Is Palladium Still Publishing Novels?

[Sethmo_Dreemurr]

I’m a budding author who loves the heck out of Rifts, and I was curious if Palladium was still publishing novels. If they are, I’ll start working on one immediately.

Thanks for the help!

[zyanitevp]

I’m a budding author who loves the heck out of Rifts, and I was curious if Palladium was still publishing novels. If they are, I’ll start working on one immediately.

Thanks for the help!

They have not published one in a while... I do not believe they are anxious to get back into that path.

[Sethmo_Dreemurr]

I’m a budding author who loves the heck out of Rifts, and I was curious if Palladium was still publishing novels. If they are, I’ll start working on one immediately.

Thanks for the help!

They have not published one in a while... I do not believe they are anxious to get back into that path.

Why would they not want to publish more novels? Were the other ones not very popular, or something?

[Hotrod]

I’m a budding author who loves the heck out of Rifts, and I was curious if Palladium was still publishing novels. If they are, I’ll start working on one immediately.

Thanks for the help!

I wrote up and submitted a novel manuscript about five years back. Talking with Kevin and Alex about it, there seemed to be very little interest in RPG novels. They regard it as a niche market at best. Their first outing, "Sonic Boom," was an editing disaster. The two sequels that followed were apparently better, but I don't think they sold well. A more recent short story anthology called "Tales of the Chi-Town Burbs is actually an excellent read, but it hasn't lead to more interest in publishing novels. Some longer-form fiction has gotten serialized in The Rifter. That might be the way to go.

All that said, I don't think it's impossible that they might publish another novel. Personally, I wish they'd put together a digital rapid publishing system for fiction and small-scale products on Amazon or DriveThruRPG.

[Rallan]

I’m a budding author who loves the heck out of Rifts, and I was curious if Palladium was still publishing novels. If they are, I’ll start working on one immediately.

Thanks for the help!

I wrote up and submitted a novel manuscript about five years back. Talking with Kevin and Alex about it, there seemed to be very little interest in RPG novels. They regard it as a niche market at best. Their first outing, "Sonic Boom," was an editing disaster. The two sequels that followed were apparently better, but I don't think they sold well. A more recent short story anthology called "Tales of the Chi-Town Burbs is actually an excellent read, but it hasn't lead to more interest in publishing novels. Some longer-form fiction has gotten serialized in The Rifter. That might be the way to go.

Also even if you ignore the hilarious editing goof, their first foray into publishing novels just wasn't very well executed. Doing everything in-house instead of going through a traditional publisher was a terrible, terrible mistake on every conceivable level.

[Sethmo_Dreemurr]

I’m a budding author who loves the heck out of Rifts, and I was curious if Palladium was still publishing novels. If they are, I’ll start working on one immediately.

Thanks for the help!

All that said, I don't think it's impossible that they might publish another novel. Personally, I wish they'd put together a digital rapid publishing system for fiction and small-scale products on Amazon or DriveThruRPG.

Maybe that's what they could do! I already asked the help desk about it, and they haven't told me no, yet. There still might be a chance!

[Eddie Focus]

They need to hire someone good with Kindle Direct Publishing.

[Warshield73]

They need to hire someone good with Kindle Direct Publishing.

I kind of disagree here. PB is an RPG company, not a publisher of popular fiction. They do not have the staff necessary to oversee the quality or legality (imagine they accidentally allow an author to publish a story that has a clear copyright violation from a major company) of projects like this.

After the total disaster that was Robotech my loving message to PB is simple - Stay in your lane.

[Hotrod]

They need to hire someone good with Kindle Direct Publishing.

I kind of disagree here. PB is an RPG company, not a publisher of popular fiction. They do not have the staff necessary to oversee the quality or legality (imagine they accidentally allow an author to publish a story that has a clear copyright violation from a major company) of projects like this.

After the total disaster that was Robotech my loving message to PB is simple - Stay in your lane.

If Palladium is smart about how they set it up, I don't see an issue. If they're doing a digital distribution and an author violates a copyright, they pull the product. Liability-wise, I'm skeptical that there's a major concern. Writing/editing quality is always a mixed bag, but there's very little financial vulnerability. Palladium can put as much or as little into the process as they like.

[Eddie Focus]

They need to hire someone good with Kindle Direct Publishing.

I kind of disagree here. PB is an RPG company, not a publisher of popular fiction. They do not have the staff necessary to oversee the quality or legality (imagine they accidentally allow an author to publish a story that has a clear copyright violation from a major company) of projects like this.

After the total disaster that was Robotech my loving message to PB is simple - Stay in your lane.

Robotech was a licensed property. A different set of circumstances.

[Warshield73]

They need to hire someone good with Kindle Direct Publishing.

I kind of disagree here. PB is an RPG company, not a publisher of popular fiction. They do not have the staff necessary to oversee the quality or legality (imagine they accidentally allow an author to publish a story that has a clear copyright violation from a major company) of projects like this.

