I realized this afternoon that I have probably mentioned this nowhere except on Facebook: I'm making a book! And when I say making, I mean it: I not only wrote all the words, I designed it, did the layout, and will be publishing that sweet mess all myself. (When I told someone who shall remain nameless I was going to "print it myself," he wanted to know how I was going to hold all the pages together. WITH MY MIND.) This won't be no print-on-demand nonsense this time, no sir. This will be the real thing in several boxes that will take up tons of room in my hallway and cause me to break my toes as I stumble to the kitchen in the middle of the night for emergency cookies. Plus, there will be a downloadable PDF version for those who prefer to read on one a them fancy ee-lectrick doo-hickeys. And this isn't one of those things I say I'm going to do and then never get around to. The layout is finished and I just got the first round of corrections back from one of my fabulous proofreaders.
The book is a collection of every humor article I ever published in Quilter's Home, plus all the ones that were posted on the GenQ website - all in one handy volume, plus a brand-new piece. So, those of you who have been hoping to get your hands on a copy of A Quilter's Survival Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse or A Brief History of Quilting will be able to get those—as well as all the others—in one convenient package. I am also including a little bit of commentary on each piece, just to give you a little background and info on how each article came to be, what inspired it, and how many nasty e-mails from readers I got as a result. See, I figured it might be helpful for you to know that there are people out there who are pretty sure you shouldn't put the word "penis" in the same sentence as the word "Jesus." And certainly not with reference to applique. I make these mistakes so that you don't have to. You're welcome.
BUT. In order to print it, I will need funds, and for that purpose, I will eventually be taking pre-orders, possibly through Kickstarter. My timetable on this is up in the air right now; I don't know if I'll be pushing for this before the holidays (so that people could potentially order in time for Christmas), or if I will wait until after the new year starts. Setting up a Kickstarter campaign is kind of daunting, and there is the whole rewards thing to consider. (I mean, yes, there will be books, but should I also offer to make a quilt? Or something else? And then the economics of that are a concern - building in the shipping costs, supplies if I make stuff, time. It all makes my head spin.) Plus you have to make a video and I don't think I can convince someone to pretend to be me in time so I'd probably have to take it on the chin and do it myself.
My goal is to take the book to Market in the spring and hopefully get it picked up by a distributor, and maybe sell it to shops directly if possible. Again, daunting, and I keep vacillating between being all excited, working on it feverishly, and remembering that—once again—I don't really know what the ever loving hell I am doing. But, as I have recently learned, I do some pretty cool shit when I don't know what I am doing, so why should I let that stop me?
Once this is all done, I'll get started on the next book. Yes, another one! Only not so much with the reprinting articles and more with the quilting and whatnot. You'll see! I hope. I won't say too much at this point except it will be fun to read. Hey, you know me. I'd make patient brochures on colonoscopies fun to read if I could.
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