A publishing dilemma (for the reader)

Cat Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making is now out (Here’s her talking about it, with links to a few places it’s for sale. It’s a wonderful book; I’ve read it and I will certainly want to read it again.

I read it when it first came out – anyone reading this probably knows the story, but if not, it’s a unique one. TGWHCFiaSohOM was opriginally mentioned as the main character’s favorite story from childhood in Valente’s adult novel Palimpsest. As I understand it, people said “Cat, you should write that one,” and she said “I can’t, I have to spend my time on books that I can sell because writers need to eat.” And then at a time when she needed money, it turned out that people *would* buy this one and she was able to raise the money she needed by putting this book online as a crowd-funded piece. Then others notied it was really kind of wonderful and decided to publish it as a conventional book, and here we are. So far so good.

THing is, I was part of that – if I recall, I contributed to its funding, and felt pretty good about being part of that. Now it’s for sale, and I want it so I can reread it. (The book is still online here here, but they’ve quite reasonably taken down the final act.) There is a Kindle version, but it’s $9.99, as much as the hardcover at the moment. My personal policy these days is something like, I’ll freely buy books for $6.99 and $7.99, but when it gets to $10 or so I have to really want it or that has to be a good savings on other editions. In this case, I do really want it, but I also sort of feel like I’ve already paid for it.

On the other hand, the Kindle edition is really not the best way to go with this book anyway, because the illustrations are beautiful. I think what I will probably do is to buy it in hardcover next time I go to the US, or if I see it in Amsterdam. (I wonder if my brother and SIL would object if I started a policy of buying one for me and one for the niebling when I buy children’s books? That could result in major shipping issues,though!)

Also, I should make it very clear or people will misinterpret what I’ve written: None of this is a complaint. I have written it and put it up here in public because I think it’s a dilemma that’s going to happen a lot more as new publishing methods shake out. I am not complaining about Valente or her publishers taking down the inline novel or selling something that was originally crowd-funded; you do what you need to do to make ends meet so you can go on creating. Further, in some ways the issue is mine: if I didn’t reread incessantly I wouldn’t even care, and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone had created a downloadable version when the book was originally up, that I didn’t download. Finally, there are a lot worse places my discretionary income can go than to supporting makers and to voting with my dollar to convince a particular one that I really like a particular kind of thing she’s made.

But it is an odd situation, and I think it will happen again.

Mirrored from Dichroic Reflections.

other stuff

In a separate post because I wanted to keep the book-publishing discussion as its own thing.

Knitting: I should finish the current project this weekend, which is good because I’m especially eager to see what happens when I block it. The black yarn has been coming off a bit on my hands, and I am hoping it will stop doing that after a washing – and will not bleed onto the other yarn. It’s superwash, so I think I will wash it first in a sink to see what the colors do, then toss it in the washer and dryer to get itself sorted out and evened out. Hopefully I can finish it Saturday, but either way I won’t bring it on Sunday’s drive. Which brings me to

Rowing: Last night I committed to coxing a quad (yes, they have coxed quads here – narrow canals require them!) in a race in Haarlem on Sunday. Apparently they were desparately scouring the list for anybody available who is qualified to cox. This should be interesting; it’s literally been years since I coxed a race. I haven’t coxed a boat at all since last fall’s Rondje Eindhoven tour (when three of us in a wherry took turns rowing and coxing), and it was probably a couple years before that since I last coxed even a practice, let alone a race. Also, I’ve never seen this racecourse and I don’t even know the crew, except maybe by sight. Nonetheless, I’ve coxed all over the west coast and even did the Head of the Charles once, and a local friend who has coxed this race a few times is going to give me the rundown so it should be OK. It’s a running start, not a countdown start, and it’s only a 4.5km course with two bridges and one sharp turn. It should be interesting and I would even say fun, except they’re predicting heavy rain and temps only up to 53F / 12C, which will put a literal damper on things.

ETA: I forgot to mention the funny part. The guy who called me sent an email to his crew-mates to tell them I would be coxing. His subject line was “witte rook / white smoke”

Story (I mean the one two entries back): what I’d sort of like to do would be to make a little chapbook out of it, with pictures, so it could actually be read to the baby someday. However, my art skills may not be up to it. I might try anyway, just for the heck of it – I can certainly run up a few sketches, anyway, and if they come out terrible, well, toddlers aren’t that critical.

Mirrored from Dichroic Reflections.