The GameDev Business Handbook aims to help get teams started in the games industry

Getting started with any sort of business can be difficult if we’re not prepared. It took years for me personally to understand just the very basics of getting a design company going, and that was only through trial and error. There wasn’t a lot of information out there to help either, as people tended to hold their cards close and it became expensive to search for the necessary business experts.

In many ways it’s more difficult now, not that the information is more readily available but because there’s so much of it and it’s overwhelming, scattered everywhere across the web. There are just as many paths to starting as there are project ideas: do I make and package a game for myself? Sign with a publisher? Try Early Access? Do I use crowdfunding, and if so which one? It’s enough to make my head spin.

Thankfully, Michael Futter’s GameDev Business Handbook looks to answer many of these questions.

Featuring testimonials from renowned developers such as Brenda Romero and Rami Ismail, attorneys, IP lawyers, and more industry professionals, the book will give insight into what it takes to get started developing, marketing and selling games. The amount of info getting packed into the book looks extremely promising — essentially, it could be required reading for developers. Futter, a former games journalist now working on the business side of Bithell Games, has plenty of experience and understanding of the subject, as his work in the industry encompasses nearly every aspect.

The tenets of the business of game development spread across to a variety of other professions and industries; everyone needs to understand how to do the basics, and though Futter’s book is geared towards gaming it can just as easily apply to design, music, and small business.

Published by Bithell Games, the GameDev Business Handbook releases digitally in October, with a hardcover coming soon after. Preorders are available through the web priced at $19.99 digital, $29.99 Hardcover/Digital.

Source & Images: GameDevBizBook

*Disclosure: I follow Mike Futter on Twitter.