Help me! - How to ''publish/start'' my own book&game story

[Archangel Tyrael]

So recently , this friend of mine graduated, and he is creating his own games already (not anything too fancy, but he is getting his shit together). I do believe he is quite good at it, and he joined another friend to expand his knowledge and try to develop their own games.

Anywho, he was talking to me about how he needs ''ideas'' to create his stuff and for his other friend to design things like, creating concept art and things like that, but they have hit a ''block'' wall... meaning they just aren't having good ideas or whatever... So anyway, i told him a story i have written *it's actually an entire "book" with 420 pages* and he said how awesome it was and it fit perfectly with what he wants to create. It's something along the lines of Diablo (i didn't steal any ideas from Diablo, it's just like, the same genre, gore and bloody with demonic beings and things along those lines, but with a deeper? story)

So anyway... this ''book'' i have written... it's on my pc... I guess the real answer comes now: This friend of mine asked me if i want to be part of their amateur team (remenber they just graduated) to develop fantasy games and books, they said they loved what i got going and want to help me enhance it.

I loved the idea, and i'm thinking of sending the material to them so they can get it in order and create art for the fantasy world i created.. Thing is... i'm not sure any of us know exactly what we should do now?

Should we start a website about it? I mean, i have all of this information about this fantasy world i created, like i said, it has 420 pages, plus, i have a ''detailed'' archive with separate info on each major being of my stories (kinda like a wowpedia page for lore info on say, kil'jaeden , for example) , and i already started a ''chapter 2'' of this same story, which has reached 300 pages as of today.

So now we're like... what the fuck do we do? Do we ''hire'' someone to put our art and text into a ''real book'' ? I'm not sure how to publish it, how to make it known and things like that...

So any advice would be great ! Sorry if the post is too long or if it's a little obscure, english is not my first language so i probably made a lot of mistakes

[Throrion]

You should probably sit down and have a meeting first of all, and establish exactly what you want to accomplish. Make a short, concise, to the point bullet-point list of your exact goals.

• Do you want to make your own company and become an indie developer, or do you want to pitch your idea to an existing studio or a major games publisher and try to get jobs there?
• Do you want to have your books published the traditional way (ie through a publishing house) or will you retain your independence and get them out through the internet via ebooks and such?
• Do you want to publish your books first and build the games based on those, or do you want to publish the games first and let the books supplement them?

And so on and forth. Once you know exactly what you want to accomplish, it becomes much easier to know what you have to find out to get there. Take it one step at a time and establish the basics first

[Archangel Tyrael]

You should probably sit down and have a meeting first of all, and establish exactly what you want to accomplish. Make a short, concise, to the point bullet-point list of your exact goals.

• Do you want to make your own company and become an indie developer, or do you want to pitch your idea to an existing studio or a major games publisher and try to get jobs there?
• Do you want to have your books published the traditional way (ie through a publishing house) or will you retain your independence and get them out through the internet via ebooks and such?
• Do you want to publish your books first and build the games based on those, or do you want to publish the games first and let the books supplement them?

And so on and forth. Once you know exactly what you want to accomplish, it becomes much easier to know what you have to find out to get there. Take it one step at a time and establish the basics first

I got this part covered.

We agreed on making this : I'd write the books and throw in all info needed for it, ''lore'' / plot twists / characters everything, seeing as i'm really creative and can come up with a lot of stuff quickly if need be, and i already have a lot of material ready to go.

The 3rd point you talked about is what we thought we'd like to do, like this : We don't have enough resources for everything we want to put in a game right now, so we decided on using books as our project. That means our books would be THE end all be all for information about this fantasy world, containing everything you need to know about the ''game'' which will come in a later time.

This is no ordinary book thought, we have really detailed art to put in there, and we'd like the pages to be somewhat ''ravaged'' and with an ''old book'' feeling all of that stuff... To give it a really specific feel. So eh, we'd be creating the books and basing the games around them... We'd like to remain working together so for now at least, i think we'd all be ''indie developers'' , but if we could also send our material to other companies that would be great.

Also, we want books published through traditional ways (publishing house) and Ebooks, but seeing as our budget is a little low atm , i think ebooks would be the best opition for now? If so how do we go on about publishing an ebook?

It's like, this ''buroucratic'' part is what is fucking us up at the moment...

---------- Post added 2011-11-30 at 09:20 PM ----------

Thanks for putting this in the correct board (whoever -mod- did it) :P

---------- Post added 2011-12-01 at 12:36 AM ----------

if someone else has any ideas, please help me out here ! I really need it, we're trying to take this to the next level :P