This one has to take the cake.
If I was going to publish a book, I would never ask anyone for a penny to help finance any part of my book-publishing effort. Yet this is exactly what one published author is doing.
And, in return for supporters’ monetary donations, the author has agreed to give donators mention in the book. Correct me if I’m wrong, but what that sounds like to me is a quid pro quo. I’m not saying it is. It just sounds like it is.
Okay, so let’s say, hypothetically, I wanted to visit every single Major League Baseball stadium there is. But not just visit the stadium, and instead actually also watch a Major League Baseball game being played in each one. And, my plan here was when completed, I would write an account of my total experience with the aim of presenting that experience in book form for the purpose of selling my book and telling my story. However, there’s a problem. Even with the advance the book publisher has given, this still won’t be enough to completely cover my travel expenses needed for me to visit all 30 stadiums — the travel expenses also taking care of lodging. So, what do I do? I ask supporters to help fund this project.
Well, this is along similar lines of what one author is doing.
But the bizarreness doesn’t stop there. The story gets even weirder.
As much as I would like to, I
As much as I would like to, I can’t drop names here. But what I can and am willing to say is that what this author has stated is that for any contributor of monies to this effort, they’ll get mentioned in the book.
On the surface that may seem like a wonderful gesture. In reality, not so much if for no other reason than because maybe not all donors want their identities revealed. And it’s not just that. From a legal or perhaps an ethical standpoint, wouldn’t the donors first have to agree in writing to have themselves be mentioned in the book?
Next, for the sake of argument, let’s just say that nothing I’ve explained thus far goes so low that said actions would result in a breach or violation of contract. That everything is allowed to proceed as planned, in other words. Well, then, no harm, no foul. And more power to the author, I guess and the best of luck to this person.
In my view and from where I sit, however, I see things way differently.
For starters, if I knew I did not
For starters, if I knew I did not have the financial means to see my project through to the end and that the advance that the publisher had provided would be insufficient to cover my travel expenses, I’d be looking for a different publisher to get behind a project of this nature. If I couldn’t find another, I might either start looking to hire an agent to look for me or just say I did what I could and admit it wasn’t enough.
The second thing is that I would need to recognize that just because my meeting and completing what I will call the thirty stadium-visit quest is a personal dream, this doesn’t necessarily mean that there are folks out there who share my enthusiasm for doing the same or even want to read a personal account of the entire experience and go so far as to pay money for a book that details that experience. There will no doubt be people who would by such a book, but the real question is how many book sales can be reasonably expected?
Now, looking inward, in 1996 I began work on a book about U.S. railroading. I put a lot of work into it. I thought people would be interested in reading it, that I’d be able to get a publisher to get behind it and that the rest would be history. I still have the unpublished manuscript to this day.
In the meantime, I bought two books
In the meantime, I bought two books by two different authors that obviously were successful at doing in effect what I proposed to do.
One of those books to me was like a primer for kids. And by that what I mean is a text that presents to a younger audience what railroading in America entails, covering the whole nine yards, if you will, and laying it all out in easy-to-understand terms with lots of illustrations and photos with quite descriptive captioning detail included. The book came in soft-cover form only.
The second book, meanwhile, is more of an encyclopedic presentation: lots of photos and illustrations and just enough text to maintain reader interest; a book intended for an audience having a “general-interest” in the subject.
Maybe those of you reading this might view
Maybe those of you reading this might view this situation entirely differently than I in terms of how you see things. The way still others might see this is as being nothing more and nothing less than the real author seeking investors. I don’t know.
In my mind’s eye, investors get something in return — not just mere mention of their names in a published book. For starters, how’s profit-sharing sound to you?!
Or perhaps I’m making much ado about nothing — my turning a molehill into a mountain, to put a spin on the more familiar saying.
Maybe, even maybe, I should conclude it all thus: Different strokes for different folks. And leave it at that.
