The StarCraft Bible is book about the history and culture of StarCraft, spanning 30 years from the first proto-RTS games until today. Grrrr..., Artosis, DjWheat and many more helped with their unique insights into history and future alike. This was a collaborative project and the contributors deserve many thanks.
You can read a 10,000 word excerpt from the book here. The entire first draft of the book is here. I was interviewed about the book here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylOT9Q4UUHE&fmt=18
So far, the only people I've heard with much negative to say were those who thought this was a strategy guide. Note: This is not 'CHOBO'S GET 2 DIAMOND QUIK!' book. This is a collaboration between huge e-sports fans, some famous and some not. This is an attempt to document part of StarCraft's rich history. It may very well give you the jolt of adrenaline you need to hit rank #1 diamond but I promise nothing on that front!
Thank you, thank you, thank you for everyone who liked what I wrote and encouraged me to make it into a book. Thanks to TL and the whole StarCraft community. And, of course, thank you to all the awesome people who were involved.
This book has already been a big success for me, I'm thrilled with how well it's doing. I hope everyone enjoys it and I welcome all feedback. Share your reviews on Amazon or anywhere you like! Spread this like wildfire, word of mouth is our best chance at success (and it's already working)!
!!: Let's see how high we can get in the best sellers listing, eh? We've already jumped up 2,000 spots in a couple of hours. Tell your friends to get a copy off of Amazon. Several hundred copies have already been sold (THANK YOU) so it won't be easy to continue to rise but I know there's more people out there who would want this book. I'll do giveaways and whatever else to promote it. All ideas welcome!
wow i just saw this and ordered my paperback copy now i just have to wait for it to ship! The waiting is killing me at least i can read the sneak peak! ^^
I bought this earlier today, I absolutely support it, everyone should go buy it, its cheap and its great to support a fellow TL member over something that relates to all of us.
So..I bought it, read it, reccomend it, and request people mass request this from book stores, to perhaps spread the possible audience. :D i've called in a few times to request the book.
On January 06 2011 10:44 PrinceXizor wrote: So..I bought it, read it, reccomend it, and request people mass request this from book stores, to perhaps spread the possible audience. :D i've called in a few times to request the book.
!
You are the man. If you really did that, thank you so so so much. Even one phone call goes so far in getting a store to stock a book.
For someone trying to get fully into the starcraft community, this is an awesome resource! I just bought it and await the shipment ^_^ Thank you very much for taking the time to help out the SC Community like this! =D
On January 06 2011 10:44 PrinceXizor wrote: So..I bought it, read it, reccomend it, and request people mass request this from book stores, to perhaps spread the possible audience. :D i've called in a few times to request the book.
!
You are the man. If you really did that, thank you so so so much. Even one phone call goes so far in getting a store to stock a book.
bought the e-book. read like 5 chapters then called a couple stores where i live. so i exaggerated what i did. (read: actually 5 chapters, few times: twice) but yeah. definitely would be something i'd pick up a paper copy of if a store had it (already have the e-book).
Let's see how high we can get in the best sellers listing, eh? We've already jumped up 2,000 spots in a couple of hours. Tell your friends to get a copy off of Amazon. Several hundred copies have already been sold (THANK YOU) so it won't be easy to continue to rise but I know there's more people out there who would want this book. I'll do giveaways and whatever else to promote it. All ideas welcome!
Bought this for my Bookshelf, it was always missing some SC love.
Ranked #1129
I would bet some ESPORTS dollars we make it to the top 250.
I wish I could show them how many copies have already been bought, I would LOVE for this to be up high on the list. It'd get more serious recognition that way for sure.
Either way, thank you so much to everyone who has bought this and thank you even more to people who are spreading the word. It means a lot to me, this is going amazingly well.
I'll definitely purchase this and ask the local Barnes and Noble to stock it. I've needed a book to read for awhile now, and what better one than this?
I was about to buy this; sadly, it's apparently not available on the european Amazon page. And I won't pay 15$ shipping for a 17$ book. The .pdf is still an option, but a physical book would be so much better.
On January 06 2011 13:31 Shockk wrote: I was about to buy this; sadly, it's apparently not available on the european Amazon page. And I won't pay 15$ shipping for a 17$ book. The .pdf is still an option, but a physical book would be so much better.
Too bad.
Yeah, sorry. It costs me about 15 bucks to ship it to Europe depending on the country. I hope to get it on European Amazons ASAP to fix this but until then, this is the best I can do. I had a $5 shipping option to Europe for like an hour and lost some money before I realized quite how silly that was heh.
Just bought it and started reading it (Kindle). Love the writing style so far, and the history portion brings back many childhood memories, loving it !
