It's almost time

I can smell the freedom from the editing monster. Our manuscripts formatted into book are due at 11:59 PM on the 15th. If all goes well I'll be done tomorrow and then I will never ever look at this book again.

On that note, with only four days left to go, and after a month + of silence we finally heard from our Lulu overlords. Apparently, they want us to go through something called Pubslush to do our advertising.

Okay. Great. What the hell's Pubslush?

If your first thought is the detritus you kick off the back of your car on a snow day, you'd be wrong. (Seriously, slush is never ever a word you want to officially associate with your book anything. Slush is bad, slush makes writers break down into sniveling balls of snot. Do not use slush.)

Apparently Pubslush is "Crowdfunding for the literary world."

 But not editing for the literary world. Sorry: Editing, for the Literary World.

Bad feeling. You're probably asking yourself, self, doesn't kickstarter already have a ton of book campaigns?

Why yes self, it does. It does indeed. And a lot of people use kickstarter to fund their self publishing to varying degrees of success. I have avoided that route for various reasons. The greatest being I do not want to make a video of me begging for money. You guilt your friends, and family, and their friends, and family into financing your shit, getting a copy and then not looking at it again. It's a box of girl scout cookies dressed up as advertising. Advertising to finance advertising sounds like a mobius strip of hell to me. I'm no good at the humble begging, "Please sir, may I have another reward."

Okay, but self, if this is crowdfunding specifically for the literary world then perhaps they're better prepared to handle the book world while kickstarter is there for watches that shoot lasers and tabletop games based upon time traveling mailmen with harpoon arms.

I decided to peruse the genre my book would fully land in: fantasy. There are 8 books listed, in total, and not a single one of these was successful.

Bad feeling rising.

Poking around a bit more it seems there are 4 successfully completed campaigns. From every genre of book listed. Four. FOUR!

I'm not even certain what the hell we're supposed to get out of it. In theory, we get cover art and distribution from Lulu. I have no idea what money we beg off others would go for. Bookmarks? T-shirts? A shiny new apple? At this point I'll be happy with 100 free books, a vague mention on the lulu site, and that shiny new apple.

I know book stuff isn't easy. It's a single drop shouting for attention in a rainstorm. But promising the moon for a contest that they're still scrabbling to cobble together for the winners is not a good way to have happy people to use to sell your publish on demand company.

On another hand, I have some potentially good news as the query I sent in under the deadline for Dwarves in Space got a bite. So I e-mailed off that full manuscript. First time I've gotten anyone interested. Apparently I'm quirky.

That's all for now from my brain and screaming fingers.