I mentioned a little while back how UK author Michael J Ward is single-handedly aiming to turn the tide in favor of print gamebooks with his impressive epic new series Destiny Quest. And Andrew Wright, genre historian and writer of the latest Gamebook Adventures app, has an in-depth interview with Michael Ward over on his Fantasy Game Book blog, covering how the DQ series was conceived and written as well as (of equal interest to many of you, I suspect) the inside dope on its publication. If that whets your appetite, Destiny Quest 1: The Legion of Shadow is available on Amazon and there's a wealth of material on the DQ website.And talking of gamebooks, this seems to be a good place to link to the Slate article about the origin and (possible) future of gamebooks, flagged up in a recent comment by Mike Mielke. I noted this bit
"Researching interactive books," Demian Katz, gamebooks archivist, says, "There's pretty much the same pattern in every country. A few come out, they become explosively popular, a flood of knock-offs are released, they reach critical mass and then drop off into nothing. When I first started cataloguing them, around 1998, it was happening in the Czech Republic. That was one of the last booms."and couldn't help wondering if China has had its gamebook craze yet...
Hmmm, the book looks great but it's a pity that it's self-published. I might order it though . . .
ReplyDeleteOn an unrelated note, Dave, can the new Fabled Lands books be bought only through Amazon, or are they available at major bookstores (Waterstone's and the like)?
I am playing DestinyQuest right now and I can say it's IMO one of the best and most innovative gamebooks ever published. We can only hope quality gamebooks like this will bring more interest towards the genre.
ReplyDeleteDestiny Quest is great. Read another gamebook recently (Just came out) Bionic Agent Starship deadfall even more detailed and huge size was totally awesome!
Delete460 pages, according to this: http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/207842468?selectedversion=NBD57421552 . That is big.
DeleteThey're only available from online bookstores like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, Hamza.
ReplyDeleteI'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of my copy, but Royal Mail posted a memo on their website stating that US customs is cracking down on imports. Why would a package that is supposed to arrive via airmail be shipped via sea?
ReplyDeleteThat bit of news makes the arrival that much better :) All of the downloadable content (except for the final battle) should be available in the next week or so, for those of you who are waiting!
They seem to have huge sales numbers as well, as they are 2,933 in the book sales rank and #1 in the Snooker category for some reason.
ReplyDeleteWith figures like that DQ must be doing well, Mike - and more power to Michael Ward for taking the plunge and self-publishing. Traditional publishers can get quite sniffy about that, largely because they miss out the big rewards when the book is a success. (They will also say it's because they are gatekeepers of quality, but I refuse to regard anybody who would willingly publish The Da Vinci Code as a gatekeeper of quality.)
ReplyDeleteThat makes me even that more excited that Fabled Lands will sell that magic number of 10k. FL is around 25,000 (these are the UK sales charts). If that number is reached for books 1-4, will we need to wait for The Court of Hidden Faces and Lords of the Rising Sun to sell?
ReplyDeleteDo sales of other products such as Dragon Warriors, the FL App, the FL RPG, Miribilis, etc, increase the odds that the rest of the series will be completed?
Also:There was a Sci-Fi Channel fantasy miniseries titled Miribilis as well, were you involved in its production?
Michael Ward needs to get Amazon US to carry his book. While it appears to be selling well in the UK (no doubt due to providing great value for money), I think he will need to crack the US market to make the big bucks. In this regard, Fabled Lands is doing better - it has had an Amazon US sales ranking ranging from #40,000 to #250,000 depending on the book and day. For comparison, this is greater than the sales rankings for most (all?) of the Fighting Fantasy books on Amazon US.
ReplyDeleteIt was listed on the US Amazon site at one point, but it sold out quickly, and for some reason, DQ is no longer posted. One day, the listing said that only a few copies left, so I'm sure it will be re-listed at some point.
ReplyDeleteAs for Fighting Fantasy: that series is only published in the UK, and was never officially released over here, so that's not an accurate comparison. The Amazon US Fabled Lands sales have fluctuated wildly..... Why is that?
Wtan and Mike, sales rankings on Amazon (as for any store) drop off exponentially from the topsellers, with the result that a difference of one or two copies a day can shift a book from #40,000 to #20,000. Hence you will inevitably see large fluctuations in those rankings.
