Tony Brasunas

My dear friends,

After over a decade of writing and revising, after a year of publication planning, after an amazing kickstarter campaign and countless hours’ work with an editor, a proofreader, an illustrator, a book designer, and a cover designer, I’m humbled, moved, and delighted to announce…

The publication date of Double Happiness
12/12
December 12, 2013

That’s the day!

Double Happiness Day.

The day will arrive on the heels of an incredibly busy month for me and for the Double Happiness Team.

On that day, in addition to many other amazing moments, I will have perhaps my best chance to place Double Happiness on Amazon’s bestseller lists. Please mark the date on your calendar now. If you or anyone you know is going to purchase a copy, please consider making the purchase that day.

I’m compiling a list of First Readers, people who are going to buy the book the day it comes out. They will receive special treatment and a gift from me (as well as a reminder!). I hope to have 200 people on that list so Double Happiness can pop up the Amazon lists right away. Would you be willing to join in to help push the book up the charts? Can you find others who might be? To be a First Reader, just sign up!

Double Happiness Day
12/12
First Reader List

This is an amazing feeling. I have the first copy of Double Happiness in my hands!

It’s not a publication copy of the book. Those don’t exist yet. What I have in my hands is what is often called a Galley or an Advance Review Copy (ARC).

To get to this point, the last month has been unbelievably busy. And not just for me. The whole Double Happiness team that I’ve been blessed to assemble (thank you generous Backers) has been very busy.

First, after I completed the final manuscript in all its countless respects, I sent it to the book designer I hired, the famous Joel Friedlander, who had already worked with me in August to design the interior. Joel then flowed the final text of the book, inserted the gorgeous maps hand-drawn by my illustrator, Estelle Kim, and produced the first proof. I received that proof and sent it to my proofreader, the amazing Nicole Francois, who set to work on the final manuscript with her fine-toothed comb. Meanwhile, after a back-and-forth that many of you participated in via polls, the talented cover designer, Laura Duffy, created the photographically beautiful front and back covers. With those covers, and that proof, I was able to do it — make Galleys.

When the box of Galleys arrived at my door, I was overcome with gratitude and delight, and I chose to capture the moment of opening that box and holding the first copy in my hands. Here is that moment in a video I created to share with you: Video at Kickstarter.

If you didn’t click over to the video, here’s what that Galley looks like:

Yes, it’s just the ARC. But still, here it is, Double Happiness.

Already, since receiving them, I’ve sent ARCs out to authors and reviewers in the hopes of getting endorsement “blurbs” for the final cover. And the proofread proof is now back with the book designer, who is busy creating the final proof for the final publication version of the book.

Wow, my dear friends, it won’t be long now. It will be in your hands soon.

The results are in! To all of you who voted in the poll, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts.

It turns out one cover won both polls — the public poll I held here on the blog, and a smaller informal poll I carried out with two dozen people in the publishing industry.

And the winner is…

The cover that features a photograph shot in Tiananmen Square…

The cover that depicts the political events in Chapter 7…

So, yes, this is the cover I am refining and enhancing now with my cover designer!

The truth is, this choice was one of the hardest I’ve had to make during this entire journey to publication. It isn’t easy to choose a single image to represent an entire book. A proverb suggests that a picture is worth 1,000 words, but like many books, Double Happiness has over 100,000 words! At first, I was split, and favored another cover, the one listed as #5 on the poll.

But I’ve come to like this one far more over the last month. I find it bold and iconic, and it manages thematically to balance depictions of both a sedentary and a peripatetic traveler (me), a narrator who is neither just a backpacker on the roads, nor just a teacher in a classroom. I’m a young man, adventurous and curious in a changing China. It also looks great in thumbnail, which is how people who shop online for books these days see the cover first.

Not far behind, taking second place in both polls, was the cover that appeared as #3 in the poll. That cover has a lot of appeal to me, too, and I know it did to many of you as well, and it is now the leading candidate to be featured on the back cover of the book. It’s a beautiful and elegant image. The issues with #3 are that it doesn’t provide quite as iconic a cover, in my opinion, and that it depicts the book as perhaps solely a story of backpacking, when in fact nearly half of Double Happiness takes place in Guangzhou where I am a teacher in a high school.

Yes, the cover is getting there. One final question for you, if I may:

Are you, or do you know, an author or a book reviewer who might be interested in reading or reviewing Double Happiness now, with the possibility of a quotation of theirs appearing on the cover?

I would be delighted to communicate with them about any terms they might have. I have one quote ready for the cover and would love to add another.

A final time, my gratitude! Thank you so much for your thoughts and contributions. These are exciting times, and Double Happiness will be in the world very soon.

Yes, thanks to all of you, we kicked the Kickstarter. We are making this book!

We raised $11,808, far surpassing my goal during the official Kickstarter term, and then eight last minute pledges came in, and the Double Happiness Kickstarter finished with an amazing 183 backers and $12,048.

I will publish Double Happiness and share the story with the world. I’m overwhelmed and inspired. Words fail me.

Thank you!

I’m now moving into the exciting (and completely different) phase of making the physical and electronic book. I’m assembling a Double Happy team of a cover designer, interior designer, illustrator, and proofreader.

I am also attempting to somehow express the depths of my gratitude to all of you. I’m planning and creating all of your rewards. Most rewards, of course, won’t ship until September, when the book is complete, but a select few will ship in the next few weeks. For now, all of you Backers at the TEACHER level or higher: You will be receiving a survey from me so I can gather the information I need to complete your rewards. Please complete your short survey when you get it, so I can move forward on schedule. Thank you!

That’s it for now.

Towards double happiness,
Tony

Here are 3,000 words expressing my gratitude to you.

Tonight is it! If you would like to take part in the creation and launch of a labor of love and tale of transformation, this is it! Your great and final opportunity to participate and receive a pre-release copy of Double Happiness is now. I would love to have you on board.

The Kickstarter campaign ends tonight at midnight Pacific Time, 3am East Coast Time.

    >> www.DoubleHappy.be/kickstart << Words cannot express my gratitude to all of you for following this campaign, for reading all my emails :-), and for -- so many of you! -- becoming Backers and supporting Double Happiness. We've reached 10k and 11k, so the Double Happy Book Tour will visit at least: San Francisco, St. Louis, Washington DC., and New York, as well as Claymont, WV, my childhood home, the place featured in the book's Prologue. If I can reach 12k tonight, I'll add the West Coast cities of LA, Seattle, and Portland! The Double Happy Tour:       9k - [Happening!] San Francisco Bay Area     10k - [Happening!] St Louis, MO     11k - [Happening!] New York and Washington DC (+Claymont)     12k – [Not there yet] Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland

    >> www.DoubleHappy.be/kickstart << Words cannot truly express the depth of my gratitude. But of course I'm a writer, so I'll try. I feel as if I set sail on a boat alone, not knowing how long it would take to reach a distant shore, or whether I would make it. You were the strength in my hull and sails that sustained me, you were gusts of wind that propelled me, you were enormous unexpected swells of the ocean that carried me all the way into port. My deepest gratitude to you, Tony