After the total disaster that was Robotech my loving message to PB is simple - Stay in your lane.

Robotech was a licensed property. A different set of circumstances.

I understand the circumstance, it was an RPG company trying to get into the miniatures business and making a very large mess out of it, hence my idea of stay in your lane.

If PB was a larger company, had a better release schedule, less debt, and more cash reserve they could try and diversify but in their current condition it is just a disaster waiting to happen.

[Josh Hilden]

Publishing in the digital age is a lot easier than most of you seem to think.

[jaymz]

Talking with Kevin and Alex about it, there seemed to be very little interest in RPG novels. They regard it as a niche market at best.

The product they sell NOW is a "niche" market within a "niche" market......lol

[Josh Hilden]

I’m a budding author who loves the heck out of Rifts, and I was curious if Palladium was still publishing novels. If they are, I’ll start working on one immediately.

Thanks for the help!

Palladium is unlikely to do any more fiction work.

My advice, if you have the itch to write RIFTS stories is to do them and post them on a free fiction site such as WattPad. It's an easy to use platform and a useful tool for new writers and even some seasoned ones.

[jaymz]

Publishing in the digital age is a lot easier than most of you seem to think.

Well let's remember how many believed Kevin 8 years ago when he stated publicly on a live podcast that a Facebook page would take untold man hours to set up and run which they just couldn't spare, then within about a week they had a page up and running just fine because they were embarrassed into to doing so after being proven HORRIBLY wrong about that....are you really surprised that so many don't realize how simple it is to actually self publish or publish in general, digitally Josh?

[Pepsi Jedi]

The claim was "It would take three weeks of someone working 9-5 to set up a Palladium Facebook page"

And someone set up an unofficial one in like 45 minutes, while helping his kid to construct a lego set.

I remember that distinctly.

[Warshield73]

As this conversation keeps coming up I seem to have to repeat this disclaimer. I want to read good (i.e. reasonably well edited and coherent stories) set in the Palladium worlds. My one and only thing is that I do not want it to take any time at all away from the release of new RPG books.

Hell, at this point I have a pile of Phase World short stories that I would love to polish and release just to see how they do.

Talking with Kevin and Alex about it, there seemed to be very little interest in RPG novels. They regard it as a niche market at best.

The product they sell NOW is a "niche" market within a "niche" market......lol

I think you proved there point. Pen & paper RPG customers are a small circle. Inside that is an even smaller circle of PB customers. Inside that is an even smaller circle of those PB fans interested in amateur fiction.

They just don't see a big upside to this in terms of sales vs time investment.

Publishing in the digital age is a lot easier than most of you seem to think.

I think we all know how easy it is to publish. Anyone who has purchased a self published work on Drive Thru or Amazon knows how easy it is and how little editing may go into them. I have purchased more than 50 such books and comics from those sites, including two Veronica Mars novels from Amazon worlds after someone on these boards drew my attention to the site, and a staggering percentage of those were crap even though many had positive reviews. I think it is the ease of turning out crap that worries Kevin the most.

In fact every person here is capable of writing and releasing there own fiction, for their own IPs, if they want. The discussion here is taking someone elses IP and writing your own stories for profit.

When this has come up before, in terms of Amazon Worlds, I asked a few simple questions that I have never received answers to. Maybe someone here will take a crack at them.

1. What would the rules / guidelines be for submitting fiction? What rules should there be for stories submitted or is it just let anarchy reign?

2. Who is going to review these stories to make sure it meets the guidelines and doesn't damage the IP? It can't be anyone at PB because you guys keep saying this will take no time away from book release.

[Josh Hilden]

Kindle Worlds is shuttered.

Third party editors of good quality are easy to find.

[Killer Cyborg]

When this has come up before, in terms of Amazon Worlds, I asked a few simple questions that I have never received answers to. Maybe someone here will take a crack at them.

1. What would the rules / guidelines be for submitting fiction? What rules should there be for stories submitted or is it just let anarchy reign?

With Kindle Worlds (which is now, alas, dead), there were generally two sets of rules:
a) the normal standard for Amazon Kindle books
b) whatever other rules the property owners wished to create.
For example, the GI-Joe property had very specific rules about which sports teams Snake-Eyes could be portrayed as being a fan of.

As for what the rules SHOULD be for Rifts, that's mostly up to Palladium. I'd assume that they'd want their content to be pretty strictly PG, possibly PG-13, with more tolerance for violence than for sex.

2. Who is going to review these stories to make sure it meets the guidelines and doesn't damage the IP? It can't be anyone at PB because you guys keep saying this will take no time away from book release.

The way that Amazon self-publishing works (and I thought I already covered this, but perhaps that was another conversation) is that everything submitted is reviewed by Amazon to make sure that the content meets Amazon's own standards for content.
So any Rifts story about somebody getting fatally gang-raped by floopers, for example, would likely not make it past that initial screening.
But it might, because Amazon's standards are rather haphazardly enforced.

