Hey!

The last time we talked, I told you about the whole "splinter group" aspect of indie publishing, which has really just started cropping up in the past few years. Basically, some of us have split off from the publish-faster-and-faster-and-faster-forever mentality and are instead thinking of ourselves more like artisans. Folks like me are increasingly saying "smaller and better" rather than "bigger and more."

(Maybe this is where I should point out that I've written around 140 books, so my catalog is still big and I still work fast. Everything's relative, people! Einstein taught us that.)

But you're a reader, not an author. You probably don't care what's going on in publishing ... just the books that come from it, and your experience in reading them.

The question I left on the table last time was this: What's it all mean for you, the reader? How does my story about becoming an artisan author change the way I write, publish, and produce books for you to read?

Well, it's pretty simple:

My books are normal books ... but now I'm thinking of them as art projects, too.

Maybe you don't care. That's fine. If you want, you can just buy my books and read them like any other. But if you truly love books, I think you'll dig what I've been up to. I've been putting extra flare into them - thinking about the experience of holding a book in your hand, if you get it in paper. That's what I mean by "art projects."

In my opinion, being truly immersed in a good book isn't just about reading black and white words in order. That's part of it, of course; without a good story, a book is just dressed-up pulp. But there's more to it, in my mind ... or at least there can be.

I was thinking this while reconditioning some books that were originally published by my friends at Sterling & Stone. I'll be re-publishing them out here on my own, so I wanted to spruce them up a bit while I was moving things around.

The first book I did was Pretty Killer, and the process was so badass.

Most of my sales are digital, but ever since I started thinking in artisan terms (which, by the way, began with the catchphrase "beautiful books"), I've been hot to see what I can do with paperbacks. So that's what I hit first, following my excitement in the way I always do.

I'm going to put new covers on some of my books, but I'm not touching Pretty Killer's. I love this cover so much.

The thing to know about Pretty Killer (co-written with Sean Platt under the pen name "Nolon King") is that it's a dinner party murder mystery. The adjectives that best describe the story are old Hollywood noir and feminine revenge. So, throughout, there's this devious but extremely elegant interplay of terrible plots and refined snobbery. That's basically my favorite thing to write.

Immediately I thought: This is an elegant affair, so we need to present it elegantly. I thought it would be cool to create fancy images as section separators, and we could create an actual invitation to introduce the book. Problem was, that was a lot of work and it was out of my lane when the book was with S&S. Because it'd be a dick move to put a bunch of work on someone else's desk and insist they do what I wanted, I let the idea go. We just used text as the separators, sub-optimal though it may have been.

Now that I'm revamping, though, I decided to change that. Here's how the book begins now:

I also decided that Sean's chef friend's fine menu deserved better than just a list of foods in Helvetica on an otherwise blank page, so I made up course cards.

There's one for every section (Drinks, Appetizers, First Course, Second Course, Dessert, Digestif), but I'll show you the Second Course one because I actually understand these foods, unlike the fancy stuff in others:

This last one is cool. See, there are clues throughout this book, and I needed places to hide them ... and also a way to reveal all those connections at the end without doing the whole "naked exposition" thing. You know the naked exposition thing, right? It's when, at the end of a mystery, the detective simply tells everyone what happened and how it all worked. I'm not a huge fan, personally.

We decided that the best way to handle our own reveals was to create a bunch of "found documents" and give them to the reader instead: diaries, police reports, and various paperwork.

In the original version of Pretty Killer, we again could only present those as plain text files. In this new version, though, I figured presenting the found documents as actual found documents would be much cooler.

This one won't spoil anything. It's the PDR entry for a drug we invented:

Then, I created chapter flourishes, background images to match the look and feel of the other elements, and more. It was a full day of non-productivity. I wasted so much time! Only it wasn't a waste if I was having fun expanding my creativity in ways my readers will benefit from, right?

(By the way, this version of Pretty Killer is only available in my BRAND NEW ONLINE STORE. Please just note that although I am building that store as fast as I can, there's still a LOT of missing products up there. I will be adding more to the store CONSTANTLY, but if you have a book you want me to put up first, just reply to this and let me know!)

It's so cool. Now, in addition to being just a book, every book is a tiny little art project. Most won't need anything like Pretty Killer did, so I'm sure the definition of "art project" will take on many different forms. For one book, it might mean as a series of bonus material. It might mean creating some sort of Easter egg hunt, or a beautiful special edition hardback like I'm doing for Fat Vampire. It could be anything, as long as it's creative and special.

Who knows? I'm going to play, and we'll see what happens. :)

Thank you for loving books!
JT

P.S: It's going to take me a long time to gussy up my backlist, so I'll probably pay most attention to new books at first ... although I DO already have plans for special editions of some of my previous books. If you have a favorite Truant series you'd love to see given more love, reply and let me know!

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