We have commented in-house that Game Ideas Unlimited Volume 1 has not gotten much attention, at least in terms of sales. It was admittedly an experiment–those of you who visit this site are undoubtedly aware that this book contains twenty-six of the roughly two hundred articles in that series, all of which are available on this web site for the individual patient enough to seek them, and indeed the ones included in this first volume easier to find than most, as work has already been done to clean up the articles themselves and the access links to reach them. Thus on one level we’re not all that surprised that the book, available here directly through Cafe Press, has not been selling well. On the other hand, we’ve also wondered whether we had adequately promoted the tome, indeed, whether gamers were at all aware of the effort.
One way to raise awareness is by getting reviews posted. It is not always easy for authors to get reviews of their works; however, in the role playing game world there are sites eager to post reviews, and one in particular which is rather popular and which guarantees that any game-related books it receives will be reviewed. We have dithered about sending a copy, because of course we have to pay for copies and are still uncertain how the book will be received by gamers generally (and reviewers in particular), but at this weekend’s Annual Stockholders Meeting, after being elected one of two new directors, former and now returning director Evan Young directed me to stop dithering and get the book to them. After all, even a bad review would promote the availability of the book, and we do have confidence that the contents of the book are particularly good. The doubts which arise come primarily from the question of whether anyone else will think it a good idea to release in print for money what is already available free electronically and has been for most of a decade. Thus today I finished packing and mailing a copy of the book to the site in question. It will take this week to arrive, additional time to be assigned to a reviewer, and ultimately will be reviewed. I am watchful.
As long as I was sending a package anyway, and paying for postage and packing from my own pocket, I included a copy of Faith and Gaming, which is available here, for which I have similar concerns, although this has sold a few copies probably to members of the Christian Gamers Guild who consider the series one of their strongest assets and view the availability of the book as a boon even though the series has long been hosted in the Chaplain’s Corner of their web site. Thus this has the double whammy, first that it is a collection of materials already available free on the Internet, and second that it is very clearly a Christian book about role play gaming, which can very quickly garner animosity in the gaming community. But again, a review will put the book in the public eye, and to some degree a reviewer who is not “religious” himself cannot slam a religious book without blackening his own reputation, so hopefully it will get a fair treatment.
On that note, I wait.
–M. J. Young