228 – The Fifty Pound Lockpick

BOOK ONE STATUS UPDATE

As it stands, the first MeatShield book, The Quest for the Scepter Thingie is nearly finished. I have a few minor things to complete for it, such as the cover (!) and some of the bonus content and it’s ready to go. Now it’s time to consider printing options. There are two ways I can go with this.

  1. One is to go with a Print-on-demand (POD) publisher such as Lulu.com, which means that I would have no inventory to pay for up front and store in my storage unit. The book would be printed whenever anyone ordered one. However, a fellow webcartoonist recently had a very bad experience with Lulu and I am a tiny bit leery of going with them now. On the other hand, MeatShield is still in its infancy, more or less, and by using a POD publisher I can gauge the demand for the book and later take it to a larger printer for second and third printings.
  2. The other option is to raise the funds to print the book myself by starting a Kickstarter campaign. This has the advantage of me being able to send out autographed copies to those that want them, of having the inventory on hand to sell at conventions, and to offer folks that contribute the larger amounts cool contribution gifts and generally keep this awesometrain rolling. However, the drawback of a Kickstarter campaign is that if there aren’t sufficient donations towards the printing of the book, it doesn’t get printed and I most likely go the Lulu route anyway.

It’s a quandary and one that I wouldn’t mind some input on. Thanks, folks!

See you all on Monday,

~Rob