All Those Books....

[ghost-angel]

Taking a break from another project I finished up a big list I had... all the works DoJ has published since the release of 5th Edition, and the page count...

5th Edition:
164 Published Works - that includes all PDF only releases, but does not include all the reprints or the items that had hard-cover prints as well as standard soft-cover.

21,898 pages. Most of it written by Steve, but not all of it. That's a lot of words.

Attached is a big list of releases in a little PDF. Nothing particularly fancy, but if anyone needed a list, here it is.

2009 Year In Review:

Puppies!!

... kidding.

Looking at the last four or so years of released material, and the general condition of gaming as the economy, I'd actually call this one an above average year. Ten Books (which is about average for the number of new books) but three in full color.

JAN – Urban Fantasy Hero
FEB – The Book Of Dragons
JUN – The Book Of The Machine, Lucha Libre Hero, Thrilling Hero Adventures
AUG – 6E Character Creation, 6E Combat And Adventuring
OCT – Basic Rule Book; Advanced Players Guide; (6E1&2 Arrive from China)
DEC – The Ultimate Base

Book Of The Machine, and the two Core 6E Books were all Full Color Hard-Cover books. Yay Color!

And I'm back to work now.

[Steve Long]

Trying to pre-empt my "year in review" column this Friday, eh? ;)

[ghost-angel]

I'm sure yours will be more interesting than "Look! Books!" :D

[Rapier]

My writing has always been a bit sporadic. I would like to think that if it was my main occupation I would divert a bit more attention to it. I've always wondered about how prolific James Patterson and Stephen King are. They seem to come out with a new book every couple of months (more so James Patterson lately, King seems to be resting on his laurels).

You've just got to include Steve in that list. It's one thing to rattle off a hunk of fiction where the juice comes from an internal idea factory. It is another thing entirely (and a great deal more work) to have to come up with not just the fictiony bits, but all the concept/rules materials along with all the research that goes into it. Each book is (with variations depending on topic) nearly a thesis on it's own.

You've got to admire that kind of dedication and effort, especially after having kept to this kind of schedule for this length of time. Kudos!

[Steve Long]

Thanx!

But to be fair, I suppose it depends in part on personal inclinations and whatnot. For me, it's much easier to write gaming books than fiction. I have a half-dozen proto-novels and plenty of short stories on my hard drive, none of them anywhere near completion, because I just can't get into the "groove" and "mood" of writing fiction... whereas I can toss out gaming books all day every day. Maybe Stephen King is just the opposite.

I'm sure if I concentrated more on fiction I'd get better at cranking it out, but as long as someone's willing to pay me to write gaming books I'm happy to stick with that. ;)

[BobGreenwade]

Actually, I thought Watchers of the Dragon was a heck of a good story -- one of the best books Hero Games put out during that period. I wish we could get more like it.

[Steve Long]

Glad you enjoyed it! I don't think that sort of format works for very many books, but in that particular case it was an enjoyable experiment at least. ;)