So, I've been debating putting this up, and it's taken me a while to get around to it, but since this category's all about shameless promotion at times, I finally decided to go ahead.
First, a little background. My parents raise alpacas as sort of a hobby. Yeah, they're those kind of parents. Their main job is owning and running an international public relations firm in based out of NYC. Anyway, about a year and a half ago, my mom came up with an idea to promote alpacas: she'd hire someone to write a book with an alpaca in the leading role. Think Black Beauty, or Bambi, or something like that.
Right.
She came to me with the idea to see what I thought of it. (For those of you who don't know me, I spend quite a bit of time writing. I've been in EUOL's writing group for about three years, and I'm currently working on my eighth book, all of which have been YA/middle grade fantasies thus far.) I told her she shouldn't hire someone--I would do it for her, if I could have liberties with the story and creative process. She agreed. She came up with the two main characters (Buttersby and Meander), and I came up with the rest. Through workshopping it with EUOL, MsFish, CtrlZed, Chimera and others, it's turned more and more into a strange sort of middle-grade animal fantasy comedy.
Along the way, my mom decided she wanted to have a good cover for the book. CtrlZed had already volunteered to design the book, and he recommended a friend to do the cover. I looked at his work and recommended him as well, and my mom hired him. His name's Shawn Boyles, and those of you familiar with the site might know him as the creator of the Mistborn Llamas pictures that circulated a while ago. Anyway. Shawn read the book and liked it enough that he was interested in illustrating each chapter. He proposed the idea to my mom, and she agreed.
My mom's initial idea had been to use one of the many Print on Demand services (like Lulu) to print the book, but I hadn't heard entirely good things about them. I spoke with CtrlZed, and he had other ideas. He spent countless hours designing the look of the book and the cover, and then he used some connections to find us a printer who has done work for the Lemony Snicket property in the past. They're who we ended up using.
To make a long story short (which I realize is rather late at this point), the book is finished today. 5,000 copies of it. Trade paperback, 186 pages. I really have no idea if it will sell at all--something I've been telling my mom at all points of the process. But she has some interesting ideas for distribution, including utilizing alpaca farms to sell it. We'll see.
When I get time, I'll try and post the cover so you can all look at it. She's also been working on a website for it, which is still under construction, but which you can view at
www.buttersby.com.
I wrote the book under a pen name--Albert Packard. Should it crash and burn like a train wreck, I never have to really mention it. Should it do well by some strange twist of fate, I can take credit. I'm sort of looking at it as a big experiment.
Now that's it's all done, I'm honestly quite happy with the final product. It's not my usual style, but it was sort of a commission work, so that's to be expected. For what my mom wanted, I think she more than got it. I think the book is going to look very professional, and I know my mom's ready to put a lot of resources toward its promotion. Who knows. In any case, feel free to ask questions or point fingers at me and laugh. This certainly isn't something I would have done with my own (nonexistent) money, but using someone else's . . . why not?
And that's all I can think of to say about that for now.