The next layer of defense would be that people can report books for content violations.
So if Rifts: Fatal Floopening got successfully published somehow, outraged readers would let Amazon know about their outrage, and Amazon would take the content down. They're pretty good about this, in that they're more likely to take down content over any complaints at all, than to let questionable content go through.

The next layer of defense would be Palladium's own rules for their property, which would have been posted on the Kindle Worlds page.
I can't say entirely how this layer operates, but I suspect/assume that it at least works on the same level as above: if the story gets published, and people complain that it breaks one of Palladium's listed rules for their property (i.e., a hypothetical rule against floopers engaging in anything other than light-hearted non-sexual antics, or a rule against explicit sexual content), then Amazon would again take the property down.

All of that would happen without Palladium lifting a finger.

Amazon even theoretically has some basic theoretical quality control:
We reserve the right to determine whether content provides a poor customer experience and remove that content from sale.
If Amazon receives enough complaints that a story is just an utter piece of garbage or nonsense, they might well take the story down themselves, again without Palladium lifting a finger.

Beyond that:
Palladium could put fans to work, looking for basic flagrant rule or quality violations for free.
It's not like there isn't a contingent of loyal fans/customers who are willing to read and complain about things on our own time.

And Palladium staff could just occasionally check out the content themselves. It wouldn't even have to be a thorough reading, just skimming through for blatant violations.

For that matter, I'm willing to bet that Palladium could find content/quality/language editors who would work for cheap or simply in exchange for merchandise.

[Hotrod]

Sometimes life is weird. There's a blue moon out, I saw a black squirrel, the Red Sox won another world series, and I agree with KC. There's no reason why eBooks shouldn't be a viable option for fiction based on Palladium IPs.

Furthermore, there's no need for Kindle Worlds. If Palladium wants to control the process, they can always give submitted story manuscripts a once-over to make sure it meets basic standards of decency, publish the e-book with Kevin (or Palladium Books) as a co-author and split the revenues. Kindle Worlds was nice in that it required no additional work from the IP owners, but this would give Kevin as much control as he cares to exercise.

This would require Palladium to set up an account, put out a standard format for prospective authors to put their stories into, do some very basic quality control, and upload the file. There's zero financial risk here, minimal time investment, and an opportunity for some additional cash flow.

[Tiree]

Sometimes life is weird. There's a blue moon out, I saw a black squirrel, the Red Sox won another world series, and I agree with KC. There's no reason why eBooks shouldn't be a viable option for fiction based on Palladium IPs.

Furthermore, there's no need for Kindle Worlds. If Palladium wants to control the process, they can always give submitted story manuscripts a once-over to make sure it meets basic standards of decency, publish the e-book with Kevin (or Palladium Books) as a co-author and split the revenues. Kindle Worlds was nice in that it required no additional work from the IP owners, but this would give Kevin as much control as he cares to exercise.

This would require Palladium to set up an account, put out a standard format for prospective authors to put their stories into, do some very basic quality control, and upload the file. There's zero financial risk here, minimal time investment, and an opportunity for some additional cash flow.

Which was the same argument that was made to release PDF's of their books!

[Eddie Focus]

I’m a budding author who loves the heck out of Rifts, and I was curious if Palladium was still publishing novels. If they are, I’ll start working on one immediately.

Thanks for the help!

Palladium is unlikely to do any more fiction work.

My advice, if you have the itch to write RIFTS stories is to do them and post them on a free fiction site such as WattPad. It's an easy to use platform and a useful tool for new writers and even some seasoned ones.

I have some ideas in the pipeline (Fantasy and Beyond the Supernatural). I think the audience has to be built first and WattPad is a good platform for it.

[Eddie Focus]

Perhaps Palladium doesn't need to make the first move? Maybe a small print publisher could work a licensing deal?

[Josh Hilden]

Perhaps Palladium doesn't need to make the first move? Maybe a small print publisher could work a licensing deal?

That is an excellent idea.

[jaymz]

Perhaps Palladium doesn't need to make the first move? Maybe a small print publisher could work a licensing deal?

That is an excellent idea.

One, sadly, I think will never happen since in a licensing deal I imagine Kevin will want control which leaves where we are now, everything bottle-necked waiting for him to do the work needed to get it done.

[Josh Hilden]

It will ABSOLUTELY never happen but it's still a great idea.

[jaymz]

It will ABSOLUTELY never happen but it's still a great idea.

Oh very much so....but like a number of other excellent ideas, it will never be planted let alone watered or grown

[Eddie Focus]

Perhaps Palladium doesn't need to make the first move? Maybe a small print publisher could work a licensing deal?

That is an excellent idea.

One, sadly, I think will never happen since in a licensing deal I imagine Kevin will want control which leaves where we are now, everything bottle-necked waiting for him to do the work needed to get it done.

Well it won't work unless he establishes the framework from the beginning.

