'A Comedy of Terrors' - To be published by MuseItUp Publishing

And now for something completely different.

Or at least, something I haven’t written here before :-).

It’s right there. Or rather, right here. On the front page. It, is, really! It says:

“Graeme Smith. That's me. A soon (where 'soon' is a variable) to be published fantasy writer.”

If you've been reading this blog, I hope the 'comic' isn't news. Or the 'writer'. But 'soon'? 'Published'? How do you measure 'soon'?

You measure ‘soon’ the way you measure anything. By having a measuring stick. And now I do. One of my completed novels - ‘A Comedy of Terrors’ - has been contracted to MuseItUp Publishing. So now ‘soon’ has a measuring stick.

That’s the good news. And in other news? In other news, publishing is a slow business. Yes, even electronic publishing. The current estimated release date (when it’s going to be somewhere you can buy it. Er – you are going to buy it, right? :-P) is July 2012.

Oh. Didn’t I mention that? You didn’t go read their page yet? Yes, MuseItUp are an electronic publishing company. They publish books, um, electronically. Yes, on paper as well, but their first line of business is electrons. Does that make them any different to mainstream publishers? Well, mainstream publishers deal in electrons as well. Mostly bound up with protons and neutrons. It’s called paper. And ink. And the books they publish sit on shelves in big stores, and you can go read them. Er, I mean examine them. Before buying them. Right :-) ?

Otherwise? There’s not much difference. MuseItUp don’t publish every book anybody sends them. They don’t publish books because you pay them money to publish them. You send them a nice letter, trying to interest them. A bit like Querying an Agent. They may say no. They may say ‘maybe’ – what if you changed this? Or that? Or they may say yes.

They said yes.

I’ll try that again. THEY SAID YES! YAY!

Ahem. Sorry about that. I won’t do it again :-P.

Why so long until the publishing date? Electronic publishing is easy, right? Well, putting a file somewhere you can download it is, yes. But like I said. Paper or electrons, this is Publishing. There’s editors to, um, do edit-y stuff. There’s covers to be designed. There’s publicity. There’s marketing.

Yes. This is publicity, right here. Yes, and marketing. Well, it is if anybody’s reading it :-).

So why am I telling you about MuseItUp and not my amazing, wonderful, totally hilarious book? Because Publishing isn’t about fulfilling the dreams of aspiring authors. Well it might be, but it really isn’t. It’s about paying for office space, paying editors, assistants, paying for web pages to be designed, covers… Like it or not, it’s about money. And the Publisher (Lea Schizas ) at MuseItUp is just as interested in making money and in being professional and making profit as any other Publisher.

That’s why I’m telling you. A Publisher who is interested in putting really nice bread on her family’s table, ideally with fresh churned butter and strawberry jam made with strawberries that were in a field two days ago and cost $999999999999999 an ounce, wants to spend money publishing ‘A Comedy of Terrors’. She thinks it’s going to buy some of that strawberry jam.

Know what? I agree with her.

Know what? I think you will too.

Know what? I want to know if you agree :-).

I can almost hear you. How can you agree with nothing to agree with? Well, I can help with that.

There’s a link to the Prologue under the BOOKS menu. It's up there, on the top left hand of this page. Yes, I know. Prologues aren’t very popular these days . That might be why I wrote one . Take a look. See what you think. Then, if you’re feeling brave, tell me. What you think, I mean .

You can comment here, you can comment on the Prologue iutself, you can join the MuseItUp Reader group, and you can mail me. There’s a Contact form here, under the Navigation menu over on the left.

There you are. ‘A Comedy of Terrors’. MuseItUP Publishing. July 2012.

Did I ever tell you how much I hate waiting :-P?