Category: Books

In which the audio versions of Happiest Days and Just A Geek get a new home

Posted on By Wil

I've had such a great experience using Lulu to sell Sunken Treasure and Memories of the Future, Volume One, I have decided to start out 2010 by moving the audio versions of The Happiest Days of Our Lives and Just A Geek to Lulu. It made a lot of sense to me to keep all of my self-published work together in one place, and hopefully this will make ordering even faster and easier than it already was.

Now, for the sake of completeness and making a post that's more than 70 words, here's a little bit about my audiobooks, which I yanked from the Audiobooks tag on Wil Wheaton Books dot Com:

The Happiest Days of Our Lives

You can buy the audio version of The Happiest Days of Our Lives right here, for just $19.72. "Why $19.72?" You ask? Because that's the year I was born, and since nobody else is the boss of me, I can do that sort of thing. "How long is it?" You say? "That's what she said!" I reply. Then I tell you that it's about three and a-half hours long, and we laugh and laugh before the episode ends with a hilarious freeze frame.

Like the audio version of Just A Geek, this is a super-annotated edition, filled with tons of what I call "audio footnotes" for lack of a less stupid-sounding term. I hope we've created something that's more like sitting down in a room with me while I tell you stories, than it is a typical audiobook. I don't think a traditional publisher would let me get away with doing it this way, which is a big reason I do these things on my own. If you've ever heard meperform my work at a show, or listened to any of my podcasts, you should have some idea of what you're getting into.

Just A Geek

I'm very proud of this, my first audio book. I've talked in the past about what a huge letdown my experience wih O'Reilly was on the print version of the book, and much of the joy I'd hoped to feel with its release has instead come from the recording of the audio version, which ended up being a performance, with asides, commentary, and reflections on the material that aren't in the print version of the book. I guess it's like I'm reading the book to you, and occasionally setting it down to give some meta-commentary on various passages.

So if you liked the print book, my PAX keynote, my performance of The Trade, or if you like my podcasts, I'm pretty sure you'll dig the audiobook.

For the Lulu release of Just A Geek: The Audiobook, I was able to include a PDF scan of the booklet I created for its previous release, which I think is pretty cool. (If you already own the audio version of JAG and would like a copy of the PDF booklet, just e-mail me and I'll get it to you as quickly as I can.)

My audiobooks are quite different from traditional audiobooks. Rather than create a dramatic interpretation of the literal text, which is what I do when I voice another author's book (Like Peter & Max: A Fables Novel, which I did for Bill Willingham), I am able to use my experience as an actor to bring the words and characters to life while adding my own commentary. The result is much closer to hearing or seeing me perform my material live than getting an audio version of the text.

For both of these books, I worked with my friend David Lawrence, who in addition to producing them, participated in some interesting conversations along the way. In fact, we added so much material through our conversations and my additional commentary, we only half-jokingly call them superannotated versions of the books. It's the sort of thing that I doubt I'd be able to get away with if I wasn't doing this entirely on my own, and I'm really glad that we did the books this way, because I think it makes them special and unique. The feedback I've gotten from customers is overwhelmingly positive, and it appears that my goal of making the listener feel like we're sitting down together while I read to them has been successfully achieved.

Okay, before I sign off, I'm going to address a couple of FAQs that usually come up when my aubiobooks are mentioned:

Q: How about some stats, man?

A: Happiest Days is $19.72, about 3.5 hours long, and is about a 200MB download. Just A Geek is $20.00, about 9 hours long, and is about a 400MB download.

Q: Why is Just a Geek only 28 cents more if it's so much longer?

A: That's what she said! Oh, um. Sorry. Because it's been available for so long, and the old pricing model we used when it was originally released needed to be updated. Look, I know that people can just steal it if they want to, so I figured it was better to make it more affordable for people who want to be honest.

Q: How about a discount if I get them together?

A: I wish I could do that, but I'd have to make a whole new project at Lulu, and I don't think there's enough market demand for that.

Q: Can I get this from Audible?

A: Not right now.

Q: Why not?

A: Two main reasons: Audible takes a huge cut of the purchase price, and for an indie guy like me it's not worth it. Audible also requires DRM, which I'd like to avoid as long as possible. Now, to be super-clear: if Audible could somehow open up my work to tens of thousands of new customers, I think it would be a fair trade off. However, my experience in traditional publishing leads me to believe that that isn't going to happen. I think I can reach 

Q: So why not do it anyway? Why not sell them directly yourself and also use Audible?

A: Hurm. That's a good question, and I can't come up with a very good reason that's more comprehensive than, "because I don't want to deal with the hassle and potential rejection from Audible." 

Q: So you're going to eventually do that?

A: Well … it seems silly not to, now, doesn't it? Tell you what: once I get everything I need to do under control and I'm not behind on a crapton of deadlines, I'll look into Audible, assuming that they'll even be interested in having me.

Q: So should I just wait, then?

A: Facepalm.

Q: Are you going to do audio versions of your other books?

