nickdouglas:

This is great that the project did so well. It’s a fantastic example of the new opportunities available if you trade in the traditional way of publishing books and consider how your project is more than a book.

But the agent wasn’t wrong. The book sold 651 copies. It is hard to sell material already published online unless you load the book with new stuff. (Trust me.) It’s hard to reach publishers’ sales targets without something special. Agents and publishers know that most books lose money. And right now (for better or worse) they’re trying to focus on sure things.

Meaghan probably isn’t really saying the agent is wrong, but I just wanted to point this out, because it’s very freeing for artists.

It means a book can get a lot of attention and love without also shooting for a 10,000-copy release. It means a project can just aim at the true fans, because the model no longer needs loads of casual readers to support the core audience. It’s just a different game than traditional publishing. We need both.

meaghano:

Ha! It’s absolutely not a “told ya so,” heh. I keep cringing every time I see this on my dashboard. And this isn’t my agent— I don’t have an agent! Hi, agents!

My point, really, was to show that these things can find their way into the world, in an economically viable way, in an AWESOME way, and it is cause for celebration.

Awesome Kickstarter is awesome.

Also, for the record, the book does not have re-purposed content that already exists online (although we aren’t against it, we just found our writers were excited for the project and wanted to write something new), we are paying all of our contributors a not insignificant amount, we now do have writers with ‘literary cachet,’ and we have 651 backers contributing over 17 thousand dollars in 45 days for a book that doesn’t exist yet.

I’m not saying the agent was wrong (or right), and I’m certainly not saying I blame her or wouldn’t say the same thing in her position. She’s a very smart lady.

And yes: both. Obviously I love books and buy books and spend way more money on books than the avg person and I don’t think books are dying or blah blah blah. And from a writer’s standpoint, traditional publishing is an often/mostly preferable option: it gets you distribution. You don’t do your own marketing (although, hah! i think that’s changin’). You don’t have to design it yourself you don’t edit it yourself you don’t research publishers or make videos or email writers 24/7. You don’t literally go to the post office and ship 651, yes 651, books.  You don’t have to do everything but also, you don’t GET to do everything. It is kind of awesome. (although hey, remember we both have FT jobs and are maybe going to DIE?). You also, hey-oh, usually get more money, though probably not as much as most people think.

I certainly hope to publish a book of my own that way one day (I think?).

Point being: yay Internet! No told-ya-so’s. Let us know if you want a Kickstarter invite.

This is wrestling the pig to respond to this at all, as a) the co-editor of this book in question b) Meaghan’s ally in Things Publishing, c) Nick’s ex and I know that seems irrelevant but here it isn’t at all because d) he introduced Meaghan and I in the context of hitting on her through my writing. In fact, it was that interaction that, in a curious way, inspired this book. So. Thank you!

I’m not sure I’d have posted the agent letter myself, but Meaghan and I aren’t a hivemind joined at the hip etc. To expand: the email is from someone who I think very fairly assessed the potential of a blog-to-book deal that consists largely of already-published material still available online. So please — no imagined h8. That C&C came to be in this particular way is a direct result of it not being a blog-to-book. And it is much stronger for it.

I am thankful to have the opportunity to produce this book like this, to not have to ask anyone for money to do anything that I don’t actually stand by, cover to cover to ‘viral’ marketing campaign (read: random late night chatting in Google Spreadsheet and hosting video chat dance parties where people made their books do the moves from “Bad Romance” for us). The critical thing here, we know, as soon as we hold this thing, this book is precisely what we want to put out into the world and we know it was also wanted, in this way, before it even arrived. That was the point. Not fixing publishing, or being “bigger” than anything. To be honest, this is a preposterous amount of money to live up to, and I’m not sure a book advance would instill that kind of collective social pressure to do a good job by people.

When we each have a project that suits a traditional publishing mechanism, we’ll both seek that out. And I’ll (being fucking honest here) totally take up the agent in question on her offer to circle back around with another book idea. No matter how it looks from a blog away, we all left that conversation happy to have had it.