D&D in the Spotlight

For a lot of people living in the UK, Jonathan Ross is kinda (great word, eh?) a big deal.  Television and radio personality, famous, wealthy, etc, etc.

His name is attached to a recent poll that was conducted in the UK regarding the 100 greatest 'toys' of all time.  Check out what made #3 on the list.  Nice.

Oh, and by the way, Merry Christmas!

Three Warriors

The second installment of my gaming archive.  Today, I thought that I would include three drawings.  When I drew them, the idea was that they were going to be carvings on a stone wall or engravings on metallic objects (either a shield, breastplate, or something else).

I don't remember if these were to depict specific people or what, but I do like how they look.  Hopefully, a few of you might as well.

Caped Viking.

Roman Centurion.

The Brute

And the last is my favorite.  I think that it was the last one that I drew.

My Gaming Archive - 21 December

Jim Pacek over at Carjacked Seraphim (which by the way is one of my favorite blog names in all of the blogosphere--did he just make that up or did he steal if from somewhere?) recently posted about a Time Capsule of sorts, a drawer in a filing cabinet of his that contains years and years of gaming materials.

I think most of us can relate.

Anyway, I'm in the process of going through all of my old stuff, trying to sort the wheat from the chaff, and trying to decide what I really want and what can be gotten rid of.  In the process, of course, I am coming across all sorts of treasures of my own.  I'm going to start posting about them, and this is the first such post.

I have for you here a simple dungeon map (of course--how else would I start a new regulare feature?).  I drew it on some engineering graph paper--do you know the kind?  The front side is blank and the grid is on the back--a handy invention indeed.  Never used it for anything, and now that I've looked at it a bit, I realize that it isn't even finished.  Oh well.

I drew it in college during a time when I wasn't even gaming.

Map Roundup - xx December

Yet another map roundup. 

Jeff's Gameblog, 17 Dec: Some hex maps from the campaign of the Rients.

The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms, 17 Dec: A geomorph--everybody's doing it.

The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms, 17 Dec (#2): Two geomorphs--one of them fixed?

The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms, 18 Dec: The geomorph kick continues (False Well 2).

The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms, 19 Dec: A geomorph and a punch in the face!

Greyhawk Grognard, 18 Dec: World of Greyhawk maps done in Hexographer.  And since I was here, I figured that I research GG's archives.  Came up with the following two posts:

Greyhawk Grognard, 05 Jun: A Verbobonc wilderness map.

Greyhawk Grognard, 04 Jun: A Greyhawk wilderness map.

Carjacked Seraphim, 11 Dec - xx Dec: The Seraphim continues his series about his dungeon, The Evil Temple of Fraz-Urb'Luu.  The posts are here: 11 Dec.  12 Dec.  12 Dec (#2).  13 Dec.  15 Dec.  15 Dec (#2).

JoetheLawyer's Wondrous Imaginings, 19 Dec: The title of this post is 'Hundreds of Free Authentic Maps of England, Scotland, and Wales, From the Middle Ages to the Present.'  Yeah, that pretty much explains it.

A character for every game, Maps: WOW!  Let me repeat that, in case you didn't hear me the first time: WOW! Thirty-five maps PLUS links to others, all hand-drawn, all beautiful.  THIS link is the reason that I do these map roundups.  So I don't have to link to every one of them, Dyson posted all of his maps in one post.  (Okay, his doing it didn't really have anything to do with me--but I can pretend it does, can't I?)

Planet Algol, 19 Dec : The title to this post is 'Megadungeon Maps (Spoilers!)'  How can I not link to it?  But then I realize that I haven't dug into the Algol archives for maps yet, so I do so, and that leads me to the following:

Planet Algol, 26 Aug: A cave map and some other things.

Planet Algol, 08 Aug: You know, this one looks familiar to me.  I might have linked to it in the past.  Anyway, a dungeon map.

Planet Algol, 03 Aug: Another dungeon map--this one does NOT look familiar to me.

Planet Algol, 14 Jul: There is actually no map in this post--but it talks about keying a hex map.  (Probably not the same as keying your car.)

Planet Algol, 01 May: Shrine of the Lavender Cocoon.

Planet Algol, 01 May (#2): Black Smoke Razor Labyrinth.

Planet Algol, 28 Mar: A dungeon in thirds.

Aeons & Augauries, 18 Dec: Hexagonal cave geomorphs, part 5.

Aeons & Augauries, 18 Dec (#2): Hexagonal cave geomorphs,  part 6.

