Tony Brasunas

Why $8888?

This amount is the minimum I need to produce Double Happiness. Fortuitously, 8888, or 88-88, also happens to be a number the Chinese consider extraordinarily lucky. In fact the pairs of eights are considered to resemble and evoke the principle of shuang xi – “double happiness” – one meaning of which is the happiness that comes from the union of two things. So for Double Happiness, $8888 is both essential and lucky.

After revising my manuscript for ten years, working with a professional literary agent for two years, and exploring every high and low of the various publishing industries in the United States, here in 2013 I’ve discovered that the perfect way to publish Double Happiness is independently with a Kickstarter.com campaign.

Why? For me, there are four main reasons: Adventure, Timing, Creative Control, and Community.

1. Adventure – At its heart, my book, Double Happiness is a tale of adventure, and Kickstarter brings adventure to the whole process of publishing a book. It’s a risk to put my dreams out there on some web page and hope for the best. It might not work! I don’t know who I’m going to find — or be found by — out there. I know only that I have a vision and a path, and that I have the means to walk that path. It was taking exactly this kind of risk that led to the journeys and discoveries Double Happiness is written to share.

2. Timing – With the big publishing houses, I’ve learned that books generally do not come out for at least a year after the author signs and closes the big deal. Often it takes even longer, depending on where your book is on the house’s priority list, and how it fits in with their marketing plans and goals. Exceptions are made for exceptionally time-sensitive books (your book on the Super Bowl, for instance, in mid-January, or your biography of a political candidate in the midst of a campaign), but Double Happiness would not fit in that category. If I use Kickstarter and independently publish the book, I get to determine the ideal time for the book to come out, even if that ideal time is right away.

3. Creative Control – Sometimes professional editors in Manhattan know exactly what you are trying to say — or what you should be trying to say. Sometimes they don’t have a clue, or should just leave well enough alone. This can cut both ways, of course, and at certain points in the writing process editors can provide very helpful insights. Double Happiness has been meticulously edited by myself and several professional editors, but because it’s an unusual and highly personal book — with maps and epigraphs, and with an epilogue and prologue set in contrasting time periods — being able to make the final decisions on what goes in and what stays out of the manuscript is very appealing to me. I get to deliver to my readers a beautiful book, a flawlessly-edited book, and above all, the book I deeply longed to write.

4. Community – Through Kickstarter, the book begins and is brought into the world as a collective project and as part of a shared experience with the readers themselves. This promises to be a magical part of the whole journey to publication. I hope everyone who’s ever traveled or hoped to travel jumps on board!

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? I sense it’s going to work for me. But it might not. And of course if you’ve just completed your manuscript, your mileage may vary considerably. Your particularly desires, ambitions, and creative predilections may indicate finding an agent and selling your manuscript to a publishing house is your best path.

For me, Kickstarter feels perfect. I can’t wait to go live and launch it!

When will that be? I’m working on the video and rewards for the campaign now, and they’re nearly done. I will launch my Kickstarter publication campaign this month! To get an email note when we launch, subscribe to this blog or go to facebook.com/DoubleHappy and click to “Like” the page. I do hope you’ll explore my Kickstarter campaign when it begins, and if you fancy, get on board, join the community, contribute to the campaign, and help publish Double Happiness!

When I had dinner with my mother last Friday night, she asked me a straightforward question, but it made me pause.

She asked, “What exactly do you want us to do?”

I looked at her.

“With your book,” she said. “There is the blog and the Kickstarter (which hasn’t started yet) and the Facebook and the this and the that. But what do you want us to do right now?”

There could be no confusion! I thought. But if my mother needed to ask, perhaps I should spell it out. Perhaps I don’t have this blogging thing down quite yet.

I’m doing what I’ve longed to do for years — independently publishing my book, my labor of love and joy. There are several phases of this project.

Right now, the current phase is: Building a base, a community, so as to best find the interested patrons who might support my endeavor as well as to find the readers for whom Double Happiness was written.

