Has anyone considered converting his/her gamebook to a traditional novel for Kindle?

I understand that Kindle won’t publish our CoGs/HGs, but has anyone thought about converting a gamebook to a more traditional novel by removing the choices and stats? I like my setting, characters and main story arc, and I think I could create an interesting ‘regular’ novel even without the choices. Without having to worry about being too ‘text heavy,’ I could add some more details and descriptions to partially make up for the much of the choices text that would obviously have to be chopped.

Any feedback on this? It just seems to me if you spend a year writing what is essentially a novel that some tweaking and editing to get it to an additional market may be worthwhile.

@Lucid, also was it you who mentioned converting HGs to movie/tv scripts? I would think converting a gamebook to a traditional linear story with an established MC would be a necessary step to do things like that too.

http://www.amazon.com/Choice-of-Games-Reckless-Pirates/dp/B00H4T50KA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406202068&sr=8-1&keywords=reckless+space+pirates

Actually Amazon Appstore has several COG/Hosted games. If you mean Kindle Paperwhite, then yeah a regular book format would be best.

I have a Kindle and love Amazon as a company (until their latest Kindle Unlimited crap…) and in fact I’m adapting a book that I started writing for self-publication (because I never finish books) into a CoG game, so I see no reason why you couldn’t reverse the process!

My approach was not to copy my book (at first it was) but rather to make a prequel. That way I didn’t feel like I was abandoning my fixed characters for user-created ones or going too far into the plot that I hadn’t scripted. In fact, since it’s a prequel, I know almost exactly how my CoG game should end.

@CitizenShawn, I’m just trying to get maximum exposure for all the long nights spent on my WiP. I’m also looking self publishing physical paperbacks but I haven’t researched the costs to know if doing so is economically viable.

And I won’t have to worry about abandoning any characters but I would have to essentially write a main character, so that might be fun.

I was reading an author’s suggestion about creating multiple revenue streams with the same IP including conventional publishing contracts with royalties, self publishing, selling temporary publishing rights to magazines/anthologies, and even converting to audio books or testing foreign markets. Google “magic bakery” and you’ll get lots of hits about it.

I was going to add that I realize CoGs are avIlable for Kindle Fire via Amazon but it was my understanding that lots of folks prefer the PaperWhite for regular reading because of its low price, special display, etc, basically because it is purely an e-reader. Not sure of the % split there.

Not really. :slight_smile: It was mentioned that Paradox Factor would make an interesting screenplay, but no, I have no concrete plans to do so.

I have an unrelated novel that I wrote some time ago that I would like to edit, but I have no time to do it. If I had time, I’d be working on The Lost Heir. :slight_smile:

@Lucid
Hopefully now that you’ve got 3 best sellers out, you might be able to write a little more often. :slight_smile:

The royalty checks certainly help convince my wife to let me type quietly in the corner every now and then. :slight_smile: