So I’ve recently taken up the mantle of writer with the intent of publishing a fantasy novel. My background in storytelling comes primarily from exercises as a Dungeon or Game Master for various tabletop roleplaying games. Consequently when preparing a story my brain first defaults to the creation of a setting or the essential organizations, laws, locations, and so forth rather than the plot itself. I believe that a sufficiently rich and interesting setting will naturally result in numerous plot hooks that I can later use when devising the actual storyline.

Whether or not this is “better” or “less pure” than making up a story and then a setting to go with it is up for debate; either way, this is how I tell stories.

I have very little developed so far for the setting of my first book; I know that it is to take place on earth, modern day. The choice to use our world as it is both simplifies and complicates the process of creating a setting. On the one hand, a lot of the gruntwork in terms of geographic locations is taken care of for you; but on the other hand the job of customizing the world to make it interesting enough for a fantasy novel is arguably just as intensive as starting with a blank slate.

Recent changes to the royalty payout to the authors of ebooks has led me to wonder – is it really worth it to go through a conventional publishing house if you do eBooks? Why not start your own company and sell your eBooks independently? Given the substantially reduced (read: nonexistent) material costs of electronic publication one has to wonder what value is being contributed by these publishers? Being a neophyte to the world of online publishing, I don’t claim to have any insight as to how extensively these publishing houses promote their ebooks, but it seems more logical to me to control the means of distribution and all the profits.