This is a delightful gem. I did find it wildly difficult to get much beyond a year until I started to figure out how it worked. (No 'long-tail' to speak of, at least for most early books, and quite scary escalations in cost to sign most authors, required print runs to break even, and seemingly knife-edge timing required on signing new authors to keep the ravenous maw of overhead fed.
Once I managed to get saving working (it's pretty wonky, I think this is mostly due to the misery of mobile development though) being able to experiment with different approaches became really useful.
Some suggestions below. Take them with a grain of salt; some of them may be terrible ideas that needlessly complicate the game. What you have now is a quite nice simple gem and I'd hate for that to be ruined.
My thoughts.
- Difficulty levels would be nice.
- A Hints tab might be a nice touch too. Could just incorporate much of what's written in the discussion thread on itch.
- more save slots. Nice for more experimentation, and, ok, scum-saving too!
- As VentDev suggested on Reddit, would be interesting to consider incorporating editing, legal, art, etc., forcing you to have more of a book pipeline which is a major challenge in publishing anything -- books, games, etc. Perhaps that would be 'hard' difficulty level. Could get flavour events here such as a legal challenge to the title, (delay, cost, change title making author unhappy) or threat of a defamation lawsuit. While on the surface these would mostly be negative outcomes, it's possible the Streisand Effect could end up in a net plus for book publicity to offset things like legal fees.
- No idea if its there, but relationship with authors in addition to quality reputation. (e.g. I made back my advance in one month and started earning; you printed my book in a beautiful high quality edition and it sold superbly; you dumped my book at midnight in a Walmart bargain bin classic, printed on paper so acidic the EPA had to be called in.
- more depth to marketing? Maybe just more flavour, e.g. you fund an author's tour and can get events happening, how you respond determines sales modifiers. Difficulty level can indicate whether net responses are beneficial statistically (easy/medium), neutral (hard), slightly negative (very hard). Note that randomness with occasional negatives already makes the game a little more difficult for many players.
- Ability to print different types of print runs for the same book would be really nice, and perhaps more variety of editions. If I lock a book up for 24+ months, it would be nice to be able to issue expensive [e]ARC, then hardcover, then trade paperback, then paperback, then maybe even an expensive leatherbound edition if the sales/fanbase/type warrant it. Again, perhaps these other options get introduced over time or via difficulty level.
- Your negotiations are reminiscent of salary negotiations in Motorsport manager (this is a good thing; I love that game!), but unlike that game, duration seems to have almost no value to the author. Odd? Ancillary rights, and right to do different editions (e.g. ARC, Hardback, Trade, paperback...) would increase the value of duration, likely necessitating a revision to that code.
- ancillary rights? e.g., if you're putting in a lot of effort on editing, or author is unknown, you should be able to more easily lock up graphic novel and movie rights. (Note that graphic novel publication appears, in our enlightened age, to make a movie much more likely; it might even be strategically advantageous to pump out a break-even or even slightly losing graphic novel to increase likelihood of movie sales rights if you have a piece of the action. Or, similarly, spend somewhat more on marketing than you would otherwise.)
Anyway, just some thoughts. I like it as is, but it would be interesting to see more of the book and cash-flow 'pipeline', as well as more options for strategic depth.
Thanks for this lovely little game.