Aeons & Augauries, 19 Dec (#1): Hexagonal cave geomorphs,     part 7.

Aeons & Augauries, 19 Dec (#2): Hexagonal cave geomorphs,   part 8.

Aeons & Augauries, 20 Dec: This man can make geomorphs.  Caves, part 9.

Aeons & Augauries, 20 Dec (#2): Here comes part 10, right at ya!

Portfolio: Small Dungeon

Here is another dungeon map, a small one with some more and different features.  Like some of my previous pieces, this actually came from somewhere in the blogosphere.  I just fixed it up and made it look at little better.

Hottest Blogs

Thank you to Cyclopeatron for his continued ranking of blogs.

I suppose that I am luke-warm?  Better than being cold.

Map Roundup - 18 December

(Do I need to make any comment before I start listing posts?  Or should I just shut up and get on with it?  Yeah, how about I do that.)
Aeons & Augauries, 08 Dec: Geomorphs built into hexes.  JD does not quit!

Aeons & Augauries, 08 Dec: Hex geomorphs, part deux.

Aeons & Augauries, 09 Dec: And if you needed it, some handy thoughts on using geomorphs yourself.

Aeons & Augauries, 16 Dec: Hexagonal cave geomorphs, part 1.

Aeons & Augauries, 17 Dec: Hexagonal cave geomorphs, part 2.


Aeons & Augauries, 17 Dec (#2): A dungeon-stocking challenge (in cave geomorph) with a tesseract.

Aeons & Augauries, 17 Dec (#3): Hexagonal cave geomorphs, part 3.


Aeons & Augauries, 17 Dec (#4): Hexagonal cave geomorphs, part 4

Forgotten Runes, 27 Nov: A 'concept sketch' of a city.  With dragons.

Forgotten Runes, 05 Dec: Plan of a longhouse.  Good for instilling a little historical accuracy in your game.

Forgotten Runes, 11 Dec: A map of a city above a dungeon.

Forgotten Runes, 11 Dec: Another map of a the city above the dungeon.
And there are other posts at Forgotten Runes.  I will link to them at some point...

Forgotten Runes, 17 Dec: A wilderness hex map at five miles per hex.

Forgotten Runes, 17 Dec (#2): It's almost like a map roundup of Forgotten Runes maps.

The Mule Abides, 08 Dec: Creating a sandbox on the fly, and some decent maps and talk of maps.

The Mule Abides, 10 Dec: A vast world, in watercolor.

The Mule Abides, 14 Dec: Wherein we continue from the prebious post by zooming in a bit.

The Mule Abides, 16 Dec: Finer and finer detail in a continuation from above.  Adding villages, castles, ruins, etc.

The Mule Abides, 18 Dec: A little advertisement for a little dungeon art show--and it's from one of My Daily Read.
Huge Ruined Pile, 10 Dec: Here's a post about Risk Godstorm, a variant of one of my all-time favorite board games.  I've never actually played this variant, but the map looks cool.

Dungeons and Digressions, 10 Dec: The gnoll lair map from Keep on the Borderlands in notecard format.

In Places Deep, 10 Dec: A really good post about mapping.  Contains some good little advice for greating wilderness maps.

Carjacked Seraphim, 03 Dec - 10 Dec: The Seraphim ran a series of posts about a dungeon called The Evil Temple of Fraz-Urb'Luu that he created many moons ago.  Obviously, the temple map is what initially caught my eye about these posts, but I really enjoyed his recollections of actually running the adventure and his thoughts on dungeon design.  Here are the links in chronological order: 03 Dec.  04 Dec.  05 Dec.  06 Dec.  10 Dec.

Bugbears for Breakfast, Anytime: As long as his top banner is that sweet hex map, this (new to me) blog will always have a place in a map roundup.

BigDungeon, 05 Dec: This post shows five levels of a dungeon stacked on top of each other, first in 2D, and then in 3D.  Fantastic.

BigDungeon, 08 Dec: Dungeon mapping symbols.  Always useful.

And... I'm spent.  See you next time.

Portfolio: Two Houses (And a Contest)

Continuing with a portfolio of my maps, here are two more that I made.  As before, both of these maps may be familiar to people who inhabit our little corner of the blogosphere.  Also as before, PLEASE, PLEASE do NOT comment where either of these came from--part of the deal is that their identity remain a secret. Also, I do have the permission of the original map owners to post them here.

