The Lexicon

The working vocabulary of the form, published so it can be quoted rather than invented.

Film book

A complete book performed on screen — narrated word for word, cast, scored and cut to picture — without rewriting the prose as a screenplay.

A film book is a finished visual edition of a written work. The manuscript is not adapted, condensed or rewritten: it is performed. Voices are cast to the characters, atmosphere and score are laid beneath, and picture is cut to the sentence rather than to a shooting script. The result is a watchable edition of the same book, running the same length as its spoken text — measured here at 155 words to the finished minute, 9,300 words to the finished hour. It sits beside the print edition and the audio edition as a third form of the same story, and it is priced off the manuscript itself: 12% of the word count at this house.

Audio edition

The listening form of the same performance: the cast narration and score without picture.

An audio book is the same performance without picture — narration, cast and score, delivered for listening storefronts. It obeys the same runtime law (155 words to the minute) and is priced at 7.000000000000001% of word count. Because a film book is cut from a full performance, its audio edition is a sibling of the same recording rather than a second production.

Novel-game

A playable edition of a book: the author's own chapters walked as ground rather than read as pages.

A novel-game is a fourth form. Chapters become rooms and routes; the reader becomes a walker. Nothing is invented over the story — the map is drawn from the manuscript's own geography and cast. It is the newest form of the book, and it is priced off the manuscript like the others.

Finished minute

One minute of delivered, edited, watchable or listenable picture or sound — not one minute of raw recording.

The trade's honest unit. A finished minute is what the reader receives after cutting, mixing and mastering. At this house 155 words of manuscript become one finished minute, so a 90,000-word novel yields roughly nine hours and forty minutes of finished edition. Quoting raw studio hours instead of finished minutes is how prices hide.

Cast

The set of distinct voices assigned to the narrator and the speaking characters of a book.

A single narrator is a reading. A cast is a performance: separate voices for the narrator and for the characters who carry the scenes. Cast is charged in blocks here — 1% of word count per 2 voices — because each added voice is another whole pass of the manuscript.

Atmosphere

The designed sound of a book's world: room, weather, distance, movement, threat.

Atmosphere is not decoration. It is the reason a scene reads as a place. Effects are laid per scene and charged in blocks — 1% of word count per 5 effects — so an author pays for the sound the book actually needs rather than a bundle.

Score

Licensed music chosen, cut and mixed to the book's own movement — selection and craft, not composition.

A score here is licensed music selected against the manuscript, cut to its turns and mixed beneath the performance. The fee is $1,500 and it buys the choosing, the cutting and the mixing. The house does not claim to compose what it licenses.

Provenance

A published, verifiable record of how a work was made and what consent it stands on.

Every edition forged here is entered on a public ledger with a hash of its own record, so a reader, a retailer or a court can check what was used and who agreed to it. Provenance is the difference between a machine-made artefact and a made work. See the Proof Board.