The book for The Word Is Not The Thing is now available. It’s named The Word Is Not The Thing: A Book About The Game. Simple.

It’s available as a free PDF through itch.io. You can get it here: https://mavenmob.itch.io/the-word-is-not-the-thing-book

The paperback version is also available through Amazon. You can get it here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1999019504

Creating books for these types of games is something I want to keep doing. When I finished up The Word Is Not The Thing I got the chance to figure out how to do so. After learning about the different print on demand service offerings and finding the right balance between them, I decided to go with Kindle and Itch.io with the possibility of using IngramSpark for expanded distribution. On top of researching the best options, I also got to figure out the specifics of using Kindle Direct Publishing in terms of trim sizes, bleed/margin requirements, types of binding, ISBNs, cover design requirements and the possibility of offering a free Kindle version.

The book itself was designed through Affinity Publisher Beta, which surprisingly didn’t give any real issues, even with my working files being up to 1GB in size. Outside from deciding the layout and figuring out the front matter/back matter, the rest was pretty straight forward. I wish I had determined the print version margins before designing the final pages, but that is something I am aware of for next time. The next book will be using color and I will try to keep make it shorter. Also, after getting the proof from Amazon I decided to make a few changes from the initial version. I ultimately used more white as Amazon didn’t seem to be able to trim some of the black pages correctly.

I also really enjoyed forcing myself to write the preface for the book as I am looking to practice writing about the type of things these games go into in a way that is more relatable, creative, and immersive. The leftovers of my business school writing style may slowly fade away and get replaced with something more absorbing and crunchy. It was good practice and I ended up writing a description for the game that I’m now using on the game page as well as for the book description.

Up next is continuing to tell people about this game and starting preproduction on The Creation of a Self.

Get more frequent design insights, screenshots and more on mavenmob’s patreon blog. You can view it here: https://www.patreon.com/mavenmob/posts