There's blood in the water...

I've finally taken the first steps into taking my ebook publishing 'career' a step closer, my short story "Carved" is now with an editor and no doubt undergoing some grammatical surgery to bring out what I'm hoping will be the best of my writing in a very personal account of one of the UK's biggest murder investigations.

Carved tells my side of the story as a witness in the Thames torso murder that happened ten years ago in September shortly after the 9/11 attacks when I discovered the butchered torso of a 5 year old boy in the River Thames.
The book will be released onto Kindle,Createspace,Nook,B&N,Smashwords and Overdrive through ORB publishing.

I've got to say that while the prospect of launching an Ebook is a somewhat gigantic leap into the unknown the whole thing fills me with a certain amount of dread as well, the fact I'm putting my name on something and releasing it into the big wide world will either be one of the best things I ever did or I'll just curl up and die when the reviews come in.
But then I guess that's what it's all about isn't it, laying it all out there for your peers and critics to love or loathe.

My main saving grace is that it provides me with a unique opportunity to write about a very personal and life changing event that very few people ever experience. If the book was fictional then I'd have a problem, it would have nothing trully unique to make it stand out from all the other crime novellas and short stories on the market. The fact that its non fiction and based on a true event means that it's far more appealing, or at least that's the hope. Thats not to say that the market for fictional novellas is weak, far from it but the very real personal aspect of my story meant that it was far easier to write with just enough content that it isn't padded out with uneccessary filler.

Someone once said "there's a book inside each of us" I guess the ultimate trick is to figure out how you get it out and get it working for you.

Battlefield 3 Vs Modern Warfare 3

There's a fight brewing and it'll be a big one, two of the biggest FPS franchises in videogames will go head to head in an effort to dominate the digital battlefield late in 2011.

So who has the edge, EA's ultra detailed Battlefield franchise from big hitters DICE or Activisions Modern Warfare juggernaut from its triple studio effort Infinity Ward,Sledgehammer and Raven studios?

The interesting thing about both publishers and developers is that the last eighteeen months hasn't all been plain sailing for either of them. Activision are still buffing out the dents from what could be a costly court action and PR mess as former Infinity Ward employees Jason West and Vince Zampella contest ownership and loss of earnings among other things in what could be a very revealing court case. DICE on the other hand have to maintain momentum and get back in gear from the hiccup with the luke warm reception for the Medal of Honor franchise despite a brilliant marketing campaign and P&L targets being met. EA's primary problem is that Medal of Honor and Battlefield are fighting for the same space and the same consumer dollar in a tough economy. This is further compounded by the fact it uses the same dev talent to help develop both internal franchises rather than opt for new teams and a distinctively different look and feel.

Another factor coming into play is the 30 FPS Vs 60 FPS, traditionally the higher framerate is superior so it will be interesting to see how Battlefield 3, a 30 FPS product fares on home console against MW3 superior 60 FPS. Ideally EA needs to define how and when the two franchises can share the same buyer and introduce more innovation to the Medal of Honor franchise sadly lacking in the Afghanistan themed Tier 1 Ops reboot.
For Modern Warfare 3 lead studio Sledgehammer has had considerable financial backing from Activision to prop up the remains of Infinity Wards heavily depleted dev team, Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey founded Activisions Sledgehammer studios back in 2009,the pair previously employed by EA at Visceral Games, the makers of EA's space horror "Dead Space".
Activision will be relying on brand strength and the current strong retailer pre sale backing for its Novemeber launch. It has its work cut out to see if it can't grab the sell through crown from Treyarch who has helped Activision sell through 3.72 million units of COD Black Ops in the UK beating Infinity Wards Modern Warfare 2 tally by twenty thousand units.
DLC will play a major part in maintaining the franchises longevity with fans,Activision no doubt also still confident it can squeeze a cost of 1200 MS points for additional Map packs with its Xbox 360 consumer.

With map packs such as the recent Annihilation pack adding to the ever growing Call of Duty cash cow several months down the line from release it's a big market to dominate and proves that DLC not only maintains brand awareness but enforces brand loyalty to FPS fans.
Battlefield on the other hand has already wowed global audiences and FPS fans with a simply stunning viral campaign of in-game video footage that has underlined its full committment to delivering visceral FPS experiences and incredible attention to detail.

Like I say, there's a fight brewing, its up to you to decide what team you're on.

Bin Laden Raid - The comic book

Captain Dale Dye,Vietnam veteran Bronze Star and Purple heart recipient, businessman, movie consultant, actor and writer adds yet another impressive accolade to his ever growing talents as the first one out of the gate to cash in on the Navy SEAL induced demise of the world's most wanted terrorist and porn collecting muslim Osama Bin Laden...with a comic book.

