daviss@midnightryder.com

(316) 633-4639

The Story Of Gamer Zone

Exploring A Business Failure

Every entrepreneur experiences a business failure at some point, though most make a point to hide those failures or only speak of them in passing. Wichitan Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr., takes a completely different tactic, exploring a business failure of his own in his new book, “The Story of Gamer Zone.”

“The Story of Gamer Zone – A Business From Birth to Death” (243 pages, $14.95) is an account of Gamer Zone, a business owned by Davis for two years in Wichita, Kan.  It covers everything from its inception to its eventual death, and the aftermath experienced by the author.

The book is unique in its perspective.  Most books on the rise and fall of a business are written by a third party, usually from third-hand accounts and interviews which give opportunities for large portions of the facts to be hidden away by those embarrassed by their mistakes.  ”The Story of Gamer

Zone” was written by the owner, who is intent on providing the whole truth as a warning to business owners on what behaviors and actions to avoid to increase the likelihood of success.

Davis will be having his first book signing at the Clifton Square Arts & Music Festival from noon to 8 p.m., on March 20th, 2009.  For more information on the Clifton Square Arts & Music Festival visit the Fountain Street Productions website at www.FountainStreetProductions.com.

Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr., is a three-time speaker at Indie Games Con in Eugene, Ore., on business development in the video game industry, and one-time owner of an extremely unsuccessful business in Wichita, Kan.  He currently resides in Wichita, Kan., and is currently working on his next two book projects.  Davis also keeps a podcast and blog of his current projects at www.MidnightRyder.org.

ISBN 1441446745

For individual copies of the book, please visit Amazon.com

To place bulk orders for the book, contact:

Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr.

(316) 633-4629

daviss@midnightryder.com

URL: www.TheStoryOfGamerZone.com

To arrange a book signing or interview, contact Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr., at (316) 633-4639 or daviss@midnightryder.com

The Festival is a sort of fun backdrop for doing this – 18 bands playing in four different venues there, a ton of artists (including another writer from Wichita, Kansas, Aston West signing copies of Heroes Die Young), and a buttload of fun.  It’s free to the public (unless you want into the beer garden – that’s $5).

So drop on by and pick up a copy of the book and have it signed – click to find how to get to Clifton Square.  Or if you can’t make it, feel free to order yourself a copy of the book on Amazon!

So what is The Story of Gamer Zone?  Ages ago, a LAN Gaming center was opened at Harry & Broadway in Wichita, Kansas. For two years Gamer Zone was a gamer gathering point.

This is the story of Gamer Zone’s rise and eventual fall. It’s told from my perspective – the guy who took the most hours behind the counter, the guy who took responsability, and eventually the guy who took the fall.  It covers all the successes and failures we, as a team had.  It also covers the aftermath of such a failure.

There’s more than one way to look at the book – it’s either a historical account of a business, or it’s a learning tool.  Take your pick.  It’s geeky in some places, but the focus is on the business aspects, not the video games that were involved.

Originally, it was being written as a blog on what happened, and how to avoid making those mistakes.  About 18,000 words into The Story of Gamer Zone’s blog version, I realized I had long since surpassed the original goal of a blog and was moving into the territory of writing a book.

And so it is now – The Story of Gamer Zone has a print version.  The print version had major cleanups compaired to the much lower quality blog version.  At the moment, the blog version is still on here and the first two chapters are available for free reading (which includes all the bad grammar, spelling errors, horrible editing… well, you get the idea.  It was a blog.)  You can purchase the book version from Amazon, OR, you can read all of the chapters online (handy if you have a smart phone – take your book with you anywhere.)  The online version is currently still the blog, however I’ll be replacing the blog version with the text from the print version sometime soon – so for $5 you’ll be able to read the entire thing as it appeared in print!

So, The Story of Gamer Zone as it currently exists is the first draft of a 320 page book.  Actually, the final version will weigh in just a bit higher than that – there were a few things within The Story that I never found a spot for, and after I finished I found where they belong in the framework of The Story.

I’ve exported the whole thing and have begun the edit process.  

The real question in my mind is what form it’s going to take when it ends up in print.  I’ve got two options:  self publish, or traditional publishing.  One day, someone commented that it’s impossible to get a book in print unless you have impressive credentials.  

I love a good challenge, so after I finish with my edits I’ll start shopping around for a traditional publisher.

Some obvious points here – since it started as a blog, it had all the horrible writing of a blog when it started.  It wasn’t until around 20,000 words (of 80,000) that I realized I was actually writing a book.  You can see some differences in writing style as the story goes along.  So I’ll have a huge section of The STory to revise to a more book like format.

Some publishers won’t touch it because it’s got some rough language in it (liberal use of the word “fuck” in some places), and some publishers won’t touch it because it’s an oddball item.  It’s geeky, but not really designed for gamers.  It’s business writing, but not designed for the expert businessman.  It’s a little of both, and a bunch of neither.  So I’ll have an interesting challenge ahead of me getting it published – but I’m not afraid of a little challenge (as The Story shows many times.)  I’m just insane enough to love a challenge.

So how long would it be until there’s a print copy of the book?  No idea.  If I found a publisher today, it could be on shelves as early as two months, or as long as a year.  Even worse – even if I find a publisher, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to run down to your local bookstore and pick up a copy.  Publication is no guarantee of wide distribution.

I’ll be updating this from time to time with more information on publishing the book.  Or, you can follow me on Twitter (MidnightRyder) as I pop up stuff there from time to time about the process too.