[jaymz]

He's never even done that for his rpg book freelancers so.......

[Hotrod]

Palladium HAS licensed Rifts to Pinnacle for Savage Rifts and to those folks who created Manhunter (Myrmidon books?). It's not beyond the pale that they might license someone to publish derivative fiction from their IPs.

[jaymz]

Savage Rifts still had an approval process that, to my understanding, still had hiccups due to Kevin at times that slowed the production process. As for manhunter....that was more a bringing in of another property into the rifts ruleset not a licensing of Rifts. Manhunter/Myrmidon had their own manhunter game as well using their own ruleset. Sort of the reverse of what Pinnacle did with Palladium being the seat of Myrmidon in this case and Pinnacle sort of being the Palladium seat in regards to bringing an existing property into your ruleset.

[Forar]

If they were to pursue further novels, I certainly hope they splurge on quality editors. I bought and chewed through all three of the original novels, and they were... okay they were bad. Excuses can be made for whatever was going on at the time (and one not dig very deeply to find them being shared over the years), but characters flat out changed personalities within the same chapter, names were clearly mixed up, and the finale to the third included what I'd consider gratuitous vagueness followed by a good chunk of the side characters wiped out for no particular reason.

This is above and beyond the typos and homonym errors. Like, even as I read through them so many years ago, I distinctly recall catching mistakes on the first pass, things that an actual editor should've caught in their sleep, let alone allowed to go to print.

"But we're talking about FUTURE books, not old ones!" one would argue. Fair point. But this is the hill one would need to overcome. This isn't a new field being sown, it's one that is already somewhat toxic when tied to this company/IP in particular. Any further novel outings would immediately be compared to the originals. If they're solid efforts, maybe that comparison would work in their favour, but it'd be a hill to climb all the same.

[Hotrod]

If they were to pursue further novels, I certainly hope they splurge on quality editors. I bought and chewed through all three of the original novels, and they were... okay they were bad. Excuses can be made for whatever was going on at the time (and one not dig very deeply to find them being shared over the years), but characters flat out changed personalities within the same chapter, names were clearly mixed up, and the finale to the third included what I'd consider gratuitous vagueness followed by a good chunk of the side characters wiped out for no particular reason.

This is above and beyond the typos and homonym errors. Like, even as I read through them so many years ago, I distinctly recall catching mistakes on the first pass, things that an actual editor should've caught in their sleep, let alone allowed to go to print.

"But we're talking about FUTURE books, not old ones!" one would argue. Fair point. But this is the hill one would need to overcome. This isn't a new field being sown, it's one that is already somewhat toxic when tied to this company/IP in particular. Any further novel outings would immediately be compared to the originals. If they're solid efforts, maybe that comparison would work in their favour, but it'd be a hill to climb all the same.

Tales of the Chi-Town Burbs is a good example of Rifts fiction done better.

[Killer Cyborg]

Perhaps Palladium doesn't need to make the first move? Maybe a small print publisher could work a licensing deal?

That is an excellent idea.

One, sadly, I think will never happen since in a licensing deal I imagine Kevin will want control which leaves where we are now, everything bottle-necked waiting for him to do the work needed to get it done.

Agreed.

In order for it to work, Kevin would have to be sold on the idea that Palladium would bear no responsibility or blame for the quality or content of the books.
That was one of the nice things about Kindle Worlds--nobody blames the property owners when somebody self-publishes bad fanfic.
At least, nobody who's remotely reasonable.

[Killer Cyborg]

If they were to pursue further novels, I certainly hope they splurge on quality editors. I bought and chewed through all three of the original novels, and they were... okay they were bad. Excuses can be made for whatever was going on at the time (and one not dig very deeply to find them being shared over the years), but characters flat out changed personalities within the same chapter, names were clearly mixed up, and the finale to the third included what I'd consider gratuitous vagueness followed by a good chunk of the side characters wiped out for no particular reason.

This is above and beyond the typos and homonym errors. Like, even as I read through them so many years ago, I distinctly recall catching mistakes on the first pass, things that an actual editor should've caught in their sleep, let alone allowed to go to print.

"But we're talking about FUTURE books, not old ones!" one would argue. Fair point. But this is the hill one would need to overcome. This isn't a new field being sown, it's one that is already somewhat toxic when tied to this company/IP in particular. Any further novel outings would immediately be compared to the originals. If they're solid efforts, maybe that comparison would work in their favour, but it'd be a hill to climb all the same.

Tales of the Chi-Town Burbs is a good example of Rifts fiction done better.

Agreed.
I had hoped that it would be the start of a line of further anthologies.

[Warshield73]

Wow go away to Smokey Mountain NP for a few days and you miss a lot of conversation. I just want to remind everyone that I would like to read some of this and maybe even try my hand at publishing a few stories.

First, We don't know what PBs deal for the movie rights or even with Pinnacle is. It might limit this in some way, at least for Rifts.

