{"id":1829,"date":"2011-02-01T08:00:44","date_gmt":"2011-02-01T13:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatsociety.org\/?p=1829"},"modified":"2018-10-30T15:58:01","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T19:58:01","slug":"anatomy-of-a-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/?p=1829","title":{"rendered":"Anatomy of a Book"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s time to prepare yourselves for more Nacho than you can stand: \u00a0The Cult-Culture project!<\/a> I\u2019m going to start a sort of \u201canatomy of a book\u201d series because I\u2019m going to use Kickstarter <\/a>to fund the book and that means I\u2019ll be hounding all of you relentlessly.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the end, this project is an experiment for my real life alter ego. Is it feasible to run with a series of Kickstarter-funded books and, if funding is reached, put them out as full-on frontlist releases through my current distributor? We\u2019re talking the whole nine yards \u2013 review copies, worldwide availability, finicky authors calling me from their tour hotels and demanding access to the minibar\u2026 Fuck these self-published vanity books. Is it possible for a real publisher to put together a real book using crowd-sourcing? Or whatever it\u2019s called.<\/p>\n

Well, yes, it is. Of course. Because it\u2019s really all about the money. Doesn\u2019t matter where it comes from. The trick is making the book work with the byzantine list of deadlines and requirements that make a frontlist release happen. So my goal with the Cult-Culture book is to gauge how I can make various planets line-up while dealing with the fact that funding through Kickstarter is an all or nothing gamble.<\/p>\n

However, the Cult-Culture book will be a little easier, and hit the distributor as a backlist title. Still worldwide, and on every virtual and physical shelf out there, but more grassroots. Just for the sake of my sanity, timing, and costs. Launching a frontlist title involves lots of heartache, expectation, effort, and nickel and diming from the distributor (and all the other people who have their hands in the pie).<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mind the nickel and diming, but there is the increased scrutiny paid to a frontlist title. Without fail, for every book I\u2019ve published, the distributor comes back with a long list of nattering little questions like a disappointed, over-protective parent. Why\u2019s this on the cover? Do you have a better blurb for the back? We don\u2019t like the spacing of these letters, or that box. We don\u2019t like that color on the spine, or the shape of that page, or blah blah blah\u2026 I shouldn\u2019t complain. They do it so that they can better sell the book and make me money. And god bless them for it. Except it\u2019s hard to be motivated about selling a book when the resellers get a 50% discount, and then the distributor takes 27% of my profit.<\/p>\n

An indie press can expect to shift just a few hundred copies per title, on average. Some do better, and there are success stories, but, really, it\u2019s time for champagne if you move 500 copies. Except, when you lose 77% of the face value per copy, and factor in the cost to print the book, then you don\u2019t have enough money for champagne!<\/p>\n

Now\u2026 A backlist title won\u2019t get their full support, but it\u2019ll still get the full release. It\u2019ll travel down the same pipe, and do so with less heartache. I can have the title of the book be \u201cFuck You\u201d by Adolf Hitler and have a huge, gaping asshole on the cover and the distributor won\u2019t notice. Or, if they do notice, it\u2019ll be along the lines of, \u201cGee, Janie, we sure have some weird backlist titles!\u201d<\/p>\n

Timing is also a problem. If we go frontlist, then the earliest possible release date is going to be March 2012. Backlists can come out whenever, and I feel it fitting that I try and get this title out during Greatsociety\u2019s tenth anniversary<\/a> year.<\/p>\n

But none of that matters right now. The first step is to try and get the book together. Give it a good, long edit. Nice and hard. Oh, yeah, that\u2019s right, no typo has ever been this deep, Mr. Sasha! FILL ME UP!!<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Coming soon: Estimating costs, assembling the team, lighting half edited manuscripts on fire and freaking out on Facebook, making a book trailer, and more!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s time to prepare yourselves for more Nacho than you can stand: \u00a0The Cult-Culture project! I\u2019m going to start a sort of \u201canatomy of a book\u201d series because I\u2019m going to use Kickstarter to fund the book and that means …<\/p>\n

Anatomy of a Book<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,273,6],"tags":[403,274],"class_list":["post-1829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cult-culture","category-gs-10th-anniversary-2001-2011","category-gs-news","tag-cult-culture","tag-gs-10th-anniversary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1829"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1867,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829\/revisions\/1867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}