Reading. I have yet to see Two Towers or Return of the King in movie form. What a great story, though.
I remember how in highschool, a classmate didn't want to read LOTR. I tried to convince him by saying things like, "LOTR is basically the big daddy of all fantasy RPG games. This series is the reason there are so many games like World of Warcraft where you can be an elf, an orc, a human, a dwarf, whatever." I'm not sure if he was convinced, but it sure did convince me to replay Oblivion on my 360 again...
Sure -- if you self-publish, there's two routes that I know of: Amazon, and what's called vanity press. Vanity press is a print press that offers the same basic services you'd think of a regular publisher as having: printing many copies of the book, binding it, "officializing" it etc. But there's a lot of problems that go along with it. For one, vanity presses make you pay for everything, and we're talking about a lot here. Let's say it costs $5 for the production of each book, and they make 100 copies, that's $500 that you have to pay just for the process. Add to that the editing, marketing etc. Most bookstores won't even shelf books from vanity publishers, because they have a bad rep for being poorly-edited or "not good enough to have gotten accepted by a 'real' publisher) hence the name of vanity publishing. They don't do much marketing as well, and the average person who goes the vanity publishing route sells less than 50 copies, most of which go to family members and friends. With Amazon, it's a different story. They print/package each book as customers order them, so you don't have some giant quota to worry about selling off. You do have to take the marketing aspect into your own hands, but Amazon is more of being in control yourself, and the disadvantages of vanity print publishers (many of which include being ripped off) don't apply. (Many people associate this with having to buy the book on Kindle - this is false, people can get print copies too.) With Amazon, if the book is under $2, you get 40% of proceeds and Amazon gets 60% - vice versa if it's more than $2. This may have changed, but that's how it was last time I checked. So it's still a form of self publishing, but seen in a better light because there are more advantages and fewer disadvantages when compared to vanity print pubs. Now, if you go with a traditional publishing house -- agent, queries, submissions, etc -- they do a lot more marketing for you, and you're going to sell way more books than with self-publishing due to this (most likely - unless you're a master marketer who can rock it on your own). However, there's also more intermediaries like editors, printers, people who bind the books together, shippers, wholesalers etc and all these people have to be paid...resulting in you getting less of a cut on the proceeds of your own book. (Not the case with Amazon, as noted above: see, each one has its own pros and cons to weigh yourself and find what's best for you). Finally, traditional publishers will print off a certain amount of copies for a first-run author: usually 10,000, unless you're someone like J.K. Rowling writing a long-awaited popular installment. They want to see all the copies sold, and if you do a fluke (say, only net 1,000, resulting in 9,000 returns from the wholesalers/bookstores) then they'll be pissed and less reluctant to publish future books. Another issue to be aware of. If they sell all of most of the copies they printed and sent out, they'll send out another batch, and THEN you'll start getting some nice payment. With Amazon, while you'll almost certaintly be selling less copies overall, and be less known (there are always exceptions of course, i.e. Amanda Hocking), you will be in control and you will be seeing your money right away. No messy contracts that want you to give up control of your work, either -- not that any legit pub would want you to give up control of your characters or anything, but READ any contract THOROUGHLY before signing. Also, steer clear of any agent who wants you to pay them for advancing your book. Real ones will take a commission if it's successful, and that's their motivation for looking at it and then having good discernment. Hope I helped - if you want more info, shoot me a VM. Good luck with whichever route you choose.
Yeah, except when I went to make it, I discovered that we only had one piece of bread left, so I used tortillas instead.
Ah, New Vegas. I so enjoy playing this game. =) I began playing it in the hopes that one day soon, Bethesda will release all the New Vegas DLCs onto disk like they did with the Fallout 3 and Oblivion DLCs.
It was pretty delish. I used to make them all the time with flour tortillas, and now I have whole wheat tortillas...totally different. So much better. I love whole wheat tortillas. Joel is pretty obsessed with that game. It drives me a little crazy, but at the same time it's cool because, y'know...we live here. It's interesting seeing things in the video game that I've seen in real life.
Awesome. I just invited one of my friends too, he hasn't done anything yet but he is busy with college right now. At one point you will see him post something about his novel projects. I have several friends who are writing novels like me so it's kinda cool for all of us to eventually join the site and make the community bigger.
My best mate was meant to be joining last year. He didn't. And the friend I've just stopped talking to is also meant to be joining (bet she won't).