Second, I want to say that PBs problem right now is not social media, or not having enough titles as digital as PDFs or any of the other things people bring up. It is not publishing enough RPG books, period. They are only publishing 3 or 4 books a year and they are way behind on Rifters. Get That up to 6 to 8 books plus caught up on Rifters and then this might make a difference and anything that gets in the way of this, to any degree, will hurt not help. IMHO

Kindle Worlds is shuttered.

Yes and to this day I don't know how PB wasn't talked into diving all in on AW. I mean an unknown service with spotty quality that died a slow and unremarkable death. How was PB not in this? Hello, Nokia calling we have another can't fail opportunity for you.

Third party editors of good quality are easy to find.

Vague, unhelpful. What is a good service for this? Who would you use if PB let you publish your work? What would you tell KS to get him to agree to this?

---------
Killer Cyborg, you posted a lot of good things and if you had covered some of this in the past and I missed it I'm sorry. I went back and reviewed the conversations I was in before I posted and didn't see anything but still if I missed it I'm sorry.

I'm not trying to chop your posts up but I only want to hit a few points.

When this has come up before, in terms of Amazon Worlds, I asked a few simple questions that I have never received answers to. Maybe someone here will take a crack at them.

1. What would the rules / guidelines be for submitting fiction? What rules should there be for stories submitted or is it just let anarchy reign?

With Kindle Worlds (which is now, alas, dead), there were generally two sets of rules:
a) the normal standard for Amazon Kindle books
b) whatever other rules the property owners wished to create.
For example, the GI-Joe property had very specific rules about which sports teams Snake-Eyes could be portrayed as being a fan of.

Yes I read the GI Joe and Veronica Mars guidelines that is why I had the question in the first place.

As for what the rules SHOULD be for Rifts, that's mostly up to Palladium. I'd assume that they'd want their content to be pretty strictly PG, possibly PG-13, with more tolerance for violence than for sex.

These are the rules I would be interested in because here's the thing no matter what rules KS and PB create there are going to be plenty of people who will hate them and say they are killing good stories because they want too much control. I can tell you this write now, KS will never EVER let people use Erin Tarn or Victor Lazlo in there stories. I don't pretend to know KS well but I would put serious money on that being a non-negotiable so how many would be writers will that PO?

So any Rifts story about somebody getting fatally gang-raped by floopers, for example, would likely not make it past that initial screening.

This is one of the most twisted things I have ever heard. It has scared me for life and just thinking it up should get you banned from polite society. Lucky for you the internet doesn't count as polite society.

2. Who is going to review these stories to make sure it meets the guidelines and doesn't damage the IP? It can't be anyone at PB because you guys keep saying this will take no time away from book release.

The way that Amazon self-publishing works (and I thought I already covered this, but perhaps that was another conversation) is that everything submitted is reviewed by Amazon to make sure that the content meets Amazon's own standards for content.
But it might, because Amazon's standards are rather haphazardly enforced.

And the award for understatement of the Year for 2018 goes to...Killer Cyborg. Make no mistake ladies and gentlemen this one puts him in the top bracket for understatement of the 21st century.

Seriously, if we are going to hang our hopes on Amazons enforcement of standards for getting KS to greenlight this sort of thing lets just give up right now. That's like using Spirits passenger standards to get someone to fly commercial, and I say that as someone who is still buying self-published work on Amazon. I also say that as someone who just flew Spirit over the weekend and still has the lower back pain to prove it.

Amazon even theoretically has some basic theoretical quality control:
We reserve the right to determine whether content provides a poor customer experience and remove that content from sale.
If Amazon receives enough complaints that a story is just an utter piece of garbage or nonsense, they might well take the story down themselves, again without Palladium lifting a finger.

Beyond that:
Palladium could put fans to work, looking for basic flagrant rule or quality violations for free.
It's not like there isn't a contingent of loyal fans/customers who are willing to read and complain about things on our own time.

I can tell you just from the two conversations I have had with KS about this, one over the phone and the other at the last POH, this is one of the big things he is trying to avoid.

He does not want and PB probably can not survive the reputation damage of a lot of complaints on Amazon. Also in a previouse discussion about this very topic there were multiple complaints about PB 'always expecting their fans to do the work for free' so I'm pretty sure that for every person eager to do this you will have at least one who will grouse about PB expecting it. Now this doesn't mean PB shouldn't do it but it does show that this will not be the 'win - win' or 'zero risk' opperation that everyone keeps talking about.

Agreed.

In order for it to work, Kevin would have to be sold on the idea that Palladium would bear no responsibility or blame for the quality or content of the books.
That was one of the nice things about Kindle Worlds--nobody blames the property owners when somebody self-publishes bad fanfic.
At least, nobody who's remotely reasonable.

KC please do not take this the wrong way but when I read this post I laughed my @$$ off and the question that popped into my head was "Have you been on the internet?"

