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Another week in the life of GURPS
Who keeps moving Fridays closer together? Weird. Here's the GURPS scoop for the week:
• Phil Reed finished the rough layout on the Vorkosigan Saga Sourcebook and RPG in two days. Dear Lord . . .
• We briefly reviewed the latest PDF of David Pulver's GURPS Banestorm: Abydos this week. There's some work to do on the map, but this one is looking good otherwise.
• I finished my review of the first draft of that new Bill Stoddard item I mentioned last week. That'll enter The Process shortly. I still can't reveal many details, although I can hint that it involves magic and cities.
• I took time out in between the above and below items to toss rules input at Matt Riggsby's GURPS Hot Spots: Renaissance Florence. (Sorry about the thing with the pike, Matt. Please don't sick Cosimo on me!)
• I started my review of Volker Bach and Peter Dell'Orto's first draft of GURPS Martial Arts: Gladiators.
• You're not cleared for that! Part 1. I can't say who, because paperwork must be signed, but we have an author for GURPS Horror and a contract in the mail. We can thank Shadlyn for getting the contract process moving.
• You're not cleared for that! Part 2. Contracts went out to more for-now-nameless writers, these ones for GURPS Low-Tech. We can thank Shadlyn for getting this in gear, too.
Meh report:
• The writer of a hardback for which I had high hopes had to drop the project for the entirely sensible reason that he has a day job, a marriage, and indeed a life in general. Back to the drawing board . . .
• The Pyramid changeover triggered more histrionics than I expected. Perhaps we didn't make it clear enough that our only choices were (1) what we did, or (2) kill it forever. "Maintain the status quo" was ruled out by economics. Funny how GURPS fans fuss over boring-as-paint-drying economics in worldbooks but ignore 'em in real life. I'm just the opposite . . .
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That's because at heart, you're an optimist. :)
My long-over-the-horizon opinion is that this is another in a string of good decisions and accomplishments by you, Phil, Paul, and the rest of the gang. I'm really impressed by what's been going on there over the last year.
(And as for histrionics, you should see the reactions I get in my current gig when I tell people that no, we really are only going to give away SOME of our content.)
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This is true. While I like to bitch and be negative in person, that's a stress-relief mechanism. I rarely mean 90% of my complaints, and I generally believe that things will work out for the better.
My long-over-the-horizon opinion is that this is another in a string of good decisions and accomplishments by you, Phil, Paul, and the rest of the gang.
Thank you! I think it was a necessary decision, which to me equals a good decision. Not necessarily a popular or fun decision, but neither of those has a lot to do with "good" for a business.
(And as for histrionics, you should see the reactions I get in my current gig when I tell people that no, we really are only going to give away SOME of our content.)
People like free stuff . . . and when it's digital stuff, many folks naively conclude that it's valueless merely because of the medium. Needless to say, these same people would flip if you scammed $50,000 off their Visa card and then told them, "Hey, it's digital! It's meaningless and valueless!" Ultimately, I use work to measure value, and I know how much work digital content requires. And being the optimist, I believe that most people will even get it someday.
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#2: If there had been some obvious action in the last year — a subscription price increase to $30; switchover from internal ads to Google ads; even a mention that Pyramid was struggling, and pretty-please try to get your friends to subscribe — there may well have been a lot less negative reaction now. I'm a multi-year subscriber and MOO regular, and I didn't know Pyramid had moved over into the non-viable category until the changeover announcement was made.
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I hope you were able to get Ken Hite again. I can't think of any other writer I'd rather have for this.
Pyramid change is frightening
My only remaining question is how this change will affect the Pyramid writers' guidelines for submissions. I assume someone will answer query letters, though.
Re: Pyramid change is frightening
Re: Pyramid change is frightening
Re: Pyramid change is frightening
* ("What we pay" 0.04$usd/word)
http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/writing.html
(a +300% increase in annual dues, and the writers only get a +33% increase in payment?)
Re: Pyramid change is frightening
Long experience has taught me that our template actually reduces total writer workload. Formerly, many writers got their articles back with comments on formatting, which they then had to address on their own time. This step is much less common when using our template, because the formatting is all right there in the template, on a pull-down menu with intuitive style names. It'll only be more work for writers who are completely new to Microsoft Word.
(a +300% increase in annual dues, and the writers only get a +33% increase in payment?)
Writers getting any increase at all is amazing, actually. The whole problem was that the zine was grotesquely money-losing. The current reinvention merely brings projected revenues in line with the same old expenses. Raising rates increases those expenses, narrows down the margins again, and might be risky this early on, but we felt it was necessary to attract writers to the new format. A 33% increase in rates is absolutely huge in the publishing business (if you made 100% of your income from freelance writing, it would amount to a 33% pay raise, which would be quite phenomenal), where rates almost never track retail prices.
Re: Pyramid change is frightening
Requiring the authors to format the article in a WYSISYG format will surely free up the Editor (saving $ for the company), but adds to the writer's time-per-word.
