Surprisingly, I managed to complete the redesign of Game Boy World 1989 over the weekend. The new larger version will go on sale just as soon as I can get Amazon’s CreateSpace service to stop jerking me around on my file submissions — I uploaded a PDF as a color edition and it breezed through their file check. Then I uploaded the exact same file again but set the print edition to black and white, and despite the two book formats and setups being 100% identical besides color process, they keep rejecting it for nebulous and, so far as I can tell, unsubstantiated reasons. They will happily have their professional designers fix up the files for me for a few hundred dollars, though! Hmm.
Oh well. Once I sort through their mysterious demands with regard to the monochrome edition, I’ll list the new editions for sale in place of the old. The new volumes ended up being about 30 pages shorter, despite my not removing any content (aside from some minor edits for space concerns in two of the articles). The larger page format gives the articles more room to breathe and still allows me to compact most write-ups from four pages apiece to three. The new edition even comes in about 10% cheaper than the older version, which is a real head-slapper considering the reason I went with the smaller size folio in the first place was that I expected it to be less expensive than the larger format. We live and we learn, I suppose. I won’t initially be selling at a lower price, though, but not out of greed. The extra pricing leeway means that I’m able to make the book available for purchase to libraries and other educational institutions; those venues offer a MUCH smaller profit margin than direct Amazon sales, and previously I wouldn’t have been able to hit my target price on Amazon without offering the book to expanded channels (not just libraries) at a profit of $0.00. I realize I’m probably deluding myself that any library would want this book, but still, I figure I’ll offer it to those venues for a few months and see if anyone nibbles. Since the point of this whole thing is archiving a slice of history, it seems appropriate to at least make that possible.
Will this be on the Canadian Amazon site as well? I was only ever able to find the B&W print version of the previous version. I was planning to import it in the next couple of weeks, glad I held out!
I want to say yes, but the first book was supposed to be up for Canada, so I don’t know. There’s no transparency when it comes to Canadian distribution and I don’t understand the mechanism behind it.
Haha. I actually requested that my library purchase it a few months ago, but they declined because it wasn’t in their catalogue. I’ve since purchased (and read) a copy, but I’ll try again with my library once it’s available. Might as well make a great book available to others!
Oh d’oh! Sorry, making it available to libraries would have raised the list price by several dollars, and I didn’t want to do that.
No problem at all. It’s an awesome book, so I’m glad to own a copy. Looking forward to the 1990 book and the upcoming Good Nintentions book as well.
Somewhat of an unrelated question, but is there any chance of the Gamespite Quarterly/Journal books every being republished via Createspace? I still need the Sega and SNES volumes but the color versions on Blurb are hella expensive, yo.
Republishing the SEGA book with the second volume’s contents is on my to-do list for 2016. And the SNES book is something I DEFINITELY want to do, but I’m having trouble finding the original book files.
Count me in to purchase both if they become available via Amazon. Would love to get a copy of the Playstation one as well. Ideally, all would be updated and given the full “Good Nintentions treatment” — yes, Jeremy, I admit that I’d prefer you spend all your time writing and editing more amazing books. Haha. In all seriousness, though, no one writes about video game history like you do. Thanks for all your hard work.