Chaosium monographs are a means for you to present your ideas to a discriminating role playing audience. Here you find out just what is a monograph and how to submit a monograph to Chaosium.
WHAT IS A MONOGRAPH?
Monographs are longer works by one or more authors on a single idea or concept. On these products you also fulfill the functions of editor and artist. We at Chaosium do little in the way of editorial. We have adopted this idea to provide a way for you to present your role playing background, game, or setting to a select audience of Chaosium role players.
We run across many good ideas from potential authors who, for various reasons, lack the time or focus to fully develop those good ideas. We find many of these works compelling and think that you and your peers would enjoy them.
Monographs are digitally reproduced small run publications available through our website. Because costs are relatively low, we can explore all manner of publishing possibilities without worrying about printing thousands of books at great expense. The monograph line allows us to test ideas and authors we'd otherwise be hesitant to publish.
Monographs need to be at least 48 pages in length to keep things cost-effective. You can estimate that there will be about 600-700 words per page depending upon the amount of art. The minimum word count for a monograph is therefore 30,000 words. Monographs can be longer than this, and we have considered and published works of more than 100,000 words on rare occasions.
We are particularly looking for monographs highlighting the BASIC ROLE PLAYING rules, and of course we will also consider monographs for CALL OF CTHULHU and CTHULHU DARK AGES as well.
WHAT SORT OF BOOK?
We are interested in four kinds of roleplaying books. A book might blend these approaches, but usually falls into one of the following categories. After each category are some examples. The examples are not solicitations.
BOOKS OF SCENARIOS: Scenarios must have intriguing ways of getting the player- characters into the action, and definitely must be interesting enough to keep them playing. BASIC ROLE PLAYING adventures can encompass many genres, and should highlight an interesting or clever feature of the rules. Examples: Four adventures set in 1920's Arkham, four modern day adventures involving undercover CIA agents, Four Fantasy RPG adventures which all take place onboard a sailing vessel.
CAMPAIGN BOOKS: Linked adventures which tell a larger story. These works may use a published Chaosium setting (Call of Cthulhu, Cthulhu Dark Ages) or be generic/accessible enough to played without a specific core rulebook. Campaign books must be short enough to be printable at a reasonable cost. We're not interested in 300 page epic campaign monographs. Keep them shorter for the sake of affordability. Examples: A campaign that takes Call of Cthulhu investigators across the globe while tracking down cultists bent upon summoning Great Cthulhu, a campaign in which players must escape zombie infested Chicago to the relative safety of a smaller town on the great plains, a campaign in which players make first contact with an alien species, a campaign in which fantasy heroes must stop a mad wizard from destroying their kingdom, a set of adventures in which normal people are confronted with the existence of modern day faerie/vampires/wizards living among us.
SOURCE BOOKS: Settings or source material for existing Chaosium RPG's or that are generic enough to be dropped into existing fantasy/sci-fi/horror campaigns. Examples: A Call of Cthulhu source book for Seattle (aka Mysteries of Seattle), A book detailing several guilds, cults, or factions for a generic fantasy setting or modern day occult setting, A guidebook to running a post-apocalypse campaign, a source book for bronze age Britain, a book detailing a space station where humans and aliens may, or may not co-exist peacefully, a book which offers a modern day occult setting,a book detailing the history and methods of real world Archeology.
SUPPORT BOOKS: These would expand or enhance areas of existing core rules. Examples: a new magic system, a book of alternate powers, a book detailing hundreds of weapons/items/vehicles, a 1940's Investigators companion These we will scrutinize for rules compatibility.
NOTES ON HOW YOU CREATE A MONOGRAPH
We expect that you will create your monograph using Word or some similar word processing program. We can also accept files from page layout programs such as Quark and InDesign.
SETTING UP YOUR DOCUMENT: please use a page that is 8.5 x 11” in dimension (not A4), set up to be facing pages. Use a 2-column format with a .2” gutter (the space between the columns), Use margins of .6” all around with 1.2” for the inside measure. This will ensure that your text does not run into the center binding area of the book.
FONTS: Chaosium has access to many standard and unique fonts. For the body of your text use a font of 10 to 11 points and 2 points of leading (set line spacing to AUTO). For large bodies of text serif faces (Times) tend to be easier to read than sans-serif (Helvetica) fonts. Other than chapter heads, you should have only about 3 levels of headings; more than this confuses the reader. You must own the fonts you use in your work, and you should include copies of the fonts you used (especially if they are decorative or unique). If we cannot solve a font problem we may replace a font with something similar.
ABOUT ART
You will place all of the art in your work. All of the art included must be original and used with the permission of the artist. The same holds true of maps and diagrams. Give the artists credit. Do not use third-party software to create your maps, for licensing reasons. For best reproduction art should be black and white with strong areas of light and dark. Avoid using grayscale images; they sometimes do not reproduce well. Bold art helps of offset the grayness of the text on the pages and provides the reader with pleasing areas for the eyes to rest.
PAGE NUMBERS: Please include page numbers on every page. Occasionally it is OK to omit page numbers on title pages or on the indicia page. It is simplest if the title page is page 1.
FTP: We can accept submissions uploaded onto our server. We will make arrangements with you individually to enable this option. Otherwise please send us a CD with your work included.
PDF: If you know how to create PDFs you can include them with your submission; they do make the job easier. However, we have noticed some flaws in submitted PDFs, so we also want the native file as well.
WHAT IS OUR ARRANGEMENT?
Chaosium will pay you a flat fee, $250.00, for the right to publish up to 500 copies of your monograph. That equals a 50 cent royalty per book. We may, at our discretion, print these all at once or in batches. If we sell all 500 copies we have the right to again pay the fee for another 500 copies, or we may approach you about doing the work to bring that monograph up to the standards of formal publication. This would entail also coming to a new publishing agreement.
Because our costs to publish a monograph are relatively low, we are very flexible with monograph assignments.
SUBMITTING YOUR PROPOSAL
If you have an idea in mind, email your monograph proposal to dustin@chaosium.com and type Monograph Proposal in the subject line. We'll need a summary paragraph for each anticipated chapter or adventure in your monograph. Be sure to include a realistic date by which your monograph will be completed. We will quickly let you know if we accept or deny your proposal.
