Monday, June 25, 2018

The OSR Bible (re-post, number 2)

A follow-up on this.

This is just to say that it might be possible to produce the following:
- 2000 pages (40 gr. paper, which is just a little thicker than bible paper which is usually 30 gr.), black and white, no images (or just very few: space here is going to be precious)
- Serious, lay flat binding (professional work, not POD-quality)
- Larger than a 6x9, smaller than 7x10...

I need to work out the numbers about editing and layout costs (and it will take a while), and of course, even before that, I'll need some serious proof of concept of what I want to do, and I'll need a team, etc.
But... assuming there is the proper content to put into the book, the OSR Bible might be doable and I hope with a market price around 99 U$ if I do a kickstarter for at least 500 copies.

This would resolve issue no. 1 (is it economically viable?).
Doing a kickstarter would be the only option, but it would transform the project from a dream into a book. Note: I would not do a kickstarter for 500 copies at 100$ for 50,000$ total (minimum) before completing everying. What I have right now is a ton of material, unedited and unsorted.
Expect the kickstarter some time in 2025 or so. So please no warnings about not being able to produce the material. There is going to be NO kickstarter unless the entire book is ready.

Now, for the other issues:

2- build a team... fuck it, I'll just do it alone, for now. I will put together the 2,000 or 3,000 pages and make a team only afterwards, only for editing and support with the layout and perhaps to improve and edit and add... not for the project itself. This way, if I never finish it or finish it in the year 2050 when everyone is just going to play D&D edition 9-VR in cyberspace, it's just going to be my own failure.

3- find the correct material... I said I'm working on it! :-)

4-royalties: the only possible idea that I have is this:
No one is going to make a profit out of this.
Every contributor will have a 0.x% or even 0.0x% in terms of how many "words" (I am thinking about just counting words) they contributed to the project.
Alone, this would count for nothing, even on a 100% book.
So I am thinking: kickstarter to fund the printing and shipping, all remaining funds will go towards addressing problems (i.e. lost copies, damaged copies, unforseen issues etc.). What is left, and all the proportional royalties, will go to charity. How?
Each contributor will pick a charity in a short list of 5 or 10, and each contributor share will add up with all others that selected the same charity.
This way, Chartity X might actually get for example a 10% of the profit (summing up all the 0.x% of the individual contributors that picked this specific charity).

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