The Writer's Guide to Making a Digital Living

[Newell]

I thought some of you may be interested in this free ebook released by the Australian Council for the Arts called The Writer's Guide to Making a Digital Living. It's also good for anybody interested in digital media, games, music, etc.

[AnTrAxX]

Did a quick browse through it. It seems interesting and useful enough. Ill post again when I read it properly. Thanks for posting!

[PrinceCaspian]

What would be nice is if wannabe writers and bloggers could learn to properly research before they start writing. The recent Red Ant story, for instance. 99% of them either quoted Kotaku with absolutely no attempt at gaining confirmation from the source, or (including Kotaku) made a half arsed attempt by linking to the ASIC website.

The lack of responsibility amongst “writers” is worrying, and I doubt an e-book will do much to solve the problem.

[Gameboffin]

To be fair, Red Ant are (were?) hardly the most talkative publishers out there.

I had a quick look through the free ebook and it seemed okay - although there are some truths you discover when you work as a freelancer. Perhaps the most frustrating part is waiting to get paid - I'm often waiting up to three months for magazine payments, which is lots of fun when it comes to paying the rent.

Some of the copyright stuff can be a bit hazy, too, when actually undertaking work. For example, I basically had to sign a contract for one publisher enabling them to reuse my work without paying me any extra royalties - and if I didn't sign it I was told I'd just get no work.

I pretty much spent all last year writing full time and I didn't even come close to 'making a living'. But hey. maybe I wasn't writing for the right people :P

[PrinceCaspian]

Originally Posted by Gameboffin

To be fair, Red Ant are (were?) hardly the most talkative publishers out there.

I had a quick look through the free ebook and it seemed okay - although there are some truths you discover when you work as a freelancer. Perhaps the most frustrating part is waiting to get paid - I'm often waiting up to three months for magazine payments, which is lots of fun when it comes to paying the rent.

Some of the copyright stuff can be a bit hazy, too, when actually undertaking work. For example, I basically had to sign a contract for one publisher enabling them to reuse my work without paying me any extra royalties - and if I didn't sign it I was told I'd just get no work.

I pretty much spent all last year writing full time and I didn't even come close to 'making a living'. But hey. maybe I wasn't writing for the right people :P

Gamasutra, gamesindustry.biz and MCV quoted another source but didn’t add anything of their own. The Age attempted to contact Red Ant, but no one else, even after being told to contact the administrators by Red Ant, and every other news piece on it, at best, linked to ASIC’s website, or relied on e-mailed responses from publishers. No one tried to contact rival distributors, retail outlets, or even properly speak to the publishers.

Blogging journalism at its worst. Where’s the e-book to fix that?

[Gameboffin]

I agree that there's this expectation for fast news that really hurts the quality of said news. I'm pretty sure, in this instance, that Gameplayer posted a news story that referred to a phone conversation to Red Ant in which they said 'We don't do Capcom anymore'.

[PrinceCaspian]

Originally Posted by Gameboffin

I agree that there's this expectation for fast news that really hurts the quality of said news. I'm pretty sure, in this instance, that Gameplayer posted a news story that referred to a phone conversation to Red Ant in which they said 'We don't do Capcom anymore'.

Nope. Try again RE: your "fast news" statement. If that were true it would be impossible to put together a well rounded story in quick time. Which isn't true.

[Vindik8or]

Maybe blogournalists are like me, they are scared of making phone calls. The poor fellas.

[Blue]

Gaming journalism isn't a credible career.

[Australian Ninja]

Originally Posted by Blue

Gaming journalism isn't a credible career.

You're suggesting that games journalism actually exists. Sure there are plenty of people who make some kind of money writing about games in whatever capacity.

But the number of actual journalists who write about games is how many?
Sure they are out there, but are they not the minority?

At least some people who write about games point out just how flawed "games journalism" is in practice.

Free ebooks?

Here's another relevant one. It's up to you to decide how useful it may be, or give feedback to the writers - I don't necessarily agree with a good amount of what's in it - but at least they are making an attempt to get people communicating on the topic. Some of the nit-picky BS comes down to different preferences for different countries etc, but other more general things they cover are very relevant to anyone who writes about games.

http://www.gamestyleguide.com/
It's free to download.

Personally, I've vowed not to inflict my abominable writing on anyone (via website) until it improves considerably, that is if I continue to do anything in that capacity in the first place, seeing as the website I was involved with is pretty much dead. It's still there, but I don't know if I have the will power to get it moving forward again, and I wonder if anyone would even give a shit seeing as we never had much content compared to most other similar sites.