Enembee? You owe me a new pair of pants.

Gave the thread 5/5. Felt tempted to give it a 4 since my pants are now utterly ruined, but that would just be petty.

 

You know what? Fuck it. I am unlurking for the very last time, because the concentrated win of DLP over the last couple weeks has inspired me to become a contributing member. I hope you're happy with yourself enembee.

 

That was quite possibly the coolest thing i've seen in a while... since the C2 in fact.

Brilliant job.

 

enembee, at the risk of your head inflating past breaking point, these covers really are fucking awesome. Make more.

Also, Dark Lord Publishing has to happen, the amazing authors of DLP need a way to get their original works published with no bullshit. (Plus the logo is too good to give up.)

 

The covers look great, emb. The logo is awesome and love the idea of DL Publishing.

I think for it too work, though, the Original Fiction section would need a lot more love than what it is currently being given, and said awesome DLP authors would have to sit down and actually write Original work. (That was a nudge for your own story you have resting there.)

I know Shezza seemed to have tossed the gauntlets in on OW. What about you Swim, you got the imagination and skillz for it? Joe, are you too busy with Wastelands to drop in a few chapters of your OW you spoke of one time? Let DLP help you edit it?

Without actual people writing OW, this idea will only remain in the realm of "I-want-it-to-happen-so-badly."

 

I'm pretty sure that most of us here have an original story idea or two which we've either never shared or never gotten around to writing. I know I have.

It would be pretty fucking awesome to see that happen, yeah, although I can't really see it being set up myself.

 

That's exactly the point. To do this idea, people would not just need to 'set this up,' there would have to be completed original ideas to go with it. I'm sure we all have an original idea or two floating in our heads, but few of us are popular or skilled enough to attract the first people willing to buy.

Once established, though, then others could trickle out who aren't as popular, but they would need to be skilled.

 

He has a small amount of it in the Of Harry and Harry thread.

It is made of win.

 

You're missing the point completely. Completed, good, original fiction would be needed, but the business end of things is where everything falls apart.

Getting enough good fiction together would be fairly easy; it would just take a bit of time, effort, and patience. Moving from that into actually being able to start a Dark Lord Publishing house would take either a dedicated group of people running it as an actual business, which would be difficult to find, some financial success and start-up capital, equally difficult, and so on - or a hefty donation from some rich bugger to get things printed from another small press, and some marketing effort.

Basically, the problem isn't with fiction, but with finance.

Guys: keep writing fanfiction. For now. Original writing can be a hobby, but this is your day job.

:awesome

 

I'm writing two Original stories right now. Plus A Clock on the Face of Hell. And doing a one-shot. And omega-reading for CareOtters. And contribuiting with the Round-Robin (Sparkly Faggot). And going to college. And...


Holy shit. I'm screwed.

 

Dark Lord Publishing is very daring idea and as CareOtters pointed out, unless someone have loads of money he is not afraid of losing, I don't think anyone will carry it out. But we live in XXI century, so why not make it, at least at the beginning, on-line service?

DLP could for start sell ebooks and if it manage to be reasonable success and gain more money, it could try with normal books. Seems like plausible idea we could try.

By the way, I love these covers enembee. Keep a good job.

 

The problem with e-books is that after you sell the first the internetz becomes flooded with copies. Or worst, if the story is really bad, the internet is never flooded with pirated copies.

Then if DLP's original stories are circling the net illegally and we wish to put a stop to it (as anyone who's spent months and perhaps years with his ass stuck to the chair, giving their best to finish a novel is prone to do) we'll have to get lawyers. And lawyers mean money. And needing money is what drove us to sell e-books instead of books in the first place.


Tricky thing, the internetz.

 

Unfortunately, that can be said about any book today, because finding ebook version of it take about a minute and yet there are still people who buy original ebooks, if only because they don't want to search any pirate sites for it.

 

True enough, Celestin. But keep in mind those form the minority. If you take the whole of the population, then substract those that don't like reading, those that can't read, those that are older and generally frown upon reading on the computer (large amount there, I assure you), and what you've got left is a tiny portion of the reading population. And then you have to remove from that group those that prefer not paying for an e-book. I'm fairly confident it'll be more than half.

What do you have left? I won't talk numbers since I haven't done a survey, but we all know it's a really small number. That coupled with how few people will stumbled upon "our" books...

Well, we'll be lucky to sell more than 20 copies. If you charge $5 per copy you don't even cover the hosting fee, let alone the sheer amount of effort and time that goes into a novel.


I love the DLP publishing house as much as the next guy, but let's face it, the odds are below 0,01% of it happening.

 

As it stands, I need to edit it myself first. A lot of unnecessary words and raw prose. But yeah, 2,000 words in the OHAH thread, if you're keen.

As for Dark Lord Publishing. Serving as a catalyst for this idea, I would invest time and even funds to seeing it get off the ground. As has been stated, though, we would need some quality product to proceed, as well as a group of vested individuals willing to put in the hard yards.

E-books would be an avenue, as they're available on so many formats. Followed by limited printed editions should we actually maximize the potential of our fanfic readership and whore out the original stuff.

It may just be a wonderful, wistful idea now, but there is potential here at DLP for it to garner a measure of success.

 

The thing is - you can't success if you not try. I agree that odds are small (still, probably little higher than 0.01%), but this idea is cheap enough to try and if we fail, we will not end with debts that we can't pay off.

 

Well, that's true. Hosting is fairly cheap and if the novels are copyrighted by the author, who would then have to lease it to DLP house, I see no legal problems. (not a lawyer, though) Should it fail the author could still keep his novel and try somewhere else.

And don't get me wrong, I'd love for this to work. I'm just saying it's a long-shot.


EDIT: Will a kind mod bitch-slap this discussion and move it into a separate thread please? I think it deserves proper attention.

 

I guess Celestin called it:

Discussion thread for this.