We have, first, a big house:

And now we have a slightly smaller house:

To be quite honest, the first map is a bit more obscure than the second (at least to my mind, you may disagree with me).  So to make things interesting, I shall propose a small contest.  If anyone can tell me IN AN EMAIL, NOT IN THE COMMENTS where the first map (top map, the big house) came from, I will give you a free copy of any two of the products on sale at my RPGNow store--you get to pick 'em!  My email address is fantasy.cartographic@gmail.com.  This contest shall remain open until midnight, Eastern Standard Time, Sunday night, December 19th.  I will read all emails that I receive with the subject line 'Map Contest' and the first person to correctly state where that map was originally found will win.  I will then contact that person by email on Monday to arrange prize delivery.

Portfolio: A Dungeon Map

In this post, I am going to do what I did as a youngster that would always annoy my older brother:  I am going to post an image of someone else's map.

Actually, it isn't quite someone else's map, it is actually my reproduction of a map that, in my opinion, is more aesthetically pleasing than the original.  I am posting it to show people what I can do.  Call it an entry in my cartographic portfolio, if you will.

This map is one that may be familiar to some people in our little corner of the hobby.  If you recognize it, please, PLEASE do not name it or where it came from.  I don't want to give anything away.  Lest anyone get their panties in a wad, I do have the permission of the original map's owner to post my version here.

It is, as I said above, a dungeon map:

Encouragement for rpg Blogging

Most of us had one: That person who introduced us to rpg's back when we were younger.  For me, that person was my older brother.  He owned the LBBs; he owned the AD&D books; he owned a bunch of modules; he owned a bunch of miniatures.  He taught me to play at a very young age--or maybe not, seven or eight I think.

Anyway, we were typing back and forth the other day at each other.  The conversations went basically like this:

Me:  You said that you were looking at some old notes and got excited again. Anything good?  How about you type up some of your old notes into a formal adventure, I draw the map, and we publish it? The Fantasy Cartographic could use some new products...

Him:  hhmm.... what say we publish a setting? We had started one several years ago.

Me:  Couple of thoughts:
- Settings are a dime a dozen. Unless it is a small area nicely detailed (a single island, single kingdom, single city), or a large area (typically nowadays mapped on a hex map) with numerous specific locations detailed in the text.
(Advantage of the small area is that it can easily be dropped into someone's existing campaign. Advantage of the large area is that any one of the specific locations that you choose to detail can, by itself, be dropped into an existing campaign.)
- Why not start with some thing easier--aka an adventure? (Easier in terms of length, complexity, just about everything I can think of.)
- How about start slow and (eventually) build up to a setting?

Him:  LOL... only because my mind doesn't work that way! I'll try to come up with an adventure, but don't expect anything soon... in a few weeks, though, I'll suddenly "remember" an adventure, along with an entire world. The difficulty isn't in the ideas, it's in the editing and pruning process.

When it comes to me, it's truly like remembering, bits and pieces, then whole swaths, then worlds. I've never written a novel, because it would come out more like an encyclopedia. Perhaps I could write a travelogue and have you map it... but I know that was done in Dragon years ago.

Me:  Well, if that's the case, why don't you start writing a blog with each post being about some aspect of one of the worlds? There are a great many such blogs with people just detailing their campaigns, and all the cool shit in them. They get widely read, too.

The advantage of that is that once you establish yourself in the blogosphere, you can THEN prune it into a nice, easily-digestible format and sell the setting. Since you're already known by your blog, you drastically up the sales that you will receive.

And if you don't want to start your own blog, you can guest-post on my blog.

Him:  I'd have to read some others to see how they're set up... any recommendations?

At which point I pointed him in the direction of some of the many blogs that lots of us enjoy that discuss all sorts of goodness.

But I would really like him to start a blog.  It could be incredible.  Anyone want to leave a comment for him to encourage him or otherwise comment on the blogging experience?  That would be nice.

Locales Redux

One of my intents in starting this blog was as a place to post maps that I had worked on.  I now realize that this blog is all about maps, but contains very few maps of its own--very few maps of my own.

I'm going to try to remedy that, and this will be the first post to do so.

What follows is a short bit of flavor text and then a series of maps.  This is something that I created about two years ago.  The text and maps describe the Rock at Morgus Cray, a location in my campaign world.  The Rock is a rocky peninsula that juts out from a coastline; it is surrounded by columns of stone that are slowly breaking off from the peninsula and crumbling into the sea due to the action of the surf.  A light house sits at its peak.