Definitely going to buy this as soon as I decide whether I want a .pdf or a paperback of this. You know what, I think I'll buy the paperback so I can try to convince at least a few friends that progaming isn't just a ridiculous asian subculture. I doubt reading the PDF is as good. Ugh, I do hate amazon though.
Dear What.CD user(s) who are already requesting to pirate my book on their forums,
I guess this means that I've made it. I'd like to thank my parents, my children, my many wives and you most of all. This is truly a new plateau for me.
You could pirate my book. I made it pretty easy with the DRM-free PDF. It just takes one person who bought it to post it and there it is. I wouldn't really lose sleep over it either, I've already had a great time with this book and it's done really well.
But I'd like to politely ask you to not to do it. I am not Dan Brown or Stephenie Meyer. I'm a kid who is just out of school and is trying to make it as a writer. No, you pirating it won't make me go hungry at night. And hey, maybe when I go to my next job interview I can talk about how the demand for this book was so high that it just had to be pirated!
It's just that I put a lot of time and effort into this project. This seems like it's the start of something pretty cool. Does What.CD have a big SC2 fanbase? Shit, I'll do a giveaway over there if you guys agree to not pirate it for a while. What do you say? If you do pirate it, you better at least bring some new fans in. Don't get lazy now.
Just ordered a paperback copy, I'll be sure to read it all. Also, it's a nice source because a book can be referenced in research. How much did you expand on the original?
On January 06 2011 17:07 Lightwip wrote: Just ordered a paperback copy, I'll be sure to read it all. Also, it's a nice source because a book can be referenced in research. How much did you expand on the original?
If I had to guess, I'd say the original thread accounts for somewhere from 30 to 40 percent of it all.
On January 06 2011 16:43 chobopeon wrote: Dear What.CD user(s) who are already requesting to pirate my book on their forums,
I guess this means that I've made it. I'd like to thank my parents, my children, my many wives and you most of all. This is truly a new plateau for me.
You could pirate my book. I made it pretty easy with the DRM-free PDF. It just takes one person who bought it to post it and there it is. I wouldn't really lose sleep over it either, I've already had a great time with this book and it's done really well.
But I'd like to politely ask you to not to do it. I am not Dan Brown or Stephenie Meyer. I'm a kid who is just out of school and is trying to make it as a writer. No, you pirating it won't make me go hungry at night. And hey, maybe when I go to my next job interview I can talk about how the demand for this book was so high that it just had to be pirated!
It's just that I put a lot of time and effort into this project. This seems like it's the start of something pretty cool. Does What.CD have a big SC2 fanbase? Shit, I'll do a giveaway over there if you guys agree to not pirate it for a while. What do you say? If you do pirate it, you better at least bring some new fans in. Don't get lazy now.
Love, chobopeon
publish it on Battlenet :D that will teach those pirates
but on a serious note great job Chobopeon! but does this mean that you will your daily SC news again, i really miss that, and we NEED it(so many tournaments, like 5-10 a day O___O)
On January 06 2011 18:06 Jamatron wrote: Hey man just wondering best option to buy at for Australia Cheers
Check out Amazon.com and see how much the shipping costs. If it is $15 or less, use it! If it is higher, use the international version here and I'll send it to you right away.
On January 06 2011 16:43 chobopeon wrote:It's just that I put a lot of time and effort into this project. This seems like it's the start of something pretty cool. Does What.CD have a big SC2 fanbase? Shit, I'll do a giveaway over there if you guys agree to not pirate it for a while. What do you say? If you do pirate it, you better at least bring some new fans in. Don't get lazy now.
Love, chobopeon
What.cd is not the type of community that is focused on anything, so the odds of having a lot of SC fans there are the same as the odds of any other type of fan being there.. I wouldn't worry about it at all - every academic research into internet piracy shows that people who download more, buy more music/films/books as well.
I am from europe and I do not intend to get a paypal account .. and I want the hardcopy Well, looks bad for me Well, maybe it shows up on amazon .co.uk or .de some day
Bought it now, 25 bucks for a book is kinda expensive (with shipping to sweden) but it's for "a good cause" so it's all good. Looking forward to reading this thing!
Just bought it, now a month of waiting , hope it will arrive in the beginning of January. 20€ (with shipping to France) is not that expensive for a book, especially a book about STARCRAFT.
I didn’t realize you were going to keep in the pictures (or change them back to color for that matter). I would have left them in color, but I was originally printing on a B&W printer, I just assumed that the book couldn’t handle pictures, and they would be deleted. If I had known, I probably would have spent some time getting better ones T_T.
And upon further inspection, you took out the MSPaint circle I had made in one of them, so either you found a "restore picture to what it was" button, or you have powerful photoshop skills.
On January 06 2011 23:23 tofucake wrote: #475 at the time I ordered it (about 13 seconds ago). Glad to see that you made it, though I'm a bit upset I never had time to contribute.
