Draft, Edit, Print...at What Cost?!?

Another week of Nancy traveling for work. Another chance to spend my evenings writing This Is A Book. And as if it is a universal law, there is good news and there is bad news.

The good news always comes easy. The book is practically finished. I'm wrapping up the short fiction stories I wanted to include (four in total) and the philosophical/autobiographical stuff is as good as done.

The bad news is everything else.

Let's start with the basics: I'm running out of time. It is really hard to write a book within even 4 weeks (let alone my original plan of one week) considering that I'm only writing when Nancy is gone (3 out of the 4 weeks scheduled), Alex is in bed (8pm-midnight) and I'm not doing other stuff (like writing this blog, researching Lulu and Kindle Direct Publishing or... sleeping). I truly admire those writers who set aside full days from sunrise to sunset with only writing on their mind, but I have a life. A life which demands I seek for a job, keep the household running, spend time with my family and a variety of other incidental errands.

This directly leads into the quality of the material and my ambitions about it. The experiment of 'This Is A Book' is simple:

prove that anyone can write a book, publish it and have it join the abundance of other seemingly superfluous titles available at your local bookstore. 

Do it with spontaneity, make it fun and give it away for free. 

This way people can't complain about the quality too much, because it's like a piece of performance art for writers and readers alike (and if they do complain I'll refuse to listen, nah). However I can't have it completely bomb and destroy my fragile newborn reputation as a writer, because I do still need to publish 'Aelemental' along the same channels. Yes, that means I'm converting to self-publishing from seeking out the traditional industry.

So with the time running out and the quality of the material on the line, what do I do next? I still have to design the book and publish it and by what I've seen today, the learning curve is acceptable, but still somewhat daunting. I know my way around InDesign and have checked out Lulu and Kindle, but can I get it all done in time before my time runs out? I might also have to sacrifice more than just my initial promise of getting it done in a week and giving it away for free. If you want to hold an actual copy in your hand, you'll have to shell out approx. $9.50 for a 100 page 'Lulu published' copy. If I waiver my $1.00 royalty I can bring it down to $7.50. An e-book version should be doable for free (Is this true, anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?), but this means lesser interactivity. In other words, you can't do the activities I included in the book unless you copy them onto actual paper. Still, I can do both: publish an actual book on Lulu and the free e-book on Amazon. Or should I charge at least $1 for the e-book? What do you think?

Choices, choices. I really welcome any thoughts on self-publishing, so if you can help me out, drop me a note, alright? Otherwise I'll just have to invest more time into researching...or just go for it and risk it all....eek!