The snag is that artwork is expensive. That bedevilled the Vulcanverse books, which I thought looked amazing with Mattia Simone's atmospheric filler artwork. Myself, I prefer fillers, like the little vignettes Russ Nicholson does for the Fabled Lands books, but most readers demand drawings that illustrate specific scenes in the book. (It's less bother than reading prose.) Also they'd like a lot more illustrations than the Vulcan Forged company were willing to commission for the gamebooks. So how to pay for all that art?
Perruno suggested turning to AI. I'd been thinking about that, though I'm not sure if it saves a lot of money. You can see from the examples here what Wombo Dream came up with off the top of its artificial head. It could be a lot better if I spent a few months practising. But even if that gave us cover art we could use, there's no way any Fabled Lands book could come out without interior illustrations by Russ; he's an integral part of our creative team. And what about maps? The AI is still a few years off (I'm just guessing) being able to handle those.
Then there's the cost of editing and typesetting. And I haven't even talked about paying the writers. After forty years in this business I'm used to the idea that nobody wants to pay the writer, but I'd love to bring in today's top gamebook talent to work on future Fabled Lands books. Paul Gresty of course, but also people like Jonathan Green or Martin Noutch of Steam Highwayman fame or H L Truslove, author of Alba. I have no idea if they'd even be interested, but I wouldn't insult them by asking until I knew I could write a cheque.
Kickstarter doesn't cut it, as I've explained before. I guess we could wait till AI can do the whole job including the writing, but by then the AIs will be the ones reading the books too.