[B]" Press Select —an independent publisher of original and unique books about videogames "[/B]
[B]TLDR:[/B] New digital publisher pays smart and cool people to write polished long-form games criticism
[url=http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/21/4645686/press-select-launches-to-publish-long-form-games-criticism]Polygon.com[/url] snippets:
[QUOTE]
[I]Press Select launches to publish long-form games criticism[/I]
Writers Brendan Keogh and Daniel Golding launched Press Select today, an independent digital publishing company that focuses on long-form game criticism and supporting the writers involved in the field.
The publishing company, which was funded after both Keogh and Golding won first place in Express Media's Young Writers Innovation Prize for their Press Select concept, is currently working with a diverse group of writers from around the world to produce digital books of game criticism. The first of the books are set to be published in early 2014. Some of the writers that will be published by Press Select in its first round have written for publications like Edge magazine, Kotaku, Kill Screen and personal blogs, including writers like Chris Dahlen, Michael Abbott, Jenn Frank, Jason Killingsworth, Maddy Myers, Tim Rogers, Patricia Hernandez and Robert Yang.
[...]
Each writer is given the time they need to write an in-depth piece of criticism, which can stretch into the tens of thousands in terms of word count. The writing then goes through a thorough editing process, the writers and editors work with designers and artists to supply art for the book and it is then laid out as a professional ebook that is sold online. While authors do not receive any payment in advance, they do receive 50 percent of profits, with the percentage increasing in relation to sales.
[...]
Golding emphasized that Press Select is not an academic journal publisher.
[...]
"It's about taking this reflective, critical dialogue that people have been having online over the past four years, polishing it and going as deep as possible. I can't imagine in any way that longer, deeper, better-written, more polished writing about games could not augment games culture and game development."[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/21/4645686/press-select-launches-to-publish-long-form-games-criticism[/url]
Kotaku:
[url]http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/08/meet-the-australians-who-want-to-transform-game-criticism-with-press-select/[/url]
From the [url=http://pressselectpublishing.com]site[/url] itself:
[QUOTE]Videogames are a serious creative form and a significant part of contemporary popular culture, and they deserve and demand serious critical attention. We believe that there’s a lot of people out there who want to see writing about videogames develop, and that there’s a real opportunity for close, critical writing about games to be pushed into longer, more challenging, and creative directions.
With Press Select, we want to contribute to the craft of videogame criticism. We’ll do it like this:
We’ll publish exciting work by exciting people. We’ll get the best videogame critics in the business to write about the best videogames. We’ll put great writers to work on their dream projects. We’ll work with them to turn out the most polished and professional book possible, collaborating with editors, designers, and illustrators along the way.
We’ll financially support our authors. From the moment of publication, 50% of every sale will go directly to the author. Once publication-related costs are covered, the majority of every sale will go straight to the author for all future sales. Press Select’s primary goal is to support the craft and maturation of videogame criticism, and that means supporting the people that write it.
We’re completely DRM-free. We believe that our audience will trust and want to support our writers, and that means that we want to trust and support our readers. That means Press Select’s books will be released digitally, DRM-free, with the one transaction purchasing a pdf, epub, and mobi versions of the book.[/QUOTE]
[url]http://pressselectpublishing.com/blogs/news/8672969-welcome-to-press-select[/url]
[HR][/HR]
I think it's really cool, two confirmed books are for example The Wind Waker and Tomb Raider and having the pieces in one place will make it easy to follow. Trying not to miss any good writing via Twitter only gets hard fast.
(If someone's interested and hasn't actually seen any games criticism, check out [url=http://www.critical-distance.com/]CriticalDistance[/url]. They do weekly roundups of what people wrote and what the discussion was about and stuff.)
edge, kotaku and killscreen, are you kidding.
It's odd that they're centering it on games [I]criticism[/I] when videogames in general can be seen from a lot of aspects that would be really interesting to explore in book form (the technical aspects of coding a game, the challenges in world, character and mechanic design, the impact games have had on society, the transformation of the publisher-backed industry and the introduction of widespread indie development, etc.)
[QUOTE=latin_geek;41928060]edge, kotaku and killscreen, are you kidding.
It's odd that they're centering it on games [I]criticism[/I] when videogames in general can be seen from a lot of aspects that would be really interesting to explore in book form (the technical aspects of coding a game, the challenges in world, character and mechanic design, the impact games have had on society, the transformation of the publisher-backed industry and the introduction of widespread indie development, etc.)[/QUOTE]
Because all of those things have books devoted to them already and a book format criticism is actually a really big step forward. Since it shows that not only games have evolved as a medium, but material and rhetoric surrounding them.
Take it this way, a good critic also has to be a fairly decent writer for the criticism to be good. The fact that it§s evolving means good stuff about games.
[QUOTE=latin_geek;41928060]edge, kotaku and killscreen, are you kidding.[/quote]
Not very promising. However the concept itself is very interesting, I'll keep an eye out.
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