The simple fact is for an established / well known property with a good reputation published amature writing has nearly zero risk. PB is none of these. It is not well known even by people who have heard of Rifts and it has a not underserved bad rep even before the Kickstarter disaster. Whatever a persons first interface with a brand determines their feelings for that brand. So, if someones first impression of Rifts is a crappy novel they are very unlikely to ever try it again in the future and changing there mind is very difficult. Most of us know this to be true simply from first hand experience.

[Warshield73]

Perhaps Palladium doesn't need to make the first move? Maybe a small print publisher could work a licensing deal?

That is an excellent idea.

One, sadly, I think will never happen since in a licensing deal I imagine Kevin will want control which leaves where we are now, everything bottle-necked waiting for him to do the work needed to get it done.

Savage Rifts still had an approval process that, to my understanding, still had hiccups due to Kevin at times that slowed the production process. As for manhunter....that was more a bringing in of another property into the rifts ruleset not a licensing of Rifts. Manhunter/Myrmidon had their own manhunter game as well using their own ruleset. Sort of the reverse of what Pinnacle did with Palladium being the seat of Myrmidon in this case and Pinnacle sort of being the Palladium seat in regards to bringing an existing property into your ruleset.

Sadly this works both ways. Every minute KS and the PB staff spend on Savage Rifts is a minute they are not producing gaming books which is what is really hurting them.

Look through these forums and you will find hundreds of complaints about Rifter articles submitted and never published or even given feedback on. Dozens of complaints about freelance submissions not published or given feedback for (I have made many of these just for Hardware Unlimited which is a book I need way more then fan fic). Hundreds of complaints about lack of activity on FB and twitter. Now we want to add dozens of fiction submissions to that crap storm.

[Warshield73]

If people really want PB to let them publish Novels / Short Stories than I think it could happen if we got specific. There are people on these boards that talk to KS somewhat regularly so if you get there attention they could take it to him. I'm not one of them but maybe a Rifter contributor or freelancer could bring it up with him if they have specifics.

I don't know enough about this to come up with those specifics but I imagine a few are:
1 - What platform will it be published on?
2 - What are the rules of this platform?
3 - How much for each story and how would them money be split between platform / writer / PB?
4 - Who will the volunteer editors be?
5 - Who will decide what gets published? Maybe you have a panel of 5 or more trusted PB contributors and an author needs permission from 3 of them to get the story up. I don't know if that is at all acceptable to any would be writers but I am telling you KS will not be sold on this if just anyone can post a story without so much as a mother may I so come up with something.
6 - What would the general guidlines be and maybe come up with some specifics guidlines for one IP like Heroes Unlimted or PFRPG just as a sample. Don't start with Rifts, that is his most prized possession so if you want him to let you play with it you will have to work up to it.
7 - What would be the rules on fiction combining multiple IPs (If one of you writes a half-way decent book about Nightbane and BTS set in Century Station I will buy it).
8 - Maybe start with a list of authors that would be allowed as trial run and then if it goes well open it up to submissions.

Before any of you say "Nobody is going to do this without knowing that KS will approve or even see it" I want to remind you that several people on this topic, and others, have said that this could be done with fans doing most of the work so here is a great place to prove it.

[Killer Cyborg]

As for what the rules SHOULD be for Rifts, that's mostly up to Palladium. I'd assume that they'd want their content to be pretty strictly PG, possibly PG-13, with more tolerance for violence than for sex.

These are the rules I would be interested in because here's the thing no matter what rules KS and PB create there are going to be plenty of people who will hate them and say they are killing good stories because they want too much control. I can tell you this right now, KS will never EVER let people use Erin Tarn or Victor Lazlo in there stories. I don't pretend to know KS well but I would put serious money on that being a non-negotiable so how many would be writers will that PO?

Aesop covered this pretty well with "The Man, The Boy, and the Donkey."

Spoiler:

A man and his son were once going with their donkey to market. As they were walking along by his side a countryman passed them and said, "You fools, what is a donkey for but to ride upon?" So the man put the boy on the donkey, and they went on their way.

But soon they passed a group of men, one of whom said, "See that lazy youngster, he lets his father walk while he rides."

So the man ordered his boy to get off, and got on himself. But they hadn't gone far when they passed two women, one of whom said to the other, "Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor little son trudge along."

Well, the man didn't know what to do, but at last he took his boy up before him on the donkey. By this time they had come to the town, and the passersby began to jeer and point at them. The man stopped and asked what they were scoffing at.

The men said, "Aren't you ashamed of yourself for overloading that poor donkey of yours -- you and your hulking son?"

The man and boy got off and tried to think what to do. They thought and they thought, until at last they cut down a pole, tied the donkey's feet to it, and raised the pole and the donkey to their shoulders. They went along amid the laughter of all who met them until they came to a bridge, when the donkey, getting one of his feet loose, kicked out and caused the boy to drop his end of the pole. In the struggle the donkey fell over the bridge, and his forefeet being tied together, he was drowned.

Try to please everyone, and you will please no one.