“The Rock at Morgus Cray was not remarkable in any way; it was like a dozen other peninsulas along the treacherous Iron Coast. But it was midway between Sempus Delve to the north and the wealthy port cities of the Sarsiss to the south.

I was a Mate to Shezzar KiNeel of the Strong Runner, when, on our fourth journey past the rock, we strayed too close. The Runner’s back was broken on the rocks, and she was sinking fast. Although not yet fully confident in the ways of the sea, I was smart, and observant. I made my way to KiNeel’s cabin as he was fighting to save his ship. There, I stole two rings. One, a Ring of the Scaly Deep, granted me waterbreath. The second afforded me protection against the cold waters. Old KiNeel at some point realized that he was going to loose his ship. He found me in his cabin, caught red-handed as it were, but he was too late. The rigors and cold water had taken their toll on him. As the Runner disintegrated on the rocks, I was the only to survive.

While the water and cold could not have killed me, the battering waves would have, if it weren’t for the existence of something that none of us were aware of--something that could not be seen from seaward. There was a channel through the rocks! I followed it, and it was then that I found it. The cavern!

I stayed there for three days, for I was afraid of the power of the waves. It was only hunger that drove me—drove me to explore the inner reaches of the cavern. In the darkness, I could only find my way by touch; I could make no fire. So I probed and climbed, and found a way out, up to the tower on the Rock.

The Seafarer’s Guild had built the string of lighted towers up and down the Iron Coast. The automaton left there should have been able to provide me with some food and water. And it did, as well as dutifully recording my presence in its log. But the tower had not been provisioned in many months, and the automaton did not have much to help me. It was then that I understood the waning power of the Seafarer’s Guild. And a plan began to form in my mind…”

-- Basid Wavern to a group of new “recruits”
-- Overheard and recorded by Amshir Dysa and later presented to the Council at Skror Ferry

Within days of making this report to the Council, Amshir Dysa was presented with the Black Sigil and thereafter slain. Several members of the Council attribute the veracity of the tale to the fact that Dysa was marked and then killed in Wavern’s typical style. Others, however, do not believe Wavern to be so strategically naïve as to blatantly order a revenge killing based on a report that would be difficult at the time, if not impossible, to verify.

The first map is of the entire peninsula including the lighthouse and surround ocean.  The ocean colors indicate depth contours while the lines on land indicate height contours above the water line.

 The black and white version of the above.

Focused on the end of the peninsula.

View of the cavern at sea level.  This map also shows that some of the columns have been hollowed out and are linked to the main cave by treacherous rope-and-plank bridges.

The second level of the sea caves.

So there you have it.  I would love for people to use this location in their own games.  If you do, please drop me a comment.

Map Roundup - 07 December

Here we go again.

Aeons & Augauries, 04 Dec:  A hex map of No Man's Land in the Great War.

Aeons & Augauries, 05 Dec: A continuation of the above--I feel bad for Paris.  (The city, not the character from mythology.)

Aeons & Augauries, 07 Dec: The geomorph train continues, this time with triangles sure to upset your mapping players.

Axe & Hammer, 05 Dec: Grendelwulf continues his series on Greyhawk with some beauties--world maps of various Greyhawks.  Really nice.

Robin D. Laws, 19 Nov: Sure, I've heard of Robin D. Laws, but I didn't know that he had a blog. I've certainly never visited it before now.  But, I'm there for five minutes, and I come across this post.  Lo-tech map that I really like.  Go figure.

Dungeons and Digressions, 06 Dec: Continuing the disection of the Caves of Chaos, ze bulette brings us the shunned cavern and minotaur caves.

Dungeons and Digressions, 07 Dec: Take some Caves of Chaos, mix them with Sketchup, and crank out a 3D view of the canyon.

A Palidin in Citadel, 06 Dec: A nice little location map--I really like its style.

From the Sorcerer's Skull, 22 Oct: I know that I've come across this blog before, but I'm not sure if I've referenced it in my map roundups before.  If not, shame on me!  I've found a wealth of mapping goodness and so I'm going to share it with you.  This post is about geography or not.  The following are in reverse chronological order:

From the Sorcerer's Skull, 23 Aug: Dungeons in America; this one in L.A.

From the Sorcerer's Skull, 20 Aug: A 'map' of the anatomy of a monster.  I really like this post, because I have often contemplated an adventure wherein the PCs are shrunken down to microscopic size and sent into a dragon, a la Fantastic Voyage.  I've drawn several sketches of dragon anatomy, but never got around to writing the actual adventure.

From the Sorcerer's Skull, 12 Aug: Fantasy maps in comics.  Nice.

From the Sorcerer's Skull, 25 Jun: Real world dungeon environments and maps.  While the maps are key here, the best thing about this post is that it shows that dungeons can be 'realistic' as an adventure setting.  I thumb my nose at all of those people who say dungeons are unrealistic!

From the Sorcerer's Skull, 20 Jun: A castle in America, and it is mapped!

From the Sorcerer's Skull, 26 May: I don't know Skartaris, but I sure like the map of it.

From the Sorcerer's Skull, 24 May: Another comic fantasy map.

From the Sorcerer's Skull, 21 May: Another American dungeon.  Not a great map, but definitely an interesting location.

From the Sorcerer's Skull, 16 May: More castleage in America.

From the Sorcerer's Skull, 02 May: A hand drawn D&D dungeon map from a long time ago.  It's always interesting to compare others' maps with my own from the early days so these types of posts are really enjoyable.

Some King's Kent, 07 Dec: A continued look at the megadungeon that made him famous.  This time it is two pits.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the Knights & Knaves Alehouse is a handy place to hang around.  Their forums are home to many interesting discussions on all sorts of topics.  Although, if I am going to be honest, I most enjoy their Megadungeons! subforum.  These people are experts when it comes to megadungeons, both in discussion and in mapping:  Here is a map of the first level of a megadungeon.  And then glance, for instance, at this nice picture of a megadungeon map (level two of the previous).  To me, this is what 'mega' should mean when referring to a megadungeon.

So that's all for this edition.  I'm going to have to catalog all of the posts that I am linking to in these roundups, if only to ensure that I don't repeat in the future.  At the same time, I plan on going back to my earlier roundups and putting them into this format, if only to make my life easier when looking for things.

Questions of Legality and Recourse

So by no means do I fancy The Fantasy Cartographic anything more than a hobbyist venture.  As much as I would love to devote more time to my little rpg publishing experiment, family and career ensure that it will remain something to do on the side, something that, since I began, has made me only enough money to basically partake of this hobby for free.  For the foreseeable future, that will remain the case.

With that being said, I was over at RPGNow.com the other day, and I ran across this.  For those of you who choose not to click, the link leads to a product page at RPGNow for a Pathfinder rpg supplement detailing a new character class called 'The Martialist Base Class' from a company called Little Red Goblin Games.

This caused me to raise my eyebrows a little bit, as I put out a product back in the summer of 2009 for 4E (which I realize most readers around here do not play) called Fantasy Class: Martialist and, before that, a free preview, called Fantasy Class Preview: The Martialist Heroic.  I was extremely proud of these products; not only do I believe that they are visually on par with a lot of the 'professional' products being produced, it was the one product to this day that I had an art budget for.  (For the record, I highly recommend VShane for your illustration needs.)

The Martialist class that I had developed was an unarmed fighter that was not a monk.  There is no mysticism or Eastern philosophy in its conception.

Anyway, I know that 'martialist' is not a common title.  Frankly, if the nice people at Little Red Goblin Games had read some of the reviews of my product, they might have chosen a different name for the class, as it wasn't much appreciated.  But what is the chance that those little goblins came up with the name on their own and also attached it to an unarmed combatant class?

So the questions are this:  Is there anything to do?  Should I just let it go?  Am I being a buffoon for even getting upset about this?

I think that the answers to these questions may be 'No', 'Yes', and 'Possibly', but I'm interested in hearing what others think.

Map Roundup - 04 December

It's that time again.

Axe & Hammer, 02 Dec: Greyhawk City, in multiple maps of varying quality.  If you like fantasy city maps, you should like this post.

Axe & Hammer, 28 Nov: Dungeons and E. Gary Gygax, and some nice maps, too.

Roles, Rules, and Rolls, 27 Nov: In which Roger discusses mapping woes, and asks about what type of mapping software to use.

In Like Flynn, 24 Nov: This post doesn't contain a map but it talks about maps.  And megadungeons.  But mainly I'm linking to it here, because I agree with his views on these subjects.  I, too, believe that a megadungeon, played in the right way, can very easily be an enjoyably experience for 'modern' gamers who like a more cinematic experience in their gaming.

In Like Flynn, 28 Nov: A hex-based world map.  I really like this map, because it looks more 'realistic' than many world maps I see.  The geography, the order of the continents spread over the ocean, etc. all really speak to me.

