Shout Out: Machine of Death

Today's post is going out to a little band of indie book publishers-who-could and their impossible dream: to become the best-sellers on Amazon for just one day. That day is October 26th, and the book is Machine of Death. It's an anthology of short stories submitted by many comic, magazine, blog and webcomic (including Randal Munroe of xkcd!) writers from around the world talking about the eponymous Machine of Death, a machine that can predict how you are going to die.

The really cool thing about this project is that on November 2nd it will be released for free as a pdf and audiobook and all proceeds from the sale of the physical book will go directly to the authors. Screw the middle man!

Here's an excerpt from the site:

This isn’t some vanity-press sour-grapes effort. The simple truth is that we probablycan’t compete on the shelves at Barnes & Noble alongside every other book in the world. The agents and the publishers are right; it might not work for a mass market. That’s okay. We don’t need to sell it to everyone. We don’t need to sell 100,000 copies; we don’t have the rent on a New York office to pay for.

We only need to sell it to you.

On October 26, we want to send a message that a little project dragged kicking and screaming from “crazy idea” past “it’ll never work” all the way to “By God, they actuallydid it” can make a big splash. We’re internet people; you are too. We want to prove to all the people who said “this will never sell” that internet people make things happen.

So, if you like the little guy, enjoy dark irony or just love webcomics, buy this book on October 26th!

More substantive posting returns tomorrow. Thanks for reading.