Right now, if you have a minute, please:

1. Visit www.facebook.com/DoubleHappy
2. “Like” the page.
3. Click on the gearwheel and “Share” the page.

Voila! That’s it. That would be amazing and would help get the word out to all who will find the writing in Double Happiness useful, engaging, funny, or interesting. Little things are rarely little things. Something was said once about a butterfly flapping its wings in China.

There will be more phases in the very near future, things almost too exciting for me to type out here. I’m about to jump out of this plane I’ve been riding in safely for about a decade. I hope you will be a small part of my parachute.

The journey is long and sweet to that day when a beautiful copy of Double Happiness is in your hands. Two quick updates on where it is, and how you can help…

Facebook

I’ve upgraded the Double Happiness facebook page. Check it out. If you like the way the page looks, or if you like travel books about China, or if you like Double Happiness itself, or if you like me, or if you feel like clicking a button, click to LIKE the page.

Share the page with anyone else you know who might like these things — anyone who is interested in travel, China, teaching or living abroad, backpacking, or a young man’s coming of age in a foreign land.

Let’s get to 100 likes by the end of the week!

www.facebook.com/DoubleHappy

And if you don’t like the page, tell me why, leave a comment.

Kickstarter

To raise the funds to bring Double Happiness into the world, I’ll be using Kickstarter.com, which, if you haven’t heard of it, is like a superhero that enables the universe of interested souls to be the modern independent artist’s patron saint. Everyone interested in an artistic project pitches in, instead of just one publisher, label, or company. You can be a Patron of the Arts, a modern Maecenas, for as little as $1!

For the Kickstarter page I’m going to create a video. I want to share with the world the original inspiration and current vision for Double Happiness. Do you know of any great video creators or filmmakers who could possibly help me here, even if for just an hour one afternoon or evening? I would be eternally grateful (and able to offer a small amount of money). Someone with either interview skills, videography skills, or video editing skills — or all three! — would be perfect. Let me know! Write your suggestions in a comment below, or email me directly.

Thank you. I’m humbled by your support. Towards Double Happiness for all!

I talked to two book designers this week. It’s exciting and quite the roller coaster ride going this route — independently publishing my book.

Wait, who did I talk to? Book designers? Am I looking for someone to select the colors of my book’s cover?

Well, yes. But that’s not the job of the book designer.

Book Design is the art and science of laying out the interior of the book, from the title page to the index, and everything in between. A book designer will design the Table of Contents and the Glossary, and, if talented, make the first page of each chapter visually interesting and beautiful. Book designers not only know typography and font pairing, but also typesetting and making the pages look and feel like a book. When you’re in a bookstore and you open to a random page in a book, and the font is appealing and there’s a “running head” telling you the chapter you’re in, and you notice that both the left and right page have the same number of lines, you’re probably looking at a book designer’s work. These things don’t happen by accident.

Double Happiness is going to be a beautiful book, both in print and in e-book formats. That’s been my vision since the first step of this journey. I am a web designer by day, but I’m not going to teach myself book design and risk making a bunch of novice’s mistakes.

What are your favorite visual elements of the books you love? What would you like to see for Double Happiness?

The manuscript is done, and so many other necessary preliminary steps are complete. It’s time to publish Double Happiness!

I will now be regularly updating this space, asking and answering questions, and detailing the road that takes me from a meticulously edited manuscript to a beautiful book in your hands or attractive file on your kindle. I will be hiring a cover designer, book designer, and an illustrator en route to independently publishing.

This labor of love, this journey so long and sweet, is now moving into its final phase. There is still much to do. Follow along with me here if you’re interested in independent publishing or in travel through Asia or in teaching abroad or in China or in simply reading a young man’s tale of fear, delight, and discovery.

A tale of a young American’s coming of age in a faraway land, the book will be titled Double Happiness: One Man’s Tale of Love, Loss, and Wonder on the Long Roads of China.

I would like to take this moment to thank my agent, Susan Lee Cohen of Riverside Literary Agency, for all her hard work, smart ideas, and wise counsel.

I would also like to thank Intuition, that great universal deity that plays such a vital role in Double Happiness, and that has played already a powerful part in this journey to publication.

Thank You!