MCM's Blog, page 50

Where We Go From Here

And by "we", I mean me.  Because I'm the king.  Of my head.  Never mind.

It's late September, which means there are three months left in the year, which means I've somehow survived nine months of book-making without going completely insane.  Let's see how we've done:

The Pig and the Box
Poke of the Titans
TorrentBoy: Zombie World
Fission Chips
Percy's Perch
TorrentBoy: Pirates Attack (er… well…)
The Vector
The App

So between now and January 1, I need to turn out another 4 books.  The...

Indie Distribution Models?

I was reading an article by Peter Broderick in IndieWire about how Indie filmmakers should structure their distribution channels to get the most bang for their buck.  And it got me thinking about books…

The way the film industry works, you can finance and create your own project, and have it ready for the world, after which point you hand it off to your distributors.  The distributors don't charge you to do this, but they take a chunk of your profits.  And they're relegated to a fragment of...

Why Your Content is Worthless

Boing Boing pointed to an excellent post by Paul Graham where he explored the value of content in a post-medium world.  Some people disagreed, but I see it differently.  There is a reason your content is worthless, and it's not the consumer's fault.

I think he's exactly right, but it seems he doesn't quite realize WHY he's exactly right.

Let's say you have a hardcover, and the hardcover is $20. You pay $20 because that's what a book costs. All good. Books are $20. There's some fraction of that ...

The Al Dente Code

Originally, I wanted to post my Pastafarian parody of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" in honour of Talk Like a Pirate Day, but then I chickened out because it was too silly.

Then I stupidly mentioned the fact that I was not doing what I wanted to do, and felt even dumber than usual.  So I went through the book (as rough as it was) and started cutting out things that were stupid.  In the end, I only have 56 pages left, or really just the first third of the book.

All the same, it has pirates...

RollBots USA: 101 "Training Day"

This is mostly a repeat of a post I made in February, after Training Day aired in Canada.  I'm going to try and keep on top of things all over again, giving inside information about episodes of RollBots, so you can see the things that went into producing each story.

So, "Training Day". Not surprisingly, this is the first story I came up with for the series. Structurally-speaking, the first draft of 101 (101=season 1, episode 01) was a lot longer than what you saw on air. There was an...

The Fine Print

This story, about the future of books, is all Piers' fault.  You may send him hate mail.

Johannes Gutenberg sipped his tea with the utmost grace, but his hand never left the pistol.  Marty was in no mood to drink.  He was going to be late for the board meeting.

"All right," he said as pleasantly as he could, "I'll be honest with you.  I don't think I can do thirty percent.  The way things stand with the publishers right now, we'd be deep in the red if we went much over five percent."

The...

Reader Mail: Untouched Experiment

I got this question last week and I've been trying to think of how best to respond.  It's a tricky question: "Have you thought about trying conventional publishing, so you can compare your experiences with your DIY method?"

It's a complicated question.  The easy answer is yes, yes I have thought about it.  But the execution is where I get stuck, because it's a big mess of philosophical quandaries and practical concerns.  I'll try and explain my thinking, so you don't think I'm making the...

Another Ad

Only a small subset of you will know what Chromoco is.  The rest of you will have to continue to wonder what I'm going on about…

Here is ad #2.  Click to embiggen.

Further news due next week.

That is all.

Topic Tag: Yellow Towel

This week's topic tag is actually courtesy of @quillsandzebras, who send along some truly remarkable search terms that people used to arrive at her site.  I won't list them here, but you'll probably be able to guess… they're the really, really freaky parts of the story.

Norman's PDA was broken, but he still had four hours left in his day.  He rotated the batteries, just in case, but there was no change.  The thing was dead.

"Hey Norm," said Pete, popping out of a nearby doorway with a...

RollBots Challenge!

This Saturday, September 19th, my show "RollBots" premieres in the USA on the CW4Kids.  This is where things get serious, so I'm going to try and inject a little silly.  And I need your help.  Yes, you.

Click here to watch the trailer I cut for the show.

What is RollBots?

It's many things.  On the surface, it's a Saturday morning cartoon not unlike classic Transformers, with little robot spheres that do battle with each other.  Canadian kids have been watching it since February, and they love...