Blade of the Avatar Physical Book Project

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Sir Frank, Oct 11, 2019.

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  1. Sir Frank

    Sir Frank Master of the Mint

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    My intent is to make a high quality embossed leather covered Blade of the Avatar for my collection.

    I have the text and illustrations, as do many Kickstarter backers.

    I can make artwork for the cover.

    I don’t need anyone’s permission to do just that.


    You might know former community manager Rustic Dragon, who is working on publishing his own cookbook.

    He has some capacity to help this project, and it would be practice for his book, so we’re going to put our heads together and see what’s possible.


    I do not wish to start a business, so this might be something that we get started and Rustic takes over.

    I want to cover the cost of getting started because I don’t want to be beholden to anyone.

    If this turns into a business it might be nice to recoup my cost, but I am not counting on that.


    Eventually, Rustic might need to turn to crowd-funding to make books or covers available to the public.

    To make anything available to the public, we need the rights.

    We will look into getting the rights to print books.

    If we can’t obtain the rights to the book, we will look at making paper or leather Blade of the Avatar dust jackets that fit the published Sword of Midras.

    I don’t know where this will lead.

    We’ll see.


    I had a brief discussion with Chris, and I understand what blocked them from printing books.

    It might be an insurmountable block for us as well.

    I don’t think anybody can stop us from making dust jackets.
     
  2. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    That's really great :)
     
  3. Leinad Laurelwreath

    Leinad Laurelwreath Avatar

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    And what it is or why they refuse to even talk about it?
     
  4. Sir Frank

    Sir Frank Master of the Mint

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    They don't have the rights to print a physical book. They have to buy from Tor. Tor wants to charge full retail price. Tor won't make a new book the way Portalarium wanted.
     
  5. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    And neither does anyone else here.
     
  6. Forum Name

    Forum Name Avatar

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    The paperback retails for $10.49. They took $200+ for each pledge level that had books coming to them. "We already spent that money and thus couldn't even afford to buy the books at retail" is, well, disappointing. Good to know it wasn't because the book wouldn't fit in the box, or because the illustrations were in the wrong place though, just don't want to spend money. Mystery solved at least.
     
  7. Sir Frank

    Sir Frank Master of the Mint

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    Correct. We're going to try to purchase the rights or get permission.
     
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  8. Sir Frank

    Sir Frank Master of the Mint

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    There are other costs, moving and storing palettes of books, and then shipping them to backers. And let's be honest, Portalarium doesn't handle shipping well.
     
  9. Forum Name

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    Agreed, I am aware of the other costs and coordination required to do this, that probably wouldn't be handled great. I just don't think those are great excuses.

    Good luck on your efforts here to make a copy for yourself; kind of neat for sure!

    edit; just adding in one cross post and will hop of this thread, but in the main book thread I offered up an alternative where the digital book items/dungeon are sold in the game shop (to anyone that wants them) to offset some costs for actually doing book fulfillment. I know, wishful thinking, but can you tell I really wanted my signed book?
     
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2019
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  10. evillego6

    evillego6 Avatar

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    Sorry, deleted. I don't want to derail.
     
  11. Sir Frank

    Sir Frank Master of the Mint

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    They are not allowed to self publish.
     
  12. smack

    smack Avatar

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    This is probably in the fine print somewhere regarding the terms they had with Tor, but is this blocking them from self-printing only Sword of Midras or also Blade of the Avatar?

    Also, did this also preclude them from giving us the PDF of Sword of Midras?

    Good luck with this book project!
     
  13. Sir Frank

    Sir Frank Master of the Mint

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    You address details I don't have answers for. I will say probably bars them from printing BotA because it is most of SoM.
     
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  14. Scottie

    Scottie Master Artisan SOTA Developer

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    So, to my understanding, there are two different "forms" of the manuscript; "The Sword of Midras" (owned by TOR, containing further "fleshing out" by Tracy at the behest of the publisher, and not within the rights of Catnip Games to re-print or publish), and "Blade of the Avatar" (the initial manuscript draft that's a little less voluminous, but contains the same essential story none-the-less, albeit without the extra touches and additions added later by Tracy, which IS within the rights of both Catnip Games and Richard Garriott to print/publish in physical form.)...

    What does this mean as far as this project goes (creating this cool cover with the book inside)? It means the best idea would be either to make merely an awesome book-sleeve of leather only (for the TOR version, or create a leather-bound NEW version using the older manuscript that IS NOT owned by TOR...

    Scottie ^_^
     
  15. Forum Name

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    Not according to Starr, unless his statement just means they couldn't agree on a price for Tor to print them and didn't want to seek out self-printing. In which case, that added detail "and we elected not to self print Blade", would be helpful to know.

     
  16. Sir Frank

    Sir Frank Master of the Mint

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    This differs from what Chris told me. He said Tor owns the rights to BotA.
     
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  17. Lord Tachys al`Fahn

    Lord Tachys al`Fahn Avatar

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    Funny... I said something along these lines a long time ago, but was shouted down as not knowing what I was talking about. Weird how that turned out. *completely mystified*
     
  18. evillego6

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    What Scottie says is similar to what Dallas said regarding their agreement with For when it was made
     
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  19. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    True that.
     
  20. Rustic Dragon

    Rustic Dragon Proprietor of the Hearth

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    If it works out that we secure the rights to print BotA, I still have the InDesign files I used to lay out the PDF that everyone has. This would make formatting it for print substantially easier than trying to copy paste from the PDF export. If we get the rights to reprint SoM, that would be a bit of a task.
     
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