Meanwhile, I’ve started two more books.  Yes, I now have a new insanity.  I’ll be writing on those again in my spare time – though I’m not certain if I’ll write online again.  The Story of Gamer Zone will probably be an anomaly  for me, though if I decide that my next things I write are going to be self published, then I’ll probably go ahead and write it online.

Throughout the process I’ve gotten a number of great emails.  Thanks to everyone who dropped a line and used words like “interesting”, “honorable”, “fun”, or “compelling”.   I never really expected that, and it was amazing to get little morale boosts like that.

As for my next two books – no idea on time frame at all.  One is a fiction piece in the super hero vein (with a different twist) and the second is a book on business again.  One will be fun, one will be boring.  One I’m writing for myself, one I’m writing to try and sell.  Surprisingly, the boring one on business is the one I’m writing for myself.  Go fig that one!

Thanks for reading The Story of Gamer Zone, and thanks for the two purchases of Read Ahead accounts – that doesn’t fill the car up with gas, but hell, every little bit helps!

Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr

Aka, The Midnight Ryder

December 7, 2008

Wichita, Kansas

The thing about sharing wisdom is often people don’t bother to listen, observe, and absorb what you’ve told them, and that’s OK.  Just keep in mind that you’ve purchased a book about a failed business from a guy who’s willing to share wisdom.  You’ve spent money on this – if you don’t listen, observe, and absorb the information presented here, well, it’s your loss of investment in this book.

But don’t expect that all of these things are perfect matches for your situation, or your personality type.  And by listen, observe, and absorb I mean this:

Listen to the things I’ve got to say here.  Read it closely to understand the intent.

Observe your circumstances, or your business, or even possibly your life.  Look at how these little pearls of hard-earned, very expensive for me bits of experience apply to you and your situation.  

Absorb these rules into your situation in a way that fits.  These aren’t hard and fast rules to be followed as absolutes.  Everyone is different, and every situation is different, just use what fits.

Being a business owner shouldn’t be just about making money.  It should be about doing something you enjoy, employing others at a fare wage that allows them to make a decent enough living to feed their family, putting good money in your pocket so you live a reasonably good life, and being a leader.

In a public facing business a business owner helps to determine the character of his business, and by doing so, helps shape the character of the local neighborhood he or she is in.  While I picked on Delano as being someone’s historical pet project, without the businesses there being on board with the idea, each one of them being a leader in their own right, Delano woudn’t be a thriving historical district.

And when leadership faltered, Delano businesses like the Book Room stood up and took the reigns to bring the situation back in line.  And yes, while it was never mentioned in the primary story, I was a dues paying member of The Delano Business Association, and made my opinions known to the new leadership.

If you want a thriving neighborhood to be developed from a dying one, sitting around complaining does nothing to help.  At Harry & Broadway, I failed to do anything to help improve the neighborhood, so how could I as a business owner expect that it would ever get better?  

Get up, get involved, and inspire others.  Sure, you can’t do it all yourself – that’s why that inspire others part is there.  That’s what leaders do – they don’t to all the work themselves.

If you are a business that deals with children or teens, you take a small part in determining how the next generation does business.  Treat them with fairness and respect.  If you screw them around, in ten years when they start their own businesses, they might be the ones doing the screwing.

And finally, be a leader to your own team of people.  What you do and how you act makes a huge difference.  Be abusive with your employees, and you’ll end up with a high turnover and low morale.  Treat them with, again, fairness and respect, and morale goes up and employee turnover goes down.  No one likes working for someone who treats them like shit.  Everyone loves working for someone who treats them well.

Hi! This is the author... you are looking at content that is currently classified as Unpublished. But since some people have asked, I have added an option that allows you to Read Ahead in the story past the stuff I have published (imaginatively named Read Ahead.) It is a whopping $ 5.00 for Read Ahead, and that is for everything written on here for the next two years (the story better be done by then - I have aready written 6,500+ words on it already in the span of three weeks in my spare time. Yes, I am a VERY fast typist.) I guessing by the time I\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'m done writing, there will probably be around 50 pages in the queue to be published twice a week.

Hi! This is the author... you are looking at content that is currently classified as Unpublished. But since some people have asked, I have added an option that allows you to Read Ahead in the story past the stuff I have published (imaginatively named Read Ahead.) It is a whopping $ 5.00 for Read Ahead, and that is for everything written on here for the next two years (the story better be done by then - I have aready written 6,500+ words on it already in the span of three weeks in my spare time. Yes, I am a VERY fast typist.) I guessing by the time I\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'m done writing, there will probably be around 50 pages in the queue to be published twice a week.

Hi! This is the author... you are looking at content that is currently classified as Unpublished. But since some people have asked, I have added an option that allows you to Read Ahead in the story past the stuff I have published (imaginatively named Read Ahead.) It is a whopping $ 5.00 for Read Ahead, and that is for everything written on here for the next two years (the story better be done by then - I have aready written 6,500+ words on it already in the span of three weeks in my spare time. Yes, I am a VERY fast typist.) I guessing by the time I\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'m done writing, there will probably be around 50 pages in the queue to be published twice a week.

Hi! This is the author... you are looking at content that is currently classified as Unpublished. But since some people have asked, I have added an option that allows you to Read Ahead in the story past the stuff I have published (imaginatively named Read Ahead.) It is a whopping $ 5.00 for Read Ahead, and that is for everything written on here for the next two years (the story better be done by then - I have aready written 6,500+ words on it already in the span of three weeks in my spare time. Yes, I am a VERY fast typist.) I guessing by the time I\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'m done writing, there will probably be around 50 pages in the queue to be published twice a week.