So any Rifts story about somebody getting fatally gang-raped by floopers, for example, would likely not make it past that initial screening.

This is one of the most twisted things I have ever heard. It has scared me for life and just thinking it up should get you banned from polite society. Lucky for you the internet doesn't count as polite society. [/quote]

2. Who is going to review these stories to make sure it meets the guidelines and doesn't damage the IP? It can't be anyone at PB because you guys keep saying this will take no time away from book release.

The way that Amazon self-publishing works (and I thought I already covered this, but perhaps that was another conversation) is that everything submitted is reviewed by Amazon to make sure that the content meets Amazon's own standards for content.
But it might, because Amazon's standards are rather haphazardly enforced.

And the award for understatement of the Year for 2018 goes to...Killer Cyborg. Make no mistake ladies and gentlemen this one puts him in the top bracket for understatement of the 21st century.

Seriously, if we are going to hang our hopes on Amazons enforcement of standards for getting KS to greenlight this sort of thing lets just give up right now. That's like using Spirits passenger standards to get someone to fly commercial, and I say that as someone who is still buying self-published work on Amazon. I also say that as someone who just flew Spirit over the weekend and still has the lower back pain to prove it.

For me, it's not a question of whether the rules work, but rather of whether Palladium would be held accountable, and to what degree.
Again, people could and would get upset over everything that Palladium might do, or might not do.
But with Kindle Worlds, I feel that the accountability would have been rather low, because 1) Property owners cannot control the nature of fanfic, 2) Amazon is supposed to NOT PUBLISH stuff like the flooper story in the first place, and 3) Amazon is supposed to take it down if it does get published.
People could and would get mad at Palladium for Amazon not doing their job, but few reasonable people would.

Amazon even theoretically has some basic theoretical quality control:
We reserve the right to determine whether content provides a poor customer experience and remove that content from sale.
If Amazon receives enough complaints that a story is just an utter piece of garbage or nonsense, they might well take the story down themselves, again without Palladium lifting a finger.

Beyond that:
Palladium could put fans to work, looking for basic flagrant rule or quality violations for free.
It's not like there isn't a contingent of loyal fans/customers who are willing to read and complain about things on our own time.

I can tell you just from the two conversations I have had with KS about this, one over the phone and the other at the last POH, this is one of the big things he is trying to avoid.

He does not want and PB probably can not survive the reputation damage of a lot of complaints on Amazon.

A very important distinction to keep in mind: with Kindle Worlds, there would be ZERO complaints to Amazon about Palladium.
There might be a bunch of complaints about individuals who were self-publishing fanfic, but that's not Palladium.
The order of responsibility for any self-published fanfic that would have been created through the Kindle Worlds program would fall on the shoulders of the writer/publisher, then on Amazon, then on Amazon again, and that's it.
The layers of crazy needed for somebody to get mad at Palladium over something that Palladium never wrote, endorsed, nor published, would be need to be so thick that it'd be pretty low statistically.

Also in a previouse discussion about this very topic there were multiple complaints about PB 'always expecting their fans to do the work for free' so I'm pretty sure that for every person eager to do this you will have at least one who will grouse about PB expecting it. Now this doesn't mean PB shouldn't do it but it does show that this will not be the 'win - win' or 'zero risk' opperation that everyone keeps talking about.

In this case, it wouldn't have been "work," so much as it would be people checking out fanfic, recoiling at the bad stuff, and complaining to Amazon about an Amazon product.

Agreed.

In order for it to work, Kevin would have to be sold on the idea that Palladium would bear no responsibility or blame for the quality or content of the books.
That was one of the nice things about Kindle Worlds--nobody blames the property owners when somebody self-publishes bad fanfic.
At least, nobody who's remotely reasonable.

KC please do not take this the wrong way but when I read this post I laughed my @$$ off and the question that popped into my head was "Have you been on the internet?"

Hence the "at least, nobody who's remotely reasonable."
I'm aware that a lot of people online are NOT.

The simple fact is for an established / well known property with a good reputation published amature writing has nearly zero risk. PB is none of these. It is not well known even by people who have heard of Rifts and it has a not underserved bad rep even before the Kickstarter disaster. Whatever a persons first interface with a brand determines their feelings for that brand. So, if someones first impression of Rifts is a crappy novel they are very unlikely to ever try it again in the future and changing there mind is very difficult. Most of us know this to be true simply from first hand experience.

I don't think that Kindle Worlds was ever meant to introduce anybody to anything, but rather to tap into the existing fanbase and make a few bucks.
While there probably were some people who went to the Kindle Worlds page, and shopped around for new settings to explore... those people were probably not many.
Fanfiction is written as a rule for people who are already fans, not for people who have never heard of the characters or setting.

[Josh Hilden]

Kindle Worlds is shuttered.

Yes and to this day I don't know how PB wasn't talked into diving all in on AW. I mean an unknown service with spotty quality that died a slow and unremarkable death. How was PB not in this? Hello, Nokia calling we have another can't fail opportunity for you.