Neat. I think that if Amazon had been up from the first moment, we could have made it to the top 100. There were a bunch of copies ordered from that terrible store that I had up before. Oh well! Still, very cool
On January 06 2011 16:43 chobopeon wrote:It's just that I put a lot of time and effort into this project. This seems like it's the start of something pretty cool. Does What.CD have a big SC2 fanbase? Shit, I'll do a giveaway over there if you guys agree to not pirate it for a while. What do you say? If you do pirate it, you better at least bring some new fans in. Don't get lazy now.
Love, chobopeon
What.cd is not the type of community that is focused on anything, so the odds of having a lot of SC fans there are the same as the odds of any other type of fan being there.. I wouldn't worry about it at all - every academic research into internet piracy shows that people who download more, buy more music/films/books as well.
I'm not too worried haha. I was only half joking, it is cool to see demand so high that they want to pirate it.
On January 07 2011 05:25 Ic3d wrote: I got the paperback off PayPal. Is there a way to still bump the amazon rating or anything like that?
I wish! heh, in my rush to make it accessible to all, I may have a sacrificed my chance at Amazon best seller's list. Oh well! Thanks for the support anyway
Hey Chobopeon, congratulations on getting the book published! Is there a possibility to get this in Europe? I'm dying to read it. Also, there is another book called "Optimistic" listed on amazon by the same author. Did you write that too? And last but not least, will ScCenter ever come back? I know how much work it is to make those but I think a lot of people appreciated what you did there. Cheers!
On January 07 2011 07:49 surfinbird1 wrote: Hey Chobopeon, congratulations on getting the book published! Is there a possibility to get this in Europe? I'm dying to read it. Also, there is another book called "Optimistic" listed on amazon by the same author. Did you write that too? And last but not least, will ScCenter ever come back? I know how much work it is to make those but I think a lot of people appreciated what you did there. Cheers!
I did write that but I never released it. It was a novel. I think it's really good, the best thing I've ever written, but I never could figure out how to sell it. Maybe I'll release it one day
I want to bring back SC Center, it was great. I will try my best to figure out how to make that happen. As you say, it is very difficult but it was very fun.
As for getting The StarCraft Bible in Europe, if you go here, you can buy the book via Paypal and I'll ship it to you as soon as I get the order.
Hmm this books seems super interesting, but unfortunately I don't think its what I am looking for. I am writing a memoire for school on esports comparing regular to regular sports. If anyone comes by a book/article that would be of use pass it plz?
On January 07 2011 11:13 tree0flife wrote: Hmm this books seems super interesting, but unfortunately I don't think its what I am looking for. I am writing a memoire for school on esports comparing regular to regular sports. If anyone comes by a book/article that would be of use pass it plz?
O and great work by the way.
Well, it depends on what you are trying to conpare. if you are just looking about the amount of practice time, then ya, this book will be lacking. But If you want to look at the passion/pride of the players for what they do, and how they elevate what started as a child's game into something they base their lives on, or look at the fans, or the underlying strategies (which would ba rather hard from the traditional sport side) then this book can help.
If nothing else, it can help get rid of the "non-internet sorce" requierment that all of my teachers had.
On January 07 2011 19:23 undyinglight wrote: Are there any reviews for this yet written by high level players?
That is something I would like to see.
First couple of top tier players to PM me or post here asking will get a free copy as long as they agree to tell me what they think
That said, some serious reviews are coming. Review copies are just now being received (I didn't time this well, I agree! ), so hopefully over the next week we'll get some weighted opinions in.
I bought the pdf version, and I'm happy so far to have such a large amount of stories and information collected into one place. It's very interesting. I'm glad to support this effort.
That said, I'm glad I didn't pay for the physical book.
The Starcraft Bible looks like it simply is a copy and paste of text into a Word document. That is to say, the Stacraft Bible doesn't look very good - like an actual book.
To improve the Starcraft Bible as far as book format:
* Use "justified" text, which is flushed both left and right. Right now the Starcraft Bible it's flushed left, but ragged right. See Justification.
* The "optimal" width of text (as determined by typographers) is closer to 65 characters (including spaces). This is for legibility purposes. Right now the Starcraft Bible uses closer to 80 characters width. http://www.creativepro.com/blog/typetalk-there-optimum-line-length
* Put in page numbers.
A lot of the formatting problems could by solved by using LaTeX rather than Word (or whatever was used). LaTeX is to documents like html is to web pages. It is standard and used by many people (mostly in academia).
With the use of a few LaTeX tags here and there, and simply using a lot of LaTeX format defaults, the Starcraft Bible could have the format similar to most other books. I'm very familiar with LaTeX myself and it is quite powerful. (I'd also be willing to help out in putting the book in latex format, if anyone is interested).