Dye who served with the 1st battalion 5th Marines in Vietnam and acheived rank of Captain has lots of fingers in the media pie. On his retirement from the Marines he founded Warriors Inc, a production company that trains actors for authentic military roles in TV and film which included HBO's Pacific, Band of Brothers, Oliver Stones Platoon and Spielbergs Saving Private Ryan.
Dye's latest writing foray see's his military prowess extend to the comic book format with his latest offering "Codeword: Geronimo" an 88 page graphic novel depicting the clandestine US Navy SEAL raid into Abbottabad, Pakistan to kill Osama Bin Laden. Released in September just prior to the anniversary of the Sept 11th attacks on new York the graphic novel has been written by Dale Dye and his wife Dr Julie Dye. The graphic novel has been illustrated by comic book artists Gerry Kissell and Amin Amat and will be published by IDW.
What's interesting to me is that I raised the issue of cashing in on the Bin Laden raid during a 90 minute meeting with a specialist Military book publisher based in Oxford earlier this month. Having emphasised to them that the first one out of the gate with a publication that could recount the final moments of the Worlds number one terrorist could generate decent revenue I was surprised to be told there just wasn't enough information to generate the content.
Except for a full colour 88 page comic though eh?, DOH!

5 Ways that games are bringing realism ever closer

With the latest videos and announcements from GDC ( Game Developers Conference) of EA's next stunning shooter Battlefield 3 due out later this I thought it would be good to touch on the various ways that developers are looking to blur the lines between videogame and real life.
Patrick Bach, a senior game developer at EA's DICE studio in Sweden has been wowing specialist games press journalists with Battlefields incredible visuals emphasising that the game would go a long way towards conveying the feel of battle, the potential pain of a shot fired and the impact of soldiers at war. On top of that it would demonstrate DICE's zeal to present "next gen tech" on a "current gen platform.

Above: A impressive screenshot from Battlefield 3 showing a US Marine standing guard in an Iraqi town

Below: Real Life - A US Army soldier in Agfhanistan

1. Realism: providing players with an immersive experience that delivers true to life visuals, environments, emotions and NPC's that help take the whole experience to another level.

2. Sound Design - For Battlefiled DICE studios joined with the Medal of Honor team to record weapon sounds with the Swedish army when they were out on manoeuvres, allowing them to record the games sound with 84 microphones set up at different points.

3. Character - having a central protagonist that is utterly believable, someone that the player can empathize with at every level, making them almost human in way that these characters live within your game.

4. Story - current events and conflicts provide rich pickings for story and script writers to bring home a truly believable story that sets the scene perfectly.

5. Attention to detail - Architecture, vehicles, weapons, human emotional responses, lighting, physics and artificial intelligence are just some of the elements increasing in complexity as game technology evolves  to bring a level of detail never seen before.

The Photobook is Dead Longlive the Photobook...

What next for the photo book, those eye candy tomes we all love to flick through on the proverbial coffee table?The natural progression seems to point to digital if everything else is taken into consideration, comics, magazines and books have all seen a move to digital formats although not quite in the mainstream way that their paper counterparts have enjoyed so far but I'm betting that in the next five years we'll see a massive increase in the way digital  platforms provide the means to view traditional published media.
I grew up reading comics and I have to admit I'm reluctant to give in to an entirely digital model, the same for Photobooks, I love being able to pick up a decent sized coffee table book packed with photos to paw over and the thought of flipping pages on a digital tablet leaves me slightly cold.

Currently the way of the electronic paperback, Kindle, Smashwords and other ebook publishing formats have helped break down the restrictive barriers for indie authors and amateurs to realise their own book. However the route for photobooks has been somewhat slower because in order to fully maximize formats like the ipad  a small degree of Html coding is required in order to template the book before you put it out there which I think is restricting a large degree of the audience. Making money from traditional glamorous paper photo books however or using Blurb.com as a platform to make money is extremely difficult and the larger the book, the larger the retail and production cost, some of the higher paginated photo books on Blurb.com are priced at over $100 per book, some even higher, a trip to Amazon underlines the stark reality of pricing when you can buy books by professional photographers such as David Notons Photography Essentials waiting for the light which is 192 pages (24 X 26 cm) of full colour photographs and advice for around £16.