ReplyDeleteJamie, Min, Oliver and I rarely got big sales with our books in America, despite doing quite nicely in Europe, Australasia and the ROW. I think Choose Your Own Adventure meant that gamebooks evolved differently in the US and Canada.
Mike, the Syfy Mirabilis (aka Kinghts of Bloodsteel was a sword-n-sorcery miniseries. No relation to my Edwardian not-really-steampunk fantasy comic.
Sales of Fabled Lands products (books, apps, RPG) would certainly make Fabled Lands LLP more likely to invest in further products. Dragon Warriors is a separate property, so sales of that just make more DW products more likely. Mirabilis is not controlled by Fabled Lands LLP, so it has no direct effect on the company's business strategy, except possibly to encourage new development of comic books in digital formats.
Will we know current sales figures in March? I figure that sales figures are released quarterly, am I correct?
ReplyDeleteAs for DQ having great sales figures Wtan, they have a huge advertising campaign with Future UK.
Dave, I do remember you saying in an earlier post that there is a sharp drop-off once you get outside the top 10, 100, etc. I hope, though, that the difference between #40,000 and #250,000 is more than just a couple volumes. If that's the case, then I am proud to have increased the sales rankings from #250,000 to #40,000 by buying 8 books in one day. ;)
ReplyDeleteMike, interesting to know that DQ is being aggressively marketed in the UK. I was under the impression that since the book was self-published, direct marketing would be intentionally minimal as well.
Wtan, we certainly appreciate you buying 8 copies! In fact a large part of advertising is to get everyone buying on one day, as it's possible to push a product into orbit that way.
ReplyDeleteIt's clear that Michael Ward is willing to invest seriously in the DQ series - not just the printing, illustration and the writing (of course) but also in the website, extra content and in the advertising. The last is not cheap, though if a product reaches escape velocity you hope to get back more than you put in.
Mike, I doubt if Fabled Lands LLP will publicize the exact sales figures at the end of the quarter, but I will be sure to update everyone with as much non-confidential information as I'm allowed to reveal!
Thanks for the shout-out Dave, the interview is proving a popular read!
ReplyDeleteRegarding Demian's comments and your response - do you know any good Mandarin translators? :-)
Can't speak for China, but in Thailand MMORPGs are huge with the youth. Not so much western faves lie WoW but a whole slew of anime/manga style fantasy games, a lot of which originate in Korea, such as Ragnarok Online.
cheers
Andy
Interesting you should ask that, Andy. I apparently speak Mandarin with a Beijing accent. But since my command of the language doesn't extend much beyond "ni hau ma?" I'm not going to be attempting that translation myself!
ReplyDeleteWrt the tastes of the Asian gaming market, it may well turn out that Megara's decision to give FL a manga makeover proves far-sighted.
Btw I'm creating a Thai warrior-character and I could do with some good links about medieval Siamese armour and weapons. Can you suggest any?
There's a system worked out by Morris Rosenthal to get an idea of how many copies a book is selling from its sales rank on Amazon:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fonerbooks.com/surfing.htm
Re: Siamese weapons and armour, try here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.vikingsword.com/vb/printthread.php?t=4046
http://www.usmta.com/thai-weapons.htm
http://www.allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=237
Not much in the way of armour, but it's usually lightweight laquered plate with flared helms for commanders (who are on elephant-back), and bugger-all for the ground troops (I think). I can remember trekking around the Mekong floodplains of southern Laos checking out various ancient Khmer ruins and wondering how the soldiers would have coped lugging about weapons and armour in 40 degree heat and 100 per cent humidity!
Lastly, there's the Thai weapons-based martial art Krabi Krabong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krabi_Krabong
Any Siamese warrior would know this! Hope that helps...
cheers
Andy
That's brilliant, Andy. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteMy name is Fred and i play gamebooks since 1986...
ReplyDeleteCould you tell me if the sales was (is) good for the reedited books fabled lands 1 to 4 and if the 5 and 6 will be reedited ?
