Fundraising and Self-Publishing: Lessons Learned
On January 20, 2011, one of our cats passed away. He was almost sixteen; I’d had him since he was almost two, and I loved him dearly, but that’s not actually what I want to talk about.
You see, I decided to do a fundraiser in his honor, to benefit the Companion Animal Fund of the University of Wisconsin-Madison‘s Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, as a way of saying thank you for the care they gave him and the kindness they extended to me and my husband. And as part of that fundraiser, almost as an afterthought, I decided to do a chapbook of the four stories featuring Kyle Murchison Booth that were not collected in The Bone Key. I figured if the fundraiser did exceptionally well, I’d be able to donate $1000 or $1500.
As of today, the donations have passed $4000. [I ended up donating $3200. --Ed.]And basically three-quarters of that is the one hundred sixty-one people who have bought Unnatural Creatures. As a comparison point, the auction of my last hardback set of the Doctrine of Labyrinths (Mélusine (OOP), The Virtu (OOP), The Mirador, Corambis) had only two bidders and raised only $150.
I think the chapbook sale has worked so well for two reasons:
1. it was something people wanted (I know, duh, but it surprised me how eager people were)
2. the price point was low enough that it felt affordable, even in the current zombie apocalypse
(Well, and #3, people like contributing to what they feel is a good cause.)
So the lesson learned is that it’s better to have a (potentially) unlimited number of a low price-point item than to have one, or very few, of an expensive item.
I’ve also learned a number of things about self-publishing in trying to put the chapbook together through Lulu.
1. Lulu would really prefer it if you’d use (and pay for) their formatting service; the option for the obstinate is to make your own .pdf
2. Making .pdfs is a PAIN IN THE ASS if what you happen to have is, you know, word processing software.
3. MS Word is the tool of Satan. There is no other explanation for the things it does to innocent documents.
4. Although Lulu will let you use any font you like in the interior of the book, it offers only a limited palette of fonts in its Cover Wizard, and some of them are very ugly. Unless you get lucky, as I did, and have someone volunteer to design your cover, Garamond is your best bet. (I went with Garamond anyway, because it’s an attractive and legible font, and it has the slightly old-fashioned air appropriate to Booth.)
5. Yes, you do want to order a proof copy before you commit to your big order. Even a .pdf doesn’t show you what the physical book is going to look like, and there will always be more errors to catch.
6. Full justification is necessary if you want the book to look competent and professional, and if you want the full justification to look competent and professional, you have to hyphenate. Whereupon, MS Word’s auto-hyphenation will sabotage you by mishyphenating an astonishing array of words, thereby making you look like an illiterate n00b.
7. Something I knew already: book production is a lot of work if you’re going to do it right, even when you’re keeping things very simple and taking the path of least resistance wherever possible. (And for this project, I don’t even have to think about distribution and marketing.)
This is why authors want there to be publishers, and why publishers, despite the sometimes egregious flaws in the system, are at bottom a good thing. Because there is an ENORMOUS YAWNING ABYSS OF DIFFERENCE between a complete manuscript of a story and a book, and the more time the author has to spend thinking about the book, the fewer stories s/he can write.
I’m not knocking self-publishing–obviously, since I’m participating in it. What I’m saying is that if you’re going to do a good job, it’s difficult and time-consuming. And although I’m happy to be doing this specific project and do not begrudge in the slightest the time and effort, I’d still rather be writing.
