be great.  I can picture some great visuals to go along with the words that give life to the story behind the title.  More collabrative since I would have to work with an artist and maybe some ink/colorists as well.  And of course, what good idea doesn’t cry out to be made as a movie!?  I could write it as a screenplay and make a movie out of it.  (Or sell the screenplay to someone with the money to make a movie out of it, whichever.) I was honestly weighing the different options (including some RPG related releases to be sure!) when it hit me…

Why pick just one?  How many movies were first books or comics?  How many comics are based on TV shows, books or movies?  Heck, even video games are spawning novels, comics and movie adaptions.  All this gelled around the term “Transmedia” I first heard during the iPad/Publishing discussions.  The story wants to be told, and some formats serve better than others for telling the story, but in the new media reality a story need not remain locked in one form. As a publisher I can’t afford to keep ideas confined into one little box.

So who knows, in a few months time you could be reading Daughters of the Arcane Blade on your Kindle, Nook, iPad or dead-tree book.  Some time after that you might find the comic book on DriveThruComics or the iBook store.  It is even possible that some day you might be sitting on your couch watching my crazy idea as a movie full of action, adventure and gun-play!  It could also be that you sit around a table and play an RPG based on my idea.  Or maybe none of that will happen.  The exciting thing is that each and every one of them are indeed possible today, and will become even more likely in the future as the barriers to entry continue to be lowered.  It truly is an exciting time to be a small PDF digital content publisher!

We finished out the month on a high note!

Aside from a banner sales month, I have heard back from a couple of freelancers and two new artists as well.

One of the Traveller projects checked in with some good things to look over, and another S.C.A.R.E. has been assigned.

I herad back from the artist I hired to add some last minute art for the S.C.A.R.E. Vol. 3 release.  Here is a preview of the Far Trader Merry Widow…

The four crew members he illustrated look great also.  Once they are cleaned up and the final artwork submitted S.C.A.R.E. Vol. 3 will hit the virtual shelves.

I also began laying out the big Fantasy Firearms project, but I’ll need to have some art done for that project as well.  Plenty to keep me busy.

More info soon.

So last night I was working on the Fantasy Firearms script which I had saved as a Google Document by chapters.  Well, Google was having some issues and would not save anything, so I copy/pasted the changes into Word and decided to take a break and do something else.  I went over to Lynda.com and wanted to bone up on some InDesign skills; especially regarding formatting text. (I’m a subscriber to their service.)

In no time I discovered a few simple things that made me realize I have pretty much been doing it wrong the whole time!  A few key-strokes and I fixed most of the formatting errors in the SCARE Vol. 3 layout.  If you will remember, the layout issues were one of the problems with SCARE Vol. 2 that cost me a star (along with some spelling to be fair) so I wanted to make an improvement.  Especially with some much larger page count projects coming up.

After that I was on to styles, which is a whole other topic.  While I didn’t get as much editing done last night as I wanted to, I have to say that I learned some important new things about the products I am using that will result in a better end product for my customers.  Sometimes training and learning isn’t as sexy or fun as doing a cool cover or coming up with a great concept, but in the end it will pay off with better production values and a more professional product.

If your using Adobe products, or a host of others that they cover, then do your self a favor and check out lynda.com; way cheaper than taking a college course.

Lots going on right now, some details…

I got back another S.C.A.R.E. script from the freelancer that did the soon-to-be-published vol. 3.  It looks good, just a couple of minor tweaks and I’ll hand it off to an artist for appropriate illustration.

I have a slew of other Traveller projects in the hands of various freelancers, waiting anxiously to hear back from them but it has only been a few weeks so I shouldn’t be too impatient.

Monday I sat down to edit the first chapter of the Fantasy Firearms script and wound up doing three chapters instead!  I added some text,tweaked a few stats, nudged here and there and was pleased with where the project is going.  I am finishing up the last two sections and its off to layout!  There was one section I read where I decided we would need more magical ammunition varieties, so last night I made notes on what types we might include.  I’ll either write them up or see if Chris Field wants to tackle it.  All in all the project is coming along well, and I hope to have a print-ready PDF created in February. If I follow that with one print project per month that will be three or four “on the shelves” in time for GenCon; which is the goal.

