Inspired by the thread in headlines on a Japanese NES book, I have a question. my girlfriend is a commissioning editor on illustrated books. she's been trying to get a book through on videogames for a while (character design specifically) but it's a conservative company and she can't convince them that there's an adequate market. to be profitable it would need to sell 10,000 copies + in the UK plus sell the rights to publishers elsewhere for at least 10,000 more. What do you think? What subjects would you buy a book on? What markets do you think it would sell? How much would you be prepared to pay? And where would be best to sell them? high street bookshops? More creative places? big question. i'm nothing to do with this publisher, I just want my girlfriend to work on a book on games...
-
-
It would be great to have a book that is not just a list of games with a little description or one book dedicated to a single game with lots of padding.
The best book ive read was Game On which accompinied the exhibition at the barbician. It had essays of diffrent games, genres or the work of a particular person.
I admit that I love the idea of an English language book dedicated to videogame artwork and design. That would be lovely.
Anyway good luck, your partnerwill probally need it to get a videogame book published in the UK (Assuming you're from this little island?) -
Yeah, that's precisely it, it would be a book on design. very visual. Course the static nature of books means that the dynamic nature of games is hard to put across. just look at how badly screenshots put across how good a game looks. Game On was good, nice and thoughtful, although its scatological approach made it a bit bitty for me. there's a good lot of academic work coming through at the moment that means there's lots of thinking about the subject, and people that can write about it too that aren't just journos (speaking as a journo myself
)
Comment
-
Not sure if it helps but Otaku have loads of videogame books on their site - if you want to have a look at what else is about.
The ones I've always bought in the past are the Japanese books which cover something specific (like for example game robots from early days to present or Capcom's 2D character design)Comment
-
I've read Game Over
ress start to continue and Masters of Doom,
Game Over was a good read (sometime a bit boring)
and I loved to read Masters of Doom , being a big fan of the ID games this book was excellent to read.
I'd like to see more of these books, the real stories of some great game designers, or the real stories behind the making of some classic (old and new) games.Comment
-
I wonder how many copies of Trigger Happy were sold?Comment
-
I bought Supercade when I was feeling rich and foolish one day. It's a gorgeous book and well worth the money. I guess ?30-?50 is ok for a quality book like that - but I can't say I'd go for one dedicated to character art unless it was backed up with some good writing e.g interviews with the creators, history behind the character, influences etc.
Hey, on the subject of expensive books... I've been wanting to get a copy of Edward O Wilson's book 'The Ants' for ages but at ?100!!!! it's too ****ing expensive,Comment
-
I don't recall paying that much at all for the hardcover of Supercade. Got it for $30-ish plus shipping, and it slipped past customs too!!!
Most expensive gamebook I ever bought was probably Fami Complete for $60.
I have:
Zap: The fall and Rise of Atari 6/10
Supercade 9/10
Trigger Happy 7/10
Phoenix 8/10
Video Game Bible 7/10
Digit Press #7 8/10
First Quarter 9/10
Sega Arcade History 7/10
Sega Consumer History 8/10
Fami Complete 8/10
High Score 8/10
Arcade Fever 7/10
Yu Suzuki Gameworks 7/10Comment
-
I'd like to put forward a personal recommendation of something along the lines of High Score! It's a great book that splits gaming up into eras and developers, with lots of nice text, not just loads of pictures.
Comment
-
You wont be able to please all the people from all the places.
Gamers are fickle to say the least.
GameOver by David Sheff was an excellent read, very corporate and matter of fact. More a history book of the company, which made it, it wasnt discussing the importance of gaming in society, but rather charting the rise of a corporation.
Trigger Happy IMO was bile filled and terrible, with Poole going overboard, trying to sound overly intellectual on the subject of gaming. A few good points, but far too much complex jargon, the whole "gaming is art, and is currently in its post conceptulist phase".
Clearly a book aimed for pseudo-intellectuals, where he comes across as nothing more than pompous.
It read like some kind of poorly done philosophy debate.
The Famicom book in the thread you mention, is more a history almanac, a combination of facts, and personal views from different people. A nice balance, it doesnt feel waffly with regards to opinions, and the facts section tries not to be simply lists.
If it were going to be a very visual subject matter, such as game art and other related stuff, I personally would only be interested if it was aimed at gamers.
