Censored

I've been plugging away at the book. Initially I had wanted to have all of the patterns done before Christmas, but I realize that was somewhat overambitious. My new goal is for the end of April. So far all of the scarf patterns are done--a narrower version of the infamous "Fuck You" scarf, as well as one that reads "Adult Content", "Crime Scene Do Not Cross," and the title project, "Censored." Earlier this week I sent a shawl pattern off to a test knitter (if you are interested in taking part in the test knit please drop me a line.

I'm not quite ready to start sharing pictures. Maybe next month. I have, however, begun looking at publishers and am putting together a book proposal.

I know that this book will be hard to publish. For starters, most publishers don't like printing vulgar projects. Second, while I have a few publishing credits under my belt and the original scarf kind of went viral on Ravelry, I'm hardly the Yarn Harlot or Meg Swanson. I don't really have a following of any kind, and I haven't taught or made a real name for myself. In fact, as far as I can tell, my one and only print publishing credit thus far was canned and never even made it into the stores. It was supposed to go out in October, then got pushed back to December, and I haven't seen it at all or even received my author copy yet.

But that's a story for another day.

As I was saying, this book will likely be hard to publish. If that is the case, I might resort to Kickstarter. I'm just uncertain of how precisely to sell the books if I do, since I can hardly go door to door with them. Perhaps publishing through Amazon is a better route? I would prefer to have hard copies, but that might have to wait.

I talked a little about this dilemma last fall. Now that I'm getting a bit closer to completion, I'm looking at it in more detail. What kind of incentives could I offer for different levels of support? Is it even worth doing Kickstarter if I end up only being able to release a PDF version? How would that affect my end sale price? Would it? I might be able to use the money to hire a graphic designer, and a photographer,  both of which would be a vast improvement to me doing the work on my own. I would also probably be able to pay a tech editor and some sample knitters to speed up production. I don't know if I could do that going the traditional route, or if the publisher would pay for it.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm still on the fence about a lot of things, but that Kickstarter is beginning to look like (maybe) a viable option. I still would like to try the traditional route first, but at least this way I've got choices.