Publish or Perish

From: Hughes, John (NAT) <"Hughes,>
Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 09:26:26 +1000


Mr Danny:

Details a situation many of us are familiar with:

>Simon Bray, Martin Hawley, Dan Prentice, Richard
>Faragher and myself were looking for something to do, after contacting Rob
>Heinsoo, he said to go ahead with work on the Grazelands and submit it.

>... Once we had 240
>pages completed, we then got the call that it had been decided that the
>Grazelands was a Gloranthan core area and so would be written in house.
Thus
>into the bin went our 240 pages and I don't know how many man hours of
work.

Don't bin it. Web it! Send it to the fanzines! Share it around as a text file. Post individual essays to the Digest. Do your own one-off web magazine as a pdf file. Register as an Issaries fan site. Be careful of the official/unofficial legalities. People will use your material, assimiliate it, borrow from it and react against it. It will enter the collective consciousness, perhaps become GAG, or 'common vision glorantha' or 'standard variant mythology', whatever. And in 2007 ("Coming Soon - Hero Wars - summer of 1981"), when the Grazeland pack is on the table for publication, people will know who to approach. (Or, also in the realms of possibility, a new 'expert' team will rewrite your ideas, going off in similar directions from the common base of marterial, or (more cynically) twisting and reinventing concepts to stamp them with new ownership so they're no longer identifiable as yours,). The Gloranthan community, however, recognises and respects ancestry.

I should say that the strike rate for Gloranthan projects shelved isn't dissimilar to that of other publishing houses. However, we all know the communication process, and other factors, leave much to be desired. I'm not sure how Rob comes into this - did you have any written go-ahead from Greg?

John  


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