I agree that from what I've read, the template is a good thing(tm) to promote consistency in the WYSIWYG submissions.
I've never used a template in Word, so this will be a new experience for me.
(Ah, I wasn't aware of any of the back room math, that Pyramid was operated at a loss for a while... my apologies.)
I seem to be learning much about the writing industry -- one of the reasons I subscribed to your LJ. Thanks for the patience.
Re: Pyramid change is frightening
Oh, sure – where the editor used to handle the HTML tags, you will have to hit CTRL-I if you want italics and drag down B-HEAD from the style menu if you want a subheading. That said, a lot of items demanded lists, boxes, tables, and so forth, and especially character sheets, that we punted back to the writer for clarity a lot of the time. Thus, the writer ended up doing the work twice and the editor still had to code stuff. With the Word template, there are unambiguous styles for the writer to use that will prevent "redo" steps on the writer's part.
I've never used a template in Word, so this will be a new experience for me.
Ah . . . that might color your perception. Once you're used to Word templates, they become yet another triviality like hitting ENTER at the end of a paragraph. If anything, being able to see what you're writing and know that's exactly how your editor will see it can save you many hours of frustrating correspondence.
(Ah, I wasn't aware of any of the back room math, that Pyramid was operated at a loss for a while... my apologies.)
At a terrible loss, and for a long time. It has been marked for ages now. It's just that we only now got around to dealing with it.
I seem to be learning much about the writing industry -- one of the reasons I subscribed to your LJ. Thanks for the patience.
Glad to help! Do be aware, though, that small-run niche publishers who operate primarily on a work-for-hire basis function differently from publishers in general. For instance, there's a huge difference between writing an entire manuscript, submitting it cold for review, and getting either a rejection note or a royalty contract (which is standard elsewhere, but not in RPG publishing), and writing just a brief proposal to create a desired item for a preexistent product line at a per-word rate (which is how RPG publishing mostly works). And who wears what hats is another major difference. Most writing goes through editing, page design, indexing, proofreading, indexing, and prepress checking, but in small-run publishing, those jobs are usually done by one or two people total!
Re: Pyramid change is frightening
I tried to follow the official char sheet layout within my articles (sometimes as HTML tags in plain text).
For my intended style, I would include <,i,> or the like.
Looking at the .dot more closely, it appears to make sense, but has a 3e bestiary template at the end.
http://www.sjgames.com/general/guidelines/authors/SJG-WYSIWYG.dot
(the rest)
Okay. I see. Thanks for the elucidation.
Re: Pyramid change is frightening
Lucky you!
Looking at the .dot more closely, it appears to make sense, but has a 3e bestiary template at the end.
The Word template exists strictly to package the Word styles used in SJ Games writing in general; it isn't specific to GURPS and might well use obsolete examples of GURPS formatting to illustrate its styles. For formatting, use the GURPS formatting guide; this is trivial, because you can just copy and paste its examples! It also includes all the styles from the template, incidentally . . .
Re: Pyramid change is frightening
As long as you use the template that we provide -- and don't try to add any new styles or change our styles -- the template will be a breeze. And if you do run into problems, just poke around online and you should find plenty of documentation on using templates. It's basically as easy as using drop down menus for styles, though.
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The new price is a bit of a shock (only because of the formerly dirt cheap price), but what it comes down to is that you all have *always* played true. If its said 'change or die' then I know you guys reasonably bent things every way you could to make things work and when it said that the new format will be of a quality that makes it worth the investment, then I know you guys will make sure that happens too. Yeah there is going to be *someone* who whines because that is who they are, but you guys have always played true, are clearly doing so now, and deserve the respect and trust that the new pyramid will be great.
Thanks to you all for taking the hard decisions.
RH
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From my perspective as a contractor in Canada – which is what I am, remember, and not a payrolled staff member per se – I can say that SJ Games is remarkably honest and transparent in its business practices. If they aren't saying something, it's probably because they're too busy working to stop and make a public report on it. In this case, the reason why there were no ongoing reports of the zine's financial woes was because the focus was on solutions, and dismal reports wouldn't have helped solve the problem. There are only so many hours in the day. And yeah, the decisions were hard . . . Fortunately, I didn't have to make them myself; Paul, Phil, and Steven got that job.
As for SJ Games content, we wanted to avoid turning Pyramid into a house organ. We often went to heroic extents at times to meet that goal, but from the response, it looks as though the majority of subscribers were only in it for the SJ Games stuff (although there was a significant cohort of Suppressed Transmission fans). Looking at that, I would think that the new model should appeal to our audience. Specifically, each month will bring a GURPS-centric PDF that could fairly be regarded as a mini-sourcebook on the month's theme. For instance, if Steven decides to have a spy-themed issue, it might be "just" a magazine issue to some, but it would be equally fair to regard it as a GURPS Espionage substitute.
As the blind man says, "We'll see."