Awesome article, as usual, Robin. I can't get enough of those stories (literally, hah! Need to find more finalists to interview). I can't believe your written competition tales are over. It's like Xmas ended, lol.
At the end of the article you mention a site I have done on the NWC. I actually haven't done any such site...yet...or something, though a couple things were written at request of the former owner of The Warp Zone.
See, many folks know I am working on a book on the NWC, but it seems so overwhelming sometimes. I often think I should just make a site that can be constantly updated instead, since I feel the book may never get done because I want to put so much into it. Ideally, I'd have pics of every known NWC cart with ownership lineage, interviews with every finalist or others who wanted to share their stories, interviews with every staff member possible, and ideally, some interviews with Howard Phillips, Gail Tilden, M. Arakawa and others, but I fear I'll never find them in a resonable amount of time. Additionally, I very much wanted to have a huge section on other tournaments for the book. I wanted to make everyone involved shine because everyone involved are truly my heroes. History demands to be let known of and to bring to light everyone's stories.
The advantage of such a site is people would come out of the woodwork. The disavantage is that so much would be on the site, many wouldn't want the book, though I know it would NEVER make any money, as that is far from the point. But, I'm sure all readers here see the catch-22. Of course, many I'm sure would want the book regardless of the site being available, as I'm sure I could put some pretty exclusive stuff in it (like I did with the repro manual), and, well, some would just want it.
I dunno. I've got a ton of info and I wish it was all in one place for all to see, but a book just means so much more for so many reasons.
Anyway, I wouldn't mind hearing everyone's thoughts on this. I often get notes from folks asking when the book will be done, but I just never have a good answer, mostly because of the issues described above eating away at me.
On top of the reasons above, I get a ton of leads for interview subjects, but I never have time to really track the people down (most of the time, anyway). It kinda sucks.
Funny side note...I've had the domain nwc1990.com reserved for a couple years now and some guy wrote me yesterday asking if it will be available soon, though I had just renewed it a day prior. Strange coincidence. I asked if he wanted to buy it just to see what he'd say, but he didn't respond.
-Rob
Well, I hate to be the only negative opinion in here, but here goes. If you want to try to write the book and such, that's great. However, expect BIG legal trouble in getting it done. Nintendo still cares about some of their property, and in order to get this published you're probably going to need their okay, and they likely won't give it.
However, they might because why would they care about something almost twenty years old? The other problem is, once you have it written, how are you going to sell it? Going the vanity press route is never a good idea because few people will buy it. Why? Because ANYONE can publish that way, all you do is write it and put it together on some site like Cafepress and you're done. The problem is, there is no editing process or quality control, so you might have a handful of buyers, but it will stop there. Even if you do get someone to edit it for you, that doesn't mean anyone will believe you necessarily, because in the end you're publishing it because you CAN anyway. My uncle tried this for his book after failing to go the real route, and it's gone nowhere. Has some awful syntax errors as well.
That being said, the only real way to get a book published is either taking a chance directly with a company, or doing what everyone else does and get an agent. Going straight to the company rarely works, and if you don't have backing by Nintendo they won't even bother and they're so inundated with crap from other people you'll be lucky to hear anything, let alone within a year. An agent is just as hard, but if you want to get a proper publishing it's the only way to do it. Take it from a guy who may finally have an agent for a novel he finished after SEVEN YEARS of hard work searching for one. It takes a hell of a lot of time, research, and dedication to find an agent and get them interested in your work. In the end, they're just in it for the money, and if they don't see your book having any sort of even minor impact on the general book market, you can forget it. You have to be prepared to sell yourself VERY well for something like this, because it will maybe only nab a niche market, and they don't like that. You might have a lot of people interested, but it's hard to say, you have no way of really knowing how it will sell. All you can do is research the current market and compare your book to others. Problem is, as far as I know, there isn't anything really like this that's selling.
The main thing is, though, you're going to be HARD pressed to find an agent who's going to want to take a risk publishing a book that will likely sell a very small number of copies. There's just no market for it. People are buying books less now to begin with, and as such you will probably be looking at a long time to find a proper agent, so self-publishing and selling it to people on the forum is probably your only option, but expect some negative responses or be SURE you have someone edit it and have others check it out before you release it. But then, once they do, they might not want to buy it. Most of this information is available for free on the internet, so personally I know I won't buy one unless you include some awesome interview DVD with it or something, because otherwise I have no reason to own a book about this, in spite of the fact that I'll always be interested in the NES and its history. If you haven't started it yet, I don't think you know what you're in for. Be aware that taking the time to write a book takes a lot of mettle and hard work. And for something like this, which isn't fiction, it's going to be even more difficult. I once was going to do a hard-copy collecting guide and had a hell of a lot done on it, but it tanked after my help backed out and left me to dry, so I eventually just made it into a better-than-Etler's list and that was that. Anyway, I don't want to shoot you down, but these are things you need to be aware of if you're going to try this.
Of course, I would have to follow up with Rolenta, as it was only a passing comment he made, but it's a bridge I'd cross when I came to it.
