I received an email the other day from Mark Baumer, a writer who is launching a Kickstarter project for $50,000 to write 50 books in a year. On the project website, he writes:
Mark Baumer has never published a book. He is going to write and publish fifty books in one year. Each book will be a unique object. There will only be about 100-500 printed copies of each book. He is asking a website for $50,000 to cover the costs of printing, editing, and layout for all the books. All the money raised on this website will go towards printing books. If Mark Baumer doesn’t raise enough money then he will just go out in the street and yell at the unpublished versions of his books until someone gives him a dollar
If you’re wondering what Baumer’s writing is like, the above should give you an idea—very stream-of-consciousness and more than a little idiosyncratic. I checked out his blog and website and Googled a number of things he’s written, and they all seemed to be in that same style. The page that (apparently) lists the subject matter of the books he will be writing is another example.
Baumer seems like a very interesting person, I wish I could say I enjoyed his writing, especially since he said he enjoyed mine in the e-mail he sent me—but to be honest that sort of stream-of-consciousness stuff sets my teeth on edge. But I have no doubt that if stream-of-consciousness is your thing, you will enjoy his writing very much—he does it very well.
The project is certainly ambitious, and I wish him the best of luck with it. If nothing else, it shows that there are plenty of ways to go about self-publishing, and people shouldn’t feel limited to just what Amazon and Barnes & Noble have to offer.