So where does that leave Photobook pricing for your digital project for an i-pad version? since you've effectively removed the cost for print and manufacture which is where the majority of where companise like Blurb.com costs are tied up you can price the book at a much lower retail price. To remain competitive you have to look at the content and pricing of other book projects, what you offer as value for money is important, remember that with platforms like i-Tunes you're going to come away with 70% of the profit less whatever taxes you have to pay but its a much healthier chunk. A price in the region of $5 would certainly provide a good motivational price incentive to buy and for a digital format its far more realistic than pricing it the same as its paper counterpart, the chances are you have the potential to make more money taking a 70% i-Tunes royalty than you do with a traditional print model royalty so you shouldn't look at a price of $5 as de-valuing your photographic work. With the vast range of Tablets being made available through 2011 and 2012 the formats are emerging to make good revenue from the digital book side, the downside is that the photobook is no longer a physical entity to have in your library or have sitting on your coffee table, instead it lives and breathes inside the digital shell of whatever reading device you're using.

The Photobook is Dead, Longlive the Photobook

Blurb.com project

My latest and greatest project comes to fruition shortly, overall its been a love hate relationship, I love the fact that the project came together like my first book in the series did because it's allowed me to work with and showcase some truly talented people, however I hate the fact that Blurb.coms pricing policy makes it so hard to price photo books over 80 pages competitvely within the publishing retail sector allowing me to promote it to a much wider audience on sites like Amazon.

I've had good results with Blurb.com, the paper and print quality are excellent, its own Booksmart template is a very good tool to build the books and the ease of use is great. My only really gripe is that it would be nice for more page templates to be provided in order to really broaden the design concepts as well as better profit margins for 'book builders' who choose to sell their books online through Blurbs bookstore.

There are other Photo book programs out there from the likes of Lulu, Vistaprint and Photobox among many others so I can't really compare the quality of these against Blurb other than what the forum response has been which points to Blurb as being a leader in the field.
Airsoft Infidels: The very best of Airsoft & Milsim photography Book 2 is the second book I released in this series, I'm contemplating a third and final book but other personal projects, a full time day job, a thriller novel plus a family make it a difficult project to fulfill. I quite like the fact that Airsoft as a sport is still fairly niche, athough trying to explain to various people exactly what it entials takes longer than necessary especially when you start explaining all the kit,weapons etc.
Out of the three books I know that exist for Airsoft Photography I've released two of them and was the first to do so with Airsoft Infidels: The very best of Airsoft & Milsim Photography (Book 1) which I've since updated and am considering re-releasing with a new cover.

The new book (see below) has a website found here
I'm promoting the book on Twitter where you can follow my progress.
You can buy a copy of the book over at Blurb.com shortly.

Dead Island: The best Video Game trailer ever made?

I've worked in the videogame business for nigh on 17 years,seen a huge amount of change,seen a lot of product and hardware come and go, experienced its ups and downs, played amazing product, worked on really bad product and I've promoted a lot of product. I've also been witness to the traditional hype normally associated with the "next big thing in videogames" (sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't). There are of course the Milestone products that come out, the big hitters like Halo which has thrown considerable weight behind the way it reaches out to its audience with its trailers,taking you from the living room and into the firefight like a Hollywood movie  even employing directors like Neil Blomkemp,South African director of District 9 to create its Halo short films.
Gears of War from Epic and its Mad World trailer was sublime, it created mood, it was emotional, it was devoid of all sound effects and instead used the music from Gary Jules to create an incredible contrast that made people talk about the trailer even more.
The only other time I've seen this dynamic brought up in conversation was when Judy Garlands "Somewhere over the Rainbow" was used in a shoot out scene for the movie Face Off with Nic Cage, except it didn't quite work as well as it should or could have.
Which brings me to the announcement trailer for Dead Island which is probably the best videogame trailer I've ever seen,why?

For a new videogame I.P to enter the zombie genre is extremely brave, especially after benchmark titles like Resident Evil, Left for Dead  have established themselves as very popular brands with such a large legion of fans, Dead Island had to find a way to stand out, it needed to create a viral to get people talking about it but also to create something that no one would expect, and they did it brilliantly. Its a heartbreaking trailer, its not pretty to watch but it really brings the emotion of the scene and does so with a with an amazingly haunting soundtrack. Best of all it tells its story in reverse making it truly unique in that it breaks all the common traditions of videogame trailers. I played this trailer for a female colleague at work who  was almost in tears afterwards.The trailer is generating a ton of buzz on the forums as being one of the best ever created.

Dead Island is a first person survival horror game that will be entirely focused on melee combat set within a tropical island setting you can freely roam.

When I watched the trailer Wednesday it had 5,890 views, in two days it has acquired 1,362,679 views as of posting this update. Metro, FHM, Empire and actor Simon Pegg are just some of the channels that picked up on the global phenomenon of the trailers impact within 24 hrs posting updates and tweets about the trailer.

Watch the trailer below...