Thank you for the tips! Really, I appreciate that. At the end of the book, I acknowledge that my formatting abilities are nonexistent. I will be looking over your tips in more detail soon and hopefully in the future everything can look much, much nicer. Thank you
Ordered from Amazon.com to the UK. anyone else interested on pricing:
Book works out to be around £15 here or there Shipping for 2-3 weeks is around £5, shipping for 4-6 weeks is around £3. The super fast 2-3 days shipping is like £20 so yeah monkeys to that.
Ignore their broad descriptions on the shipping options, those are the figures quoted to me once you've placed your order (You can go back through and change the shipping speed after you've placed the other to play around and see what happens).
I opted for the 2-3 week. It's only £2 dearer than the default option and you get it quite a bit sooner. Remember you can also use your Amazon.co.uk (and probably .de etc I suppose) account information to log into .com and all of your billing and shipping address information is retained.
Happy buying!
edit: Also note that I tried ordering for a friend too, but they seem to judge shipping on consignment weight or quantity as you can't order more than one copy on a single delivery costing. So it's easier to just order individually than try to dodge the shipping costs.
I agree with ajabberwok about the formatting, and I have to wonder why some content are repeated, to be precise, I'm thinking about some of the interview with Day9. That part of the book could have been handled a bit differently, to avoid repetition.
But that aside, I really enjoyed the book, some parts almost play out like a really good documentary, and I was really touched by some of the stories, especially the story about sAviOr.
Being a veteran (and sucky) StarCraft player, but a totalt n00b, when it comes to the community, eSports and such, I enjoyed the history lesson.
I might even buy the paperback, if/when it pops up on the EU version of Amazon, instead of "just" having the PDF.
On January 08 2011 09:02 utyske wrote: I agree with ajabberwok about the formatting, and I have to wonder why some content are repeated, to be precise, I'm thinking about some of the interview with Day9. That part of the book could have been handled a bit differently, to avoid repetition.
But that aside, I really enjoyed the book, some parts almost play out like a really good documentary, and I was really touched by some of the stories, especially the story about sAviOr.
Being a veteran (and sucky) StarCraft player, but a totalt n00b, when it comes to the community, eSports and such, I enjoyed the history lesson.
I might even buy the paperback, if/when it pops up on the EU version of Amazon, instead of "just" having the PDF.
I'm glad you enjoyed the content :D
I will be working on the format in any future releases/projects. I apologize for the mistakes this time around!
I respect what you have done. I may pickup the pdf version, but i dislike reading books on my pc.
Also I like your timing :p A lot of newcomers came to TL after sc2 release and some of them maybe interested in sc history as a whole. Props on that too.
I really want to get the hard copy of this sometime. I just hope that maybe you can find a better cover picture sometime, and use correct formatting as said above. Maybe in the next edition?
This is freaking amazing!! lol. I promise you I will buy a copy. Some ideas to get the word out would be to have everyone share and post on social networking sites like Facebook.
Just got it. Pretty interesting to read, but damn you really need to work on formatting and organization(and the cover). A table of contents and good formatting would make this better.
On January 13 2011 12:39 l10f wrote: Read it halfway through, so far awesome, found a typo though
right, there's plenty of them
so far i've learned a lot from this. publishing the starcraft bible as a book is something that i just sort of stumbled into. if/when i do another project like this, i feel like i can execute it 100x better with the things i've learned from here
also ill be updating it soon. the second edition is to fix up copyright issues. another update will be coming along at some point with edits and fixes on that front.
I just bought the online PDF, mostly because i was 4 dollars short of paperback on paypal and didnt want to wait for paypal to take money out of my account.
On January 08 2011 09:02 utyske wrote: I agree with ajabberwok about the formatting, and I have to wonder why some content are repeated, to be precise, I'm thinking about some of the interview with Day9. That part of the book could have been handled a bit differently, to avoid repetition.
But that aside, I really enjoyed the book, some parts almost play out like a really good documentary, and I was really touched by some of the stories, especially the story about sAviOr.
Being a veteran (and sucky) StarCraft player, but a totalt n00b, when it comes to the community, eSports and such, I enjoyed the history lesson.
I might even buy the paperback, if/when it pops up on the EU version of Amazon, instead of "just" having the PDF.
I've bought the paperback, and next to the stuff that's repeating itself, there doesn't seem to be a clear path the book is following, seomtimes it just jumps to describing games between 2 top players, and after that it describes really good macro from a totally different player, and I think it has named about 40 people who are in the top 3, which by itself is quite unusual.
Had a lot of good stuff in it, but also a lot of bad stuff. Still had a fun read though !
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ByxqJ.jpg)
Looking forward to it though, good job! 
