Minecraft Forums

Quote from NinjaCrafter4

I Type How I Like

If you're going to get a book published, you're not going to be able to type how you like. You're going to have to type how someone else likes -- and that someone else is likely to be pretty hardcore about it. They're not only going to demand that you follow the standard conventions of English, as people here do, but they're going to tell you that you have to have your chapter titles set like so, your spacing like so, etc. The exact details vary by publisher (and if you want to get really crazy, I've heard that some of the romance publishers actually specify things like which page the hero first appears, etc!) but they're all hardcore about them.

Also, there's the matter of communication: the purpose of writing, any writing, is to communicate most effectively with your audience. In the case of something like this post, mere communication is enough; for a book, however, you not only need to communicate with them, but you need to persuade them to fork over their hard-earned money for whatever you're selling. Si ellos no pueden leer lo que usted escribió, no lo comprará. Hey, what did I say? I said "If they can't read what you wrote, they won't buy it." The odds are you couldn't read that. (if you could, I can use another language, or a cipher for that matter) So when you're writing for other people to read, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to read it -- and in the case of a book or an app, to give you money for it. It's all about the Benjamins.

Anyway, back to the work at hand. Apps are indeed cool, but consider two facts: One, if you're going iOS, you have to not only shell out for a development system (I bought a Mac just for that) but pay $100 a year to Apple just, basically, to breathe, and then have to have your app approved for their app store. If you're going Android, you save all that, but you have to deal with a much more chaotic marketplace, and most likely more competition. In either case, you have to have something good, because other people are already doing it, and you need to be better than they are or your prospective customers will buy their stuff instead. Remember also that to get in anyone's official marketplace, you're paying a cut to them, and if you're distributing unofficially, you're losing about 90% of your prospective market before you even get started.

Again, if you've read my posts, I'm not saying don't do it. As I said before, you might not be able to sell a book you write, but you certainly can't sell a book you don't write. But it's not easy, and you can't go into it thinking it's easy; if you go at it like the hard work it is, you're far more likely to succeed.

So what, exactly, do you want to write?

What market are you aiming at?

Do you want to sell it to a real publisher or self-publish it (aka vanity press)?

Do you want a paper book or an ebook or an app?

Is there another book like it already?

If an app, what should it do? Is anyone else doing it?

And the bottom line: I'm a Minecraft player. I have some money to spend. Why should I spend it on your book/app/whatever instead of someone else's? Tell me what makes yours better. Tell me why I should give my money to you instead of to Joe Schmoe. What is it that's going to be so good that I just have to have it?

If you can't answer these questions from a friendly poster on a forum, you're not ready to present your work to a decidedly unfriendly marketplace.