Avante-guarde art fops, with wispy hair, who sit around in loose shirts all day may find large double spreads, with loads of blank paper, and a tiny pic in the middle, ala EDGE artistic and entertaining, but I certainly would not.
Basically, if its going to be about imagery, for goodness sake, I would want every page crammed from top to bottom in images. Artistic white borders that are bigger than the pic itself make me feel cheated.
Id be willing to pay around ?20 for a general art book, maybe up to ?35 maximum if it was a specific subject matter that I liked, say:
"Japanese cover art for the past 20 Years"
As a gamer, I would want my gaming based books, aimed at gamers, not high society who are trying to look avante guarde by reading about "youth culture" and my hobby.
Keeping the written word clean and simple, no waffle.
Gamers are gamers, not English philosphers.
While Im sure we could all understand the complex language on display in Pooles book, the question is, do we want to read that kind of stuff?
Personally I didnt.
Neither did I like the "game on" book. (Im assuming you mean the one with a pink cover?)
Screenshots were all over the place, writing style jumped around all over the place due to it being a compilation of writtings.
I didnt like it at all. It felt like it lacked vision, like they tried to put too much in. Icons, characters, game films, yoof culture, etc ad infinitum.
Oh and let me put this in bold and make it big:
Why in gods name does everyone insist on big empty freakin gaps between text or pics!?!? Wasted space does NOT make editors look like some kind of godamned "mature higher minded genius", it just looks crap and is wastefull!
Please, whatever your partner does, Id like her to know, that there is at least 1 person out there who does not like big empty wasted spaces surrounding text and images. Why people harp on about it being artistic and a mature way of doing a layout I will never know. Smacks of laziness to me.
I like my pages filled with dense imagery and text, I want a rich composition, where each time I look at it, I see something new.
As for foreign markets? Im not sure, you mean the USA market?
Its tricky, but if the subject matter has relevance on both sides of the atlantic.... actualy, I really dont know, I dont work in the publishing world.
Trickiest thing would be making it relevant, is it to aimed at gamers or non-gamers? Also, making it sound mature, but not pompous or vacous. I dunno, mature in my mind brings up connotations of all the life and vibrancy being sucked out of something.
Depending on subject matter and quantity, Id pay between ?10 up to ?35 if it was something close to my heart like the Famicom book.
Remember, there is plenty available online for free, about all things games related.
What would this book provide that the net wouldnt?
Anyway, goodluck, it doesnt sound like an easy task.Comment
-
I think you make a really good point otaku84: what can a book provide that the internet can't? I guess it has to have some kind of permanency.
To be honest i personally think that a bit of white space goes a long way. The design of a page is all about communicating well and to fill page after page densely can make a book hard to understand - it's hard to visually identify themes and see what the author is trying to say. Course, neither does a single small image on a page do much either. I guess it's about balance.
I agree that an exhaustive study of Japanese cover art would be great, and I guess that it would be fairly easy to do given the number of collectors around. Do you know of any books like this already on the market?
Thanks for everyone's comments so far. It seems so far that words are all important and that history is too. It doesn't sound like a cultural study of games would go down so well, nor shallow overviews of generalised gaming topics like character design etc. It has to have some depth.
What do you think interested non-gamers would buy? Given that videogames are entering into more mainstream and non-gaming cultures, like pixel design (flipflopflying.com is well popular), stylised fighting scenes (crouching tiger went down a storm among the hoi polloi, as did the matrix), non-gamers seem to love (at least the thought of) retro games (there are hundreds of the bastards wandering around camden having bought an atari t-shirt at the market who have clearly never picked up a joypad since) and so on. I reckon there's a market there too...Comment
-
If you are going to do a book about character design I think you would need it to be focused on a particular franchise or genre with in-depth interviews and info on the subject matter. It is such a wide area that you could just produce a several hundred word book that actually says very little. I think a book about character design would be interesting, but I am unsure how well it would sell.
I would disagree with Otaku about layout though. Whilst some publications go to the extreme with leaving space between text and image, it is necessary. A cramped page looks confusing and amaturish and does not make the reader think "ooh what value for money". A clear and consistent layout is important. If the book is about character design then there has to be a lot of colour images that obviously brings up the price and could put people off, but I feel is essential.
I cant really think of what books I would be interested in, but I wouldnt mind seeing a character book that had large, clear pictures (and some images you dont normally come across). The sort of topic could work well as a 'coffee table' book where you just dip into it rather than sit down for hours at a time reading it.Comment
Comment