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avatar_ukmarkh

The 'book of Arnold' Poll

Started by ukmarkh, 17:12, 18 January 10

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0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

Who will buy the Book of Arnold?

8x10 Full Colour 250 pages £20-25
86 (76.1%)
250 Page PDF £4-7
21 (18.6%)
8x10 Black and White 250 Pages £5-10
6 (5.3%)

Total Members Voted: 106

VintageAdvantage

Quote from: Vince on 15:47, 26 June 20
Kizza being one. His A-Z of Amstrad games is possibly the worst of his 'books'.
Agree. Bought that book. Udderly junky and a couple more for the Kindle, they are only 1.99 $. Which is actually a fair price. Of course, you have to buy "Volume 1" and "Volume 2" - only purpose seems to be to maximize revenue. And the selection of reviewed games is just junk. No Fruity Frank, No Sorcery Plus, come on! Do you know *anything* about the platform? Apparently not.

Gryzor


arkive

Hahah, a 67 pages long thread! My lord. Atari(r)Age, the retro drama specialists  ;D

Gryzor

Yeah, a very slow day here and even I am still on page 4 :D

VintageAdvantage

Wow, I had no idea this book / author was so infamous! Seems someone from the CPC community needs to put out a review of the Amstrad version of the A-Z...  :laugh:

Vince

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Vince

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Gryzor

Quote from: Vince on 17:04, 29 June 20
Someone clicked that he has actually selected the same games over and over for each of the 'books', in a lot of cases he has reviewed the game on say Spectrum, then bunged the same review into each C64, Spectrum, Amstrad even Amiga and ST editions and just changed the words a wee bit.

They are not worth even £1.99. He claims to be 'Mr Atari' but he isn't Mr. Anything, has no actual retro game knowledge and just bangs them out to cash in.

Yeah, I had mentioned his copying the reviews in my review, though I was trying to take it in good faith. Back when I bought some of these and reviewed them I quite enjoyed them as cheap, throwaway fun, but only because I didn't know who the guy was. Some time ago I caught some of the drama on Twitter and now I wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole since it's obvious the guy is a con man and these books, far from being cheap and cheerful, are just a moneygrab.

Vyper68

I made the mistake of shelling out for a few of these A - Z books before I twigged they were a cut & paste job with minimal effort. Wouldn't do it again or recommend them to anyone.
Paul Woakes - Genius & Programmer

Thank you for Mercenary Paul

Vince

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Animalgril987

The AA thread is now 70 pages & it's been closed for posting.


As an aside, the folk at World of Spectrum are not very impressed with the guy, either (14 page thread(.

JadedLemon

My two cents on this subject would be;-


Make the book the same dimensions as the Amstrad books published by Melbourne House back in the day, which was 14cm wide X 21cm high. It would be better to increase the number of pages (if necessary)  and make it a more readable size to hold.


Secondly, does it really need to be colour? Unless you can really justify the colour (e.g. 25% of the book has colour pictures), then stick with black and white.


As for the price, that really depends on the content. If the book isn't much better than a year of Amstrad Computer User magazines, then it is too much. You need to ask yourself what are you bringing to the market that is new and fresh, or much sort after by the people that collect CPC computers. If the book can be considered a definitive work on the subject of the Amstrad CPC computers (or near as damn) then £20-£25 for a black & white print copy is not too much to ask.


I shouldn't worry too much about a pdf or kindle version, unless either of the following criteria are met,
a) You've had at least a year of good sales, and considering a reprint, and an e-book version will help to pay for the reprint.
b) It's such a dismal flop in the first 3-6 months after release, that you want to try to get some money back on the print copies that have failed to sell.


As for me, I would buy it as long as it is professionally done. I suspect your biggest hurdle would be to let the many CPC collectors know that it is out. I would also suggest that once you have your printed book then you should also put one copy at a time on e-bay with a buy it now price, so that any collector that doesn't frequent the on-line forums will see it, and know that it is available. Selling on e-bay one at a time, could be a cheap form of advertising to collectors like myself who have "Amstrad book" as a saved search with email notifications every time somebody posts one for sale.


SerErris

Would you consider to release it under Amazon self punishing? Then everyone can get a printed copy on demand.

I do not exactly know how it works, but this here is a book released that way:
https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B08W7DWZB3/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A3JWKAKR8XB7XF&psc=1

Here the author talks about it

https://youtu.be/lfIgG2WbmGw
Proud owner of 2 Schneider CPC 464, 1 Schneider CPC 6128, GT65 and lots of books
Still learning all the details on how things work.

Animalgril987

@SerErris  I have that book it's really good.
The author is a forum member  :D

rebel1

Excellent news! Richard Clayton, the man behind Locomotive, has agreed to be interviewed for the book. He has also agreed to write the preface for the book. I felt it was critical for Roland Perry or Richard to do this because, let's face it, without the locomotive basic, the CPC would not have been the same machine, if it existed at all.

zhulien

i think the history of the plus machines would be a good addition

zhulien

Why not call Sir Alan Sugar also?  he is contactible via phone actually - via his reception.

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