So, what eats a Mongoose?

[thebitterguy]

It's no secret that I've been fairly disappointed with Mongoose's B5 products.

Okay, let me rephrase that. Mongoose has made B5 products, and I've been fairly disappointed with most of their products I've read, including those B5 books.

God, to think I own that much Judge Dredd material. If anyone asks, it's for a Hero game. Or Savage Worlds. Or Top Secret SI. And I must constantly fight my desire to buy Paranoia books, but that's mostly because I still have oodles of '80s era stuff I'll never use.

Now, I don't have the same level of distrust of the company that many people have (I guess I'm just a good person), but I still think any organization capable of producing the Earthforce sourcebook deserves to have their buildings burned and their lands sown with salt.

So, this discussion on the B5 newsgroup contains only minimal amounts of Schadenfreude for me. YMMV.

In it, Matt Sprange attempts to defend his recent statements on a B5 podcast which apparently implied that Joe Straczynski was involved with the upcoming Mongoose B5 novels (which I will admit have filled me with dread initially, a feeling not eased any by the announcement of famous actress Claudia Christian writing one of them) even though it's been established fairly well that he wouldn't, although I have no idea if $500 per book is a good rate for that kind of thing or not.

The result of Mr. Sprange's post is a rather firm factfinding attempt from the assembly.

Comments

[thothmeister.livejournal.com]

500 bucks to write a book, even a media spin-off, is insulting, pure and simple.

A novel can take up to a year to write and polish off, and is a minimum of 70,000 words when done.

If I'm calculating right, they are offering around 1.4 cents a word for something that would normally get an advance larger than the final fee.

[tfbretz.livejournal.com]

1.4 cents a word? Oh, that's their rate for seasoned professionals.

[thebitterguy]

I don't know where Vic's reply went, but according to his first post on the issue, Joe said they wanted him to "asked if I could help come up with some stories for them, or provide material from myh notes, proofread the manuscripts, make corrections, maybe write an intro, and do lots of other stuff".

It certainly sounds like they were trying to get him to do a developer/editor's job on the books. That's not exactly the same as writing the books, but it's more than someone as busy as him would do for five bills.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I don't know where Vic's reply went...

::blush::

I decided to delete it, and the one asking why Mongoose was such a bad examplar of RPG companies, because after re-reading them I thought (a) they sounded a bit pompous, and (b) they were more likely to contribute to flamage than actual content.

...but it's more than someone as busy as him would do for five bills...

Yep; I can see that. I can tell you that my hourly rate wouldn't buy Mr Sprange a lot of editing/development time for 500 bucks, and I haven't got a reasonably successful TV series with wads of media tie-ins on my resumé. 8)

On the other hand, I also felt that I didn't care for the tone on either side of this argument, and (like the Crossby v Columbia spat) I really would rather that it hadn't happened in public. Why do spats like this so often get taken to usenet? ::sigh::

[normanrafferty.livejournal.com]

I still stand by my reply. I can consolidate all of it by saying that how a company can get on with such egregiousness and still remain popular because enough folks get enough of what they want is exactly what's been wrong with the RPG industry for years. There's a reason Knights of the Dinner Table has so much material.