I wrote this book, and I have to agree with most parts of this review. There's a good story behind it, but here's the short version:
Rotovision approached me about writing it based on some stuff they liked on my website. It was originally intended to be part of a 3-book series discussing game and character art. I don't know for sure what the other two were to be about, but they were canceled and only this one was given a green light.
Then the US publisher, Focal Press, wanted it to be about mobiles in what I can only assume was an attempt to be more trendy and hip. This compromised the book rather seriously, as from a design point of view there are no real graphics challenges when developing for a mobile over, say, a GameBoy or SNES.
The book was rushed. I was given four months to do it all, and for the first three I didn't hear a single word from the editor about the content. None of the promised guidance was forthcoming, and after a month of no contact I believed they had dropped the idea so I stopped working on it.
Suddenly, a month before the due date, they popped back up asking for the 50% complete text and 100% of the images. Say what? So I wrote 20,000 words in a week, enslaved some writer friends to help out, and started cropping out sprite images like a man posessed.
It worked too, I got it done and wrote some amazing stuff. Unfortunately the publisher decided time was too tight to actually use it, so several articles that were to be cut 'cause they sucked made it in, several good ones that were to replace them never did, images that were delivered for specific articles were ignored, random images were thrown in all over the place, and they didn't seem to bother labelling any images in the last quarter of the book.
It's not my fault! I've got a few copies of the book I can't even bring myself to read 'cause it was such a mess at the end.
I take full responsibility for many errors, and for the quality of the text. I totally screwed up by dropping the project for months at a time, but I really don't think I'd be the only person to make the assumption when the editor doesn't reply to your emails for six weeks.
I've re-written a few of the articles to have better image labels, added a few things I missed, and posted them online. For your reading enjoy, here they are:
Insightful post, I admire your honesty. Forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't there be a written contract involved? Like "give us W words about topic X by date Y and we'll give you Z dollars". Thus they'd have a contractual obligation to compensate you, regardless of whether they used your work.
I've got to say that this scenario sounds all too familiar. I've been a contributing author for a couple of books and even co-authored one (name on the cover!). My last experience was for a Microsoft book with MS Press which ended not-so-well. People think that the publishers (editors, project managers, etc.) have a complete handle on the subject matter and are on the same page (no pun intended) with the authors. It couldn't be further from the truth 99.999% of the time. My last book project was supposed to
I wrote this book. (Score:5, Informative)
Rotovision approached me about writing it based on some stuff they liked on my website. It was originally intended to be part of a 3-book series discussing game and character art. I don't know for sure what the other two were to be about, but they were canceled and only this one was given a green light.
Then the US publisher, Focal Press, wanted it to be about mobiles in what I can only assume was an attempt to be more trendy and hip. This compromised the book rather seriously, as from a design point of view there are no real graphics challenges when developing for a mobile over, say, a GameBoy or SNES.
The book was rushed. I was given four months to do it all, and for the first three I didn't hear a single word from the editor about the content. None of the promised guidance was forthcoming, and after a month of no contact I believed they had dropped the idea so I stopped working on it.
Suddenly, a month before the due date, they popped back up asking for the 50% complete text and 100% of the images. Say what? So I wrote 20,000 words in a week, enslaved some writer friends to help out, and started cropping out sprite images like a man posessed.
It worked too, I got it done and wrote some amazing stuff. Unfortunately the publisher decided time was too tight to actually use it, so several articles that were to be cut 'cause they sucked made it in, several good ones that were to replace them never did, images that were delivered for specific articles were ignored, random images were thrown in all over the place, and they didn't seem to bother labelling any images in the last quarter of the book.
It's not my fault! I've got a few copies of the book I can't even bring myself to read 'cause it was such a mess at the end.
I take full responsibility for many errors, and for the quality of the text. I totally screwed up by dropping the project for months at a time, but I really don't think I'd be the only person to make the assumption when the editor doesn't reply to your emails for six weeks.
I've re-written a few of the articles to have better image labels, added a few things I missed, and posted them online. For your reading enjoy, here they are:
Sonic Sprite History [nfggames.com]
Mario Sprite History [nfggames.com] (This one's been on slashdot before)
Castlevania Sprite History [nfggames.com]
And here's a rather lengthy errata [nfggames.com].
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