In france a lot of player like these books. Andf the old 5 and 6 are unavailable or was sold at price prohibitively expensive... :(
Hi Fred, we're hoping that the reissued books 1-4 will sell well enough to justify new editions of 5 and 6, and even completing the series. Personally I think gamebooks in print form alone have had their day, so perhaps I should have said that if sales are high enough for Fabled Lands in all of its various current or upcoming forms ( print books, apps and role- playing game) then new books would make commercial sense. That would need to be an integrated media plan involving both print and ebooks/apps.
ReplyDeleteFrom the viewpoint of Fabled Lands LLP, the company that controls the rights in the FL series, the gamebooks have to sell better than new properties because there is no other commrrcial exploitation that can be done with the material. For example, take a series like Harry Potter or our upcoming Dirk Lloyd novels. Those can potentially work not just as books but as movies, television, videogames, etc. So the books alone don't have to carry all the weight, they are the pump that waters the whole garden.
That doesn't apply in the case of gamebooks because, when you look at it, they are not really distinct brands. Sure, *we* can see how the Dragon Warriors world differs from the FL world differs from Fighting Fantasy differs from DnD... But to the rest of the world those are one indistinguishable mass called "heroic fantasy". Which means a company cannot exploit those properties valuably in other media. They have to fund themselves as gamebooks alone.
When Demian Katz says gamebook fads eventually pass, you could say the same about hit TV shows but sometimes they make a comeback, like Thunderbirds and Dr Who did a few years ago. Maybe Destinyquest will reverse the tide for gamebooks. You never know.
ReplyDeleteGamebook resurgence in print, Ron? Ain't gonna happen. Here's why:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thebookdesigner.com/2011/02/indie-publishing-the-problem-with-book-distribution/
As a mixed publishing strategy, though - maybe. DQ is available on Kindle already, I understand, and other digital versions can't be far behind. If gamebooks have a future it's there.
Dave, in your description of Abraxas, you mention that Vertis is meant to be the precursor to Greece, and you also mention that the Vertides are not skilful sorcerers due to their mindset being "more directed towards logic than imagination". The Ancient Greeks were, of course, great thinkers, but let's not forget that they had a highly imaginative mythology (which admittedly I do not enjoy as much as say, Norse mythology, but its creativeness cannot be denied).
ReplyDeleteDave,
ReplyDeleteThis dude:
http://www.johntreed.com/HTWP.html
is a well-known real estate guru in the US. He self-publishes all his stuff (books and newsletters) and has also written a book on self-publishing. Perhaps you already know as much or more than he does on this topic, but I thought I would suggest his book in case you are considering this route for Fabled Lands in the future. He markets by e-mail (when he writes a new book, he sends everyone on his mailing list an email). I hope you will consider doing something similar if the Amazon route doesn't work out - the Yahoo Fabled Lands group is quite large, and I wonder if it is legal/ethical to get a mailing list from the group leader.
Hamza, the Greek myths in the form we have them today are a lot of fun, but I find them a bit imaginatively sterile when put alongside the dreamlike weirdness of Celtic or Norse myths, for example. Too many monsters are "the head of this animal, the body of this animal, etc..." The original folk version of those myths was probably a lot more stripped and raw, but unfortunately writers with logical minds did a Monster Manual on them.
ReplyDeleteWtan, most definitely it would not be ethical to get a mailing list from the group leader - we would have to ask each member individually if they wanted to join the list. But I think they must all be aware by now that the books are available if they want them. (Most group members presumably bought the original books, so don't need the new editions.)
Don't get me wrong, I far prefer Norse mythology to Greek mythology (I don't know enough about Celtic mythology to comment). I suppose all mythology is very imaginative.
ReplyDeleteI'd say the closer you can get to the original form of myth and folklore, as handed down over generations by word of mouth, the purer the imagination. When fairy tales get collected and worked over by an author, they often lose some of the dark, surreal and/or dreamlike aspects that make them interesting.
ReplyDelete"the Yahoo Fabled Lands group is quite large, and I wonder if it is legal/ethical to get a mailing list from the group leader."
ReplyDeleteIt's not legal and not ethical wtan. But why bother? Just post a message in the group and all members will read it.
Just received the book in my mail and i was shocked the see a big, thick hefty tome in my mail. i was genuinely shocked! More than five FF books can fit inside there! Talk about value =)
ReplyDeleteIt's Fred again :
ReplyDeleteDo you have a date of release of the vol. 5 and 6 ?
2011 ? 2012 ?