All of the Fabled Lands books are now back in print in large format editions. These are 8" by 10", matching the original 1990s books -- though not, unfortunately, with those old fold-out covers that marked FL out as a hybrid of RPG, gamebook and boardgame.
But here's a heads-up. If you're ordering from Amazon, you're very likely to see a message telling you the books are "temporarily out of stock". The reason for that is they're set up for print on demand, which means that when you order a copy, Amazon sends a request to the printer (Ingram Spark) and your copy is added to the print queue. So naturally it isn't in stock at the time you order; that's the point of print on demand.
That message doesn't appear if you order the smaller format books because we set those up on Createspace, another POD company that Amazon bought a few years ago. It does seem as if Amazon's policy is to list books printed by rival POD companies as out of stock, but not to do that if the book is printed by Createspace.
Point is, you should get your book delivered in the same time either way. Amazon might tell you it'll take 1-2 months, or even that they are unable to say when the book will be delivered, but the fact is it'll probably arrive within a fortnight. Some Amazon customers have told me they even received an email from Amazon saying that they couldn't give a delivery date, only for the book to turn up that very same day.
There are other options, though. You can ask your local physical bookstore to order a copy for you. If they say they don't know how to do that, give them the ISBN and tell them to look on Gardners.
Or you can buy from Barnes & Noble who, not having their own print division, are happy just to supply what the customer wants without all the hassle.
Over the Blood-Dark Sea
The Plains of Howling Darkness
The Court of Hidden Faces
Lords of the Rising Sun
The snag there is that the first two books are printed by Createspace, who won't supply to B&N, so you have to get those from Amazon. It's a war, and book buyers are in the middle of it. Don't let the Soulwatch grind you down.
Hi there. First off, since a person rarely has a chance to actually thank the people who have had a major influence upon someone's life through their art, I would like to say a big thank you to you and also your contemporaries of the 80s and 90s for filling my childhood with fantastic adventures and for inspiring me to get into role-playing games. I was a huge fan of gamebooks when I was young and although I didn't have access to the vast myriad of titles that existed during that time being that the American market didn't publish as many of the titles as were accessible in the U.K., (heck, I didn't even know that most of them existed until just recently) I still consumed as many as I could get my paws on. The Golden Dragon books, Way of the Tiger, Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf books kept me company on many a day in my youth and helped spark the creativity inside me which has helped me run role-playing campaigns for over 30 years.
ReplyDeleteThat being taken care of I also would like to say that I am amazed at the volume of work that all of you guys put out during that time. Recently I ran across a gamebook at the local used book store and it sparked memories which got me interested in the genre again and so I started my own personal quest to rebuild my collection of gamebooks from that period. My own collection was mostly lost when I embarked upon adulthood and traveled across the country. Somewhere along the line most of my old books just disappeared. I still to this day have no idea what happened to them. But of course the secondary market gave me access to all of those old books from my memories and to my absolute astonishment a plethora of titles I never even heard of, among them the Fabled Lands books (which apparently were available here in the States but for some reason I never ran across them), the Knightmare books, the Virtual Reality series and the Falcon series. It just blew me away how many more of these books existed than I ever thought, so kudos to you and your friends and competitors for putting out the volume of works that you did.
DeleteAn even better revelation was that gamebooks have made a bit of a comeback recently and there's even a few new ones that have come out. This has been wonderful, especially considering that the secondary market has a tendency to have some steep prices here in the States for those books which never made it across the pond. Collecting those books that I have these past few months has definitely put a big dent in the pocketbook. Seeing these new editions available for a fraction of the cost of the originals has made me very happy because it has allowed me to experience some of these wonderful works which I never had a chance to when I was young. To top that, I didn't expect to enjoy them as much as I remembered enjoying them as a child, so when I actually got around to reading a few of my new acquisitions I was happy to be completely wrong about my expectations.
ReplyDeleteI was a bit disappointed to hear that there has been little to no interest in the resurrection of the Falcon gamebooks, although I have been able to track down the first four volumes, numbers five and six seem to be exceptionally rare and are priced at insane amounts of money. Hopefully some day down the line there will be enough interest to possibly Kickstarter the rest of the series into production. I would definitely support that.
DeleteBut all of the preceding was not really why I decided to write all of this. So after starting this quest/obsession of rebuilding my gamebook collection and finding out about the Fabled Lands books I decided to try and find some of them. They intrigued me because of their level of complexity and the fact that although they were all set in the same world you could read them in any order. After finding a copy of the old oversized Quest edition of "Cities of Gold and Glory" on the secondary market I found out that there were new editions at much cheaper prices than those originals and I picked up a copy of what I thought was "The War-Torn Kingdom" so I could have the first two books at least. After receiving it I got busy and didn't get to opening it up for a read for a few weeks, but when I did, to my absolute astonishment I found that although the cover said it was "The War-Torn Kingdom", the book inside the cover was actually "Over the Blood-Dark Sea"! I've heard of printing/binding errors like this before but never experienced it myself. I was just wondering if you have heard from anyone else who has had this happen to them with any of your books?
DeleteWow, that really is a major blunder on Createspace's part. I haven't heard of that happening before, but if you bought it through Amazon you should be able to get a replacement -- unless you want to keep it as a collector's item, that is!
DeleteThanks also for your kind words about our gamebooks in general. I know the pain of losing a cherished childhood collection, as I foolishly sold most of my Silver Age comic books at the age of 14. To buy them back now would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It'll be staying in the collection for sure, at the very least it's a novelty to show people. Having the wrong cover doesn't make the book unplayable so I really don't mind. I ended up getting a refund for it anyway because it was beat up a bit in transit also so I'm not out anything. Besides, it gave me an excuse to visit your site and converse with you. Honestly it made my day.
DeleteAnd you are most welcome, it was my pleasure to give praise where it was due.
I look forward to getting the rest of the series soon and playing these through, plus some new ones like the Blood Sword series...and hopefully sometime down the line Fabled Lands #8 and beyond....
Falcon not selling many copies this time around is the biggest travesty since, erm, Falcon not selling many copies first time around.
DeleteHah! Ive read a lot of great reviews of the books, and at least I was able to find the first four. I'm looking forward to reading them for the first time. And hopefully sometime down the line I'll be able to find and afford #5 and #6. For now they seem completely out of reach in both availability and price.
DeleteIn the 80s, I vividly remember my local discount bookseller selling stacks of Falcon books for something like 20p each. They had more Lost In Time's than you can shake a stick at. Oh, the benefit of hindsight.
DeleteOnce I get a decent online coupon, I'll like order those last four through Barnes and Noble.
ReplyDelete