Writing Guide

[simone23]

Hi, the writing guide is greatly helpful, but in my gameplay, I've found that vaudeville and children's book writers consistently outperform masterpiece writers.  The key is in the Simoleans per page rate.  I've also found that the pay rate for vaudeville is consistently higher than what is listed in the guide - my last vaudeville novel generated royalties in excess of 10,000 Simoleans per week.

Thanks!

[Shirin]

Which genre was the author a master of when the last vaudeville novel was written?

I ask because in my Dynasty, Justice was a Master of Masterpieces, and his Masterpiece novels generated royalties in excess of 12,000 Simoleans/week (I believe the highest one was 18k or so?).

[simone23]

I'm getting 12000+ now for best selling vaudeville novels now, and my sim is a vaudeville master.  For me, the flat rate isn't the critical piece of the puzzle though, it's royalties per page, so if my children's books are paying at a rate of $7.50 a page and I'm spending as much time writing them as I would writing masterpieces, then that 2000 page masterpiece would have to pay in the neighborhood of $15,000 to be as good a return on my time investment as the children's books provide.

I'm going to try a game with three writers plus a utility sim and give each of them a different specialty: children's books, vaudeville and masterpieces to see which strategy leads to overall better results.

[Carl]

I updated this page today to clarify what's best. I knew this from a challenge we'd done in the past. I think I need to go back and rewrite some of these older guides and get new data from EPs incorporated into them. Thanks!

[simone23]

Squee! Thanks Carl!

I started a game with three identically traited sims (bookworm, loves the outdoors - I like the mood boost from having them write outside, when they go stir crazy, I just send them to the library to read something - perfectionist, computer whiz, heavy sleeper). I'm on week 5 now, and keeping on keeping on to see if there's any point at which either the Vaudeville or the Masterpiece writer will start to overtake the Children's book writer, but so far, I've come to two conclusions:

• Childrens book authors make good Simoleans early and they also get a big boost later vs authors in genres that are more labor intensive to unlock because they've been able to spend so much more time on the genre (my children's author as of Thursday morning of week 5 has, in this week, generated $7,154 for 933 pages of book, or 7.667 simoleans per page, and he still hasn't hit a cap on growth of his rate per page) plus (and it turns out this is the important factor) they get more LTW completed faster because they're writing short, profitable books
• Choosing a type of writer is, apart from the happiness rewards, a matter of personal preference at best.  The writers (week 5, no vacations taken, averaging about 1000 pages a week before speed writer kicked in) are bringing in weekly royalties of $33,584 (children's), $22,661 (vaudeville), and $8,156 (masterpiece), but the utility sim just made nearly $500,000 in a single day's sales at the consignment shop (collecting, transfiguring, and consigning large spire tiberium).  Unless you're doing a challenge where all your revenue has to come from writing, collecting is so lucrative that the differences in income between approaches to writing aren't significant to gameplay.