Jan > Status Update

What's the first book like?

Well... It's fantasy with a crown Prince who is nice, but incredibly blind and naive which causes him to be insensitive. He's also very horny but completely inexperienced, which makes him think with his dick. I hated him in the beginning.

But somewhere along the line he actually changes and I started to like him. The story is hard to explain, I'd say it's like the Kushiel books in that there's a lot of sex that serves the story (without the focus on SM), a lot of political intrigue (although it's mostly setting things in motion). Add prophecies and a mythical book that makes the reader relive the lives of past royalty.

Kushiel = instant brain death followed closely by limbic system shutdown and jd;ajskjsasfhsdjfasdjf;alksj\\

Haha. Never said it would be something for you! I liked the first one ok, but then she started to wear on me big time.

YAY. Meilin reached her goal. It always makes me happy when a crowdsourcing project succeeds.

It's kind of a cool idea though. Weird but cool. You essentially become her employer. Is it a common thing for writers these days? The internets has left me behind.

Employer? Not really. It's more like you buy something before it's out. And by that you make sure it's available after. You can compare it with presales of books, only with extra's :)

I know Meilin a bit (the books were published online first, and I was a very active member of the webfiction community once upon a time), so I thought I'd spread the word for her.

If you join up, aren't you essentially paying her to write a book? She's self-pub right?

Yups. The book is written though. Basically instead of her paying for the editor, the coverart and typography, she uses the money from presales (in the form of a kickstarter) to do that. This way she knows if there's enough interest to publish the books for real.

I think it works because she has been publishing this series for free online for years, so people know the quality of the thing they are buying.

And it's not like you're donating money (well, somebody people obviously are, but most don't). You get a book in return, so that aspect of it really is like presales.