Kindle Worlds was an interesting experiment. I published a few things on it. It was a fun experience.

Third party editors of good quality are easy to find.

Vague, unhelpful. What is a good service for this? Who would you use if PB let you publish your work? What would you tell KS to get him to agree to this?

Snarky and passive-aggressive.

First, there are literally hundreds of third-party editing services with a good track record. Google them.

Second, I could not care less what Palladium does or does not publish. I would never work for or with them again.

I was only speaking as to my personal experience with the publishing industry over the last 10 years. Take it however you want.

[Warshield73]

Third party editors of good quality are easy to find.

Vague, unhelpful. What is a good service for this? Who would you use if PB let you publish your work? What would you tell KS to get him to agree to this?

Snarky and passive-aggressive.

Yes it was, thank you.

Second, I could not care less what Palladium does or does not publish.

I am looking at some fairly compelling evidence that says otherwise. I never participate in threads or discussions I don't care about so I am sorry for asking you to elaborate.

I would never work for or with them again.

I was only speaking as to my personal experience with the publishing industry over the last 10 years. Take it however you want.

OK

[Blackwater Sniper]

Companies outsource work all the time; when it's not their primary job or it costs more for them to do than another specialized company.

Think of cleaning, how many companies do their own cleaning versus hire out to Cintas. Payroll and taxes can be a headache so hiring an accounting firm may be the way to go. And deliveries ... how do you think FedEx and UPS make money?

[Eddie Focus]

Kindle Worlds is shuttered.

Yes and to this day I don't know how PB wasn't talked into diving all in on AW. I mean an unknown service with spotty quality that died a slow and unremarkable death. How was PB not in this? Hello, Nokia calling we have another can't fail opportunity for you.

Kindle Worlds was an interesting experiment. I published a few things on it. It was a fun experience.

Third party editors of good quality are easy to find.

Vague, unhelpful. What is a good service for this? Who would you use if PB let you publish your work? What would you tell KS to get him to agree to this?

Snarky and passive-aggressive.

First, there are literally hundreds of third-party editing services with a good track record. Google them.

Second, I could not care less what Palladium does or does not publish. I would never work for or with them again.

I was only speaking as to my personal experience with the publishing industry over the last 10 years. Take it however you want.

Fair criticism.

[Sethmo_Dreemurr]

I’m a budding author who loves the heck out of Rifts, and I was curious if Palladium was still publishing novels. If they are, I’ll start working on one immediately.

Thanks for the help!

Palladium is unlikely to do any more fiction work.

My advice, if you have the itch to write RIFTS stories is to do them and post them on a free fiction site such as WattPad. It's an easy to use platform and a useful tool for new writers and even some seasoned ones.

That IS a good idea, but I kinda want to do more than that.

[jaymz]

I’m a budding author who loves the heck out of Rifts, and I was curious if Palladium was still publishing novels. If they are, I’ll start working on one immediately.

Thanks for the help!

Palladium is unlikely to do any more fiction work.

My advice, if you have the itch to write RIFTS stories is to do them and post them on a free fiction site such as WattPad. It's an easy to use platform and a useful tool for new writers and even some seasoned ones.

That IS a good idea, but I kinda want to do more than that.

Then you may want think of doing it serialized and submit it for rifter publication.

[Sethmo_Dreemurr]

I’m a budding author who loves the heck out of Rifts, and I was curious if Palladium was still publishing novels. If they are, I’ll start working on one immediately.

Thanks for the help!

Palladium is unlikely to do any more fiction work.

My advice, if you have the itch to write RIFTS stories is to do them and post them on a free fiction site such as WattPad. It's an easy to use platform and a useful tool for new writers and even some seasoned ones.

That IS a good idea, but I kinda want to do more than that.

Then you may want think of doing it serialized and submit it for rifter publication.

The Rifter, eh? About how many people read that?

[jaymz]

More than read something that never gets published....

[Sethmo_Dreemurr]

More than read something that never gets published....

Fair point. I'll get to work ASAP!

[Warshield73]

More than read something that never gets published....

Fair point. I'll get to work ASAP!

As far behind as they are in Rifter releases (they are releasing Rifter 82 in December but thye should have released Rifter 84 in October) I wonder if they could ever be convinced to put out an all fiction issue or to just increase the amount of fiction in each issue.

[jaymz]

More than read something that never gets published....

Fair point. I'll get to work ASAP!

As far behind as they are in Rifter releases (they are releasing Rifter 82 in December but thye should have released Rifter 84 in October) I wonder if they could ever be convinced to put out an all fiction issue or to just increase the amount of fiction in each issue.

Honestly I am surprised they haven't done Hammer and the Forge as a compilation similar to Machinations of Doom with NPCs statted out etc.....though I think has something to do with they;'d have to pay the author again since writing for the Rifter and writing for the company itself are two different things in regards to pay scale.