Being an Online Dungeon Master, 03 Dec: This is a blog that I probably wouldn't have come across in my normal wanderings as it is mostly about 4E (which I have little interest in these days) but it contains some nice map-related posts, so I found myself poking around.  Following are some links to other posts from the blog.

Being an Online Dungeon Master, 02 Dec: A decent encounter map in a wilderness area.

Being an Online Dungeon Master, 28 Jun: The old manila folder with the hand drawn map!

Being an Online Dungeon Master, 'Maps' Category: This is a link to all of the blog's map posts.  Most have to do with online and computer mapping using specific software (Maptool), which really doesn't interest me.  Although it might interest you.

Book of Worlds, Argos Atlas: This link leads to a collection of hand drawn maps on Flickr posted by the author of The Book of Worlds, a new (to me) blog that I recently came across.  This blog is also going to appear in another post that I am working on.

Coutdown to Game Time: No, I haven't found any map-related posts on this new (again, to me) blog, but I found that Carto Cacography is listed on his 'Gratuitous Linkage' list and thought that that was pretty cool.  So I'm including a link to it here as a way of saying thanks.

The Hopeless Gamer, 03 Dec: A map of an adventure in 3D.  Something that I could never pull off...

I see Lead People, 03 Dec: Maybe I'm stretching a bit by including this link, but it kinda looks like a map.  And it's about a Navy...sorta.

Beyond the Black Gate: Lands of Lyrion Campaign Setting.  A 2 page pdf detailing a campaign setting and including a campaign map in hex.

Beyond the Black Gate: Lands of Lyrion Fan Map.  A very nice looking campaign map.

Another thing that I occassionally spend time doing is looking at the latest map-related offerings at RPGNow.com (outside of my own).  Quite often, publishers will make available nice maps as part of their free previews (especially the free downloadable pdf previews).  From time to time, I will include links to those products that have a decent free maps associated with it.  Here is one I came across a few days ago:

Headless Hydra Games, Barrowdelve Map Pack.  I really like the map of the dungeon complex here.  I might steal it for my own gaming use.

"New" Product for Release

Several months ago, I wrote a post about three products that I have for sale at RPGNow.com.  The punchline of that post was me telling you not to purchase any of them.  And I was serious.  (Seriously.  Go read that post if you don't believe me.)

Basically, as discussed in an even earlier post, I feel that the price-to-quality ratio of those products is poor at their current price.  If you were to ask me today, I would still tell you not to purchase them.

In that same post, I explained why I felt that way, and then went on to tell you about a compilation of those three products, to be called Basic Maps.  The idea behind Basic Maps was to take the maps in those three products, make them a little prettier, then combine them into a single document, and put them back on sale at a much reduced price.  (At the same time, I will discontinue the sale of the original products.)

This post is to announce that I have finally completed that project.  Basic Maps is now on sale at RPGNow for $2.30.  It contains 39 maps that I feel are pretty spiffy.  (Or, at least spiffy enough to charge you just under six cents per map, which was the point of the earlier post.)  Hopefully, some of you will feel the same way.  Please go check it out.

Sales Figures - For Another

My density knows no bounds.  I only just a few days ago realized that John Stater over at Land of Nod is pursuing the publishing thing in a big way.  Yes, I've come across his blog a few times, but for whatever reason have never spent much time there (Sorry, John!).  That's not to say that I wasn't impressed with his stuff--it's just that I always had other things to be reading.

Anyway, just a little while ago, he posted this.  (In case you didn't follow that link, it was a November Sales Report for his material.)  As someone who dabbles in the publishing side of things, I really appreciate his willingness to put out these numbers.  In my opinion, it would be fantastic if everyone who is putting out material, from those who are one step above amateurs to those who are one step below professionals, would publish their sales results.

A lot of the blogs that we are all familiar with are written by people who are also publishing material--seems to me they could all be making posts like this.  Obviously, there is nothing that says that they have to do so, and I understand that people value their privacy, etc, etc.  But I can't, for the life of me, come up with a good reason not to put out that information.

So, John, thanks for doing that.

If anyone is interested, here are his Sales Reports from the beginning:

June.

July.

August.

September.

October.

...

I figured that I would also post my historical sales figures--if only to demonstrate how well John is doing for himself.

I posted the first of my own Sales Reports back in January.  You can read it here.

But it now seems that how ever dense I thought I was before completely missed the mark:  I posted an updated Sales Report in July.  You can read it here.  If you want to understand embarassment, read the first sentence of the July Sales Report, then read this current post again.

Um, yeah.  Sorry, John.