I have also been looking to expand the Adventurer Essentials line.  I spoke with Chris Field via email and we are working on a very cool concept that I think will be a ton of fun.  More information on that soon.  I jotted some notes down last night and will be emailing Chris about the direction of the project.

We’re winding down a huge sales month, which is quite nice.  Hopefully we can make a few more bucks this weekend and end on an even higher note.

There are plenty of projects in the pipeline for the next couple months as well; more S.C.A.R.E. releases, Adventurer’s Wanted, a Black Tokyo sequel and more!

On the Tech front the iPad was announced yesterday.  It should be for sale in 60 days, and I can already see some very interesting options for the paltform.  Others agree…

Jobs touted the iPad as a great tool for videogames, but there’s also a potential impact on old school RPG sales.  The PDF market for RPGs has been growing rapidly, and the iPad’s larger, color screen has the potential to take roleplaying from the laptop to a simpler portable device, which may accelerate the growth of the digital RPG business.  With the exception of a handful of key lines, RPGs in brick and mortar stores are a minor factor in the hobby game market already; the iPad and similar devices may offer ways to keep this form of game play more diverse and robust than would otherwise be the case.

I just purchased my ticket for Gen Con 2010!

Looking forward to it, and I plan to have a few “Dead Tree” products for sale at this years show!

There will be a slight delay on the next S.C.A.R.E. installment!  But don’t worry, that is the good news. I put out the call for some freelance art help and hired an artist to illustrate the Merry Widow Far Trader and four of her crew. So a quick S.C.A.R.E. release is getting a little more love and attention.  I may go ahead and do the deck plans for the modified Far Trader while I am at it.

Later today I’ll release the first Adventurer’s Wanted poster assuming the last Sketchbook is off the front page.  If it isn’t I’ll post-date the release so it shows up in a day or two.

I’m also knee deep in editing the Fantasy Firearms script.

I put a few products into the Haiti Bundle at RPGNow.  My inbox has been crammed full of “sales” notification emails.  That bundle has been selling like gangbusters!  I even purchased a copy for myself; I get to donate some money to Doctors Without Borders and get a ton of gaming stuff to boot!  If you have not purchased a copy, please head over to OBS and do so!

I worked on the layout for S.C.A.R.E. Vol. 3 last night.  Almost done!  I need to do a paragraph of sales text for the intro and back cover, plus add in the stats for the Far Trader Merry Widow owned by the NPC.  I hope to finish it up tonight.

I also got all the Sketchbooks posted, and even put them all in a Bundle.  I also tested out the feature that makes products go “live” on a future date with these.  Way back in the day I  did it and the OBS site placed your new release in the line-up from when it was created.  So entering in the product early only meant you had no “face time” on the front page!  Looks like they fixed that, so that makes me happy.  Now I can upload some products on a weekend, but stagger them so they come out every few days while I work on something else.

I’m still wading through some larger projects as well.  I need to get them spruced up right so that when Skortched Urf’ Studios starts selling dead tree books they are up to par.   All in all I have to say I have been putting in some serious time this month, but it is definitely paying off.  We have already had our best sales month ever, with the exception of the month Black Tokyo was released!  I chalk it up to three things; new products, better marketing and the Haiti Bundle bringing more eye-balls to RPGNow that I suspect has resulted in some ancillary sales.

New Sketchbook Stock Art coming soon!

This is gonna be interesting!

Check out the S.C.A.R.E. Vol. 3 cover…

S.C.A.R.E. Vol. 2 also got a four out of five star review over at RPGNow.  Check it out.

The reviewer said that he took one star off for some spelling and formatting issues, so I went in and corrected them.  Now he bumped his review to five stars!