I mean, it’s the holidays, we run our transom twice a month so, not to be rude but yes, you’re being impatient. It sounds like you’re an indie author (?) and we move much faster than traditional publishing but not as fast as if you’re self-publishing things.
If we took you on for a Heart’s Choice or COG contract, you wouldn’t earn any money from royalties in the first few months, in all likelihood. But that’s why we give authors an advance.
Heart’s Choice are supposed to be a minimum of 60k, Choice of Games games are more complex, take about 8 months to write and are supposed to be a minimum of 100,000 words, but most start at 150k-200k.
Yeah, it’s ok. I’m obviously foruming a little on my vacation, but more importantly: like bug reports on the forum, this is not how we review candidates, though I’m happy to answer questions. Neither Jason nor I handle our editorial transom anymore. So: email, and also yeah, most agents/literary magazines/more traditional publishing venues take much longer to respond than we do. So.
Thank you, I was thinking it could have been due to the holiday season. That’s pretty staggering that the Choice of Games take 8 months to complete. On my end it seemed quite fast, but I imagine the testing gets quite convoluted as the storyline progresses. I’ve only done 10 scenes in one project and around 16-17 in another. My second trial run story was about 5 scenes in before it began diverging down two different paths. I think I definitely need to devote some time to these forums to get a better idea of what others are doing.
Well, it depends, some authors take much longer to complete their games. But the contract is divided up over 8 months or so. Budget in another three months for further review, beta testing, and copyedit.
Also, you’ll definitely get a sense of how Hosted Game authors work on the forum, but we have very few Choice of Games writers here, @GreekWinter being one of about five or six (out of dozens and dozens at this point) I can think of who are regularly active here. If you’re trying for a contract and advance with us, we work very closely with authors from start to finish on concepts and their pitch and our process is quite different from the many approaches other people take on the forum.
It is insanely fun, there are two kinds of interactive fiction here, the ones that goes more towards the story (which you will probably fall into as well, being a writer), and the ones that goes more towards the classic game.
I would advice you to check out the game development forum, I learned a lot from reading older discussions when I started out. Another thing that might be good to know, that if you find a game you really like, there are ways of viewing the code and see how things are put together behind the scenes. I’ve never done it myself, but I know some people swear by it.
With CoG you’re tapping into a new market and a new, large group of dedicated buyers. You will add to your fanbase that will crossover to your traditional novels.
I’m assuming you have a marketing budget for your traditional novels. I have virtually none and am a fairly successful writer here. I’ve tried AdWords, Reddit, and Facebook but they aren’t worth it. I just write and do more organic marketing now and still get sales.
I’m currently working with a traditional romance writer to convert his book for the new Heart’s Choice label and it’s not as easy as copying and pasting from a linear novel. I’m not saying you are doing this but I just want to say my experience with my co-writer is that it has taken him time to understand true interactivity and how to design meaningful choices that have impact.
You may not want to think of this as I need to make X dollars per month to justify it. This is a whole new endeavor and likely more of a long play. Think of it like getting one of your books optioned for a movie and you need to write a screenplay. It’s still writing but with somewhat different rules.
Good luck. If you have any questions that I can answer, PM me.
Thanks for the feedback. It’s a strong point that this could tap into a new base. I feel like that’s been in the back of my mind since I decided I wanted to take on a project like this, and it’s really good to know that’s more than just a hunch. It could be worth it to take a hit in income if it pulls in a new reader base. Plus, there’s the fact that game design is a new challenge. I’ve been writing linear novels for four years, and while writing is my passion, I can’t help wanting to do try something new.
I’ve purchased a couple of CoG games. I’m going to do some playthroughs over the next week, and dig a bit deeper into the audiences and what they’re interested in. Hopefully I will return to the forum a lot less ignorant to this process. I’m so grateful for everyone’s help.
I hope this works out! Your word output is tremendous, so I imagine you could really be a hit with the readers here. I would suggest that if you want an experience a bit more akin to self-publishing, you could always write for Hosted Games instead of Choice of Games. You become responsible for editing and paying for art, and there’s no advance (although you still get mostly the same promotion and the same percentage cut), but you can write it completely your own way at your own pace, then fire it off for submission and move on to your next or something else while it works it’s way through the production queue. No need for back and forth communication until you sign the contract shortly before it goes out into the world.
