Moving The Ruby Cloak to Stage 2

[You can read today's post on Authentic Adventures Inc. here]

On Thursday, I completed the first adventure, The Ruby Cloak, on my Authentic Adventures Inc. blog, that I launched back in May.  Took me 17 posts to complete the adventure, which amounts to about 30,000 words; judging from the feedback, it doesn't seem to have any loose ends.  I've begun laying out pages to create a pdf document and possibly a physical booklet; I have no idea how long that will take, but that's how these things always go.

Seems I'm always starting projects and never finishing them.  Believe me, it weighs heavier on my mind than the reader can imagine.

I'm beginning a new adventure today, Saithden.  While the Ruby Cloak took place at the edge of the Sahara Desert, this adventure takes place in the shadow of the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania.  There won't be any vampires.

Considering the matter of creating a module for sale, I'm faced with the process of obtaining art for the project.  At least, I've watched while others struggle to raise thousands of dollars in GoFundMe in order to pay artists to create works.  It's obvious that a great many people buy modules for the artwork, as a kind of fantasy porn, but I am skeptical regarding the actual value that art provides.

Let's say I want to produce a module adventure that I sell for $25.  I'm seeing Wizards content priced from between $25-45 that is drenched in artwork, setting the standard for the market I'd be plunging into.  Typically, I'm quoted $500-1000 per artwork from artists I've spoken to online; which would mean that 8 pieces of art (which would still be thin compared to Wizards content) would cost me roughly $6000.  This would mean I'd have to sell 240 copies just to break even on the art cost, whereas during that time I'd be getting nothing for the months of work that I put into writing the content.

This seems crazy to me.  I'm just a small producer; I don't expect to sell more than 100 copies of something this obscure, at best.  Probably, I'd do better to produce a module without any art at all, sell it for $10 a copy and be satisfied with selling 20 copies.  I would make more money that way.

Additionally, I can't see what purpose the art actually provides.  The module can't be witnessed by the players during the actual running of the adventure; most of that artwork appears on the same page as the details of the adventure itself, so the DM can't exactly share the book around to show how glorious the castle is or how frightening is the monster.  These pictures are also just snippets of the whole description of the adventure, which must be conveyed through words, not pictures.  I can appreciate that DMs often need images for inspiration, but books and written words can also be sufficient inspiration for these things.  You're having no trouble picturing what I mean right now, and I'm not adding any pictures to these words as I write them.

It seems to me that the market has its head on backwards.  We're paying high costs for images when the images are actually largely useless to the process of running the adventure.  We're paying dreck costs for writers who actually do produce the necessary material, since the adventure's value is based on how complex and innovative is the sequence of events involved.  We're demanding that small publishers support a whole industry, fantasy art works, which is extraneous to the product's design.  Why?

Particularly since gorgeous, plentiful fantasy art is everywhere on the internet.  It isn't as though we can't find images of battle scenes, beautiful women, spectacular dragons and so on simply by typing these words into an image search.  Exactly why is this content "better" if it is placed into a physical book, when the cost for printing color and visuals is excessive?  As a publisher and as a client, how does this serve us?

I'm going to be publishing my module with a few maps and no superfluous images.  The art market is ridiculously overpriced for what it provides me and I'm not going to be using it.  My writing is of very high value and the intricate design and uniqueness of the Ruby Cloak adventure argues its value.  I don't expect to sell many copies, but I do expect that those who buy it will become repeat customers for later adventures that I create and sell ~ because the writing is going to be that good.  It breaks all the rules of adventure module publishing; but it respects profitability and purpose of design, so I don't care.

I am open to an artist who wants to step up and produce some art in exchange for a percentage of the sales.  I am an artist who wrote art, and all I'm going to get is a percentage of the sales, even though I am responsible for the adventure's creation and all the layout involved in making it a product.  I'm taking a risk on producing this; I don't see why an image artist shouldn't be expected to take the same risk.

An artist won't, of course.  If an artist does step up here (and I find that unlikely, as I've made this offer before), it will be out of respect for me, and not from a profit motive.

I should point out that obviously, if I plan not to include an artist at all (except my own efforts at producing maps), then the quality of art I'm willing to consider is probably not that high.  Amateurs reading this should give that some thought.