Tuesday 12 February 2013

New experiment in publishing - SUCCESSFUL!

UPDATE - Kickstarter project was successfully funded.

I'm writing a new book. Of course I am. It's been ages since the last one and I'm sure my loyal reader is furious at the snail's pace.

But I organised this one a little differently. I tried to sell it before I finished it.


I set up a project on Kickstarter which you can find here.

It gave you the opportunity to pre-order the book, either as an e-book or a paperback and either on its own or as a bundle with They All Die At The End.

You remember They All Die At The End - it's a collection of short stories in which, er, they all die at the end. But with humour and flair and surprise and if I say any more I'll give away the ending (ha ha).

So this new collection is the antidote, the cheerful companion to the other book. And I'll make sure that the colour of the spine is chosen very carefully so that they look good together on the bookshelf.

People who wanted to chip in a little more money could get all sorts of extra treats, from naming a minor character to choosing a situation or location for me to write about.

Clearly I wanted to sell books. But more than that, I wanted readers. These books aren't for everyone - how could they be? The hope was that even people who didn't like the sound of the stories (surely not!) might know people who would. And that they might pass the word along? And then they could do the same. And before too long, people all over the world could have heard about my work.

And then, if even a tiny proportion of them pre-ordered a book, I'd be printing them and laughing all the way to the post office. Which is more than the person behind me in the queue will be doing.

And enough of them did! I reached 103% of my funding target! So I will print them. And I hope it's not you grumbling behind me in the queue.

Just because it's no longer possible to pre-order through Kickstarter, that doesn't mean that you can't get your hands on the first edition as soon as it rolls off the press and I get to the front of the queue at the post office. Contact me if you'd like to know more.

(P.S. I asked people to help me spread the message while the Kickstarter project was running. And here's an example of someone spreading the message.)