A: I've meant to do a Dancing Barefoot for years, and just never got around to it. If enough people are interested, though, I will. I bet I could give Barefoot a really neat superannotated treatment, especially since I've leveled up so much since I wrote it.

Q: What about Memories of the Future?

A: I really don't know. It takes a lot of time and energy to produce an audiobook, and I don't know if there are enough buyers to make it worth the time it would take to create a Memories audiobook all at once. I've thought about doing it episodically, so if only 20 people are interested, I've only wasted two hours instead of forty, but I'm not sure that would work. But there's always the Memories of the Futurecast, guys.

Q: Hey, is it weird to essentially have a conversation with yourself and present it as a FAQ?

A: Keep your questions on-topic, please.

Q: It's just that, I think it's kind of weird.

A: That isn't a question.

Q: Oh, so the voice in your head can say you're awesome and you'll let that slip by, but if I point out that it's a little weird, you're just going to blow me off?

A: Pretty much. Yes. Okay, um … you in the back?

Q: Hey, I don't have a question, but I just wanted to say that you're awesome.

A: Why thank you. That's very kind of you.

Q: And tell us, once again, where we can get these fabulous audiobooks, please?

A: Great question. You can go to my storefront at Lulu to find just about everything I've recently published, or you can go directly to Just A Geek: The Audiobook or The Happiest Days of Our Lives: The Audiobook.

Annnd, scene. Thanks for reading and (hopefully) listening. Remember to tell all your friends, and be sure to drink your Ovaltine.

a couple of book-related things

Posted on By Wil

Memories of the Future got :

There’s one thing that Wil Wheaton wants to make very clear: “Memories of the Future” is not, repeat, NOT a “tell-all” book about his time working on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

“It was extraordinarily important to me that this was not some kind of stupid, gossipy book,” Wheaton said. “I despise that kind of thing. I just hate it. It’s the reality television of literature, and I absolutely cannot stand it.”

Indeed, “Memories of the Future” is instead a funny review of, and a loving tribute to, the first season of “Next Generation,” which began its television run in 1987.

I also saw that Happiest Days of Our Lives was used as an example of one of those new-fangled paper-style books:

Today I picked up a paper book to read just for fun — The Happiest Days of Our Lives by Wil Wheaton. Long-time (since this spring!) Kindle user that I am, I immediately noticed the dashing use of color on its front cover, but when I opened it, I was disappointed that I couldn’t scale the font size down from the default. It seems that paper books have only one font option — what are all these Kindle forum posters complaining about with its six sizes of a single font?

On the very first page, I encountered a word I wasn’t familiar with (Namaste). I thought I knew what it meant from the context clues, and even had the thought that on the Kindle, I could just highlight it and confirm my guess. But my paper dictionary was in the basement, so I didn’t bother looking it up until I wrote this post. (My hunch was reasonably correct.)

Interface-wise, the paper book is solid, and crashes, lockups, or other malfunctions are rare. I have, however, noted severe stability problems when attempting to read outdoors, especially when it’s windy (which, since I live in Kansas, is pretty much always). Pages start turning themselves, even without me making the “turn page” gesture. Sometimes the book will even lose its memory of my last page read. This is rather annoying, and might even involve a lengthy search for a suitable temporary replacement bookmark. Also, I haven’t tried it, but I suspect that the trick of putting a Kindle in a ziplock bag to read at the beach or in the tub without risk of getting it wet would be impractical with a paper book.

That entire post is really funny and clever, and I think you should read the whole thing. Go ahead, I'll wait.

See? Wasn't it funny? I like clever writing that is funny.

Speaking of The Happiest Days Of Our Lives, I know a non-zero number of people have been waiting very patiently for the special edition to be released by Subterranean Press. I wanted to explain, again, why it's been a year: After the book was announced, I spent almost two months digging through published and unpublished material for the expanded parts of the book, then I spent another month or so rewriting and polishing the stuff that made the cut. After that, I wrote additional introductions and notes to go with each chapter. That was the first delay (and, honestly, I thought it was entirely reasonable, since the book was announced as a pre-order) The biggest delay, and the first serious problem, though, was a software compatibility issue between me and the copy editor. OpenOffice and Word don't track notes the same way, but neither of us knew this until we'd both spent a lot of time working in our respective suites, completely oblivious to the work of the other. Finally, we realized what was wrong, and had to go all the way back to the beginning of the copy editing process the old way, printing the entire manuscript out on paper and making notes in the margins. It had a certain nostalgic value, but it took forever to get all that shit straightened out. 

So that process, which should have taken a couple weeks, took close to three months. Then, once we got that all squared away, I had to get a bunch of pictures together, caption them, fact-check the captions with my parents and siblings, then get all that stuff to Subterranean Press. I also held up this part of the process for a couple more weeks while I looked for even more unpublished pictures that neither me nor my mom could find. 

Finally, I asked my son Ryan (who is a creative writing student) if he wanted to write an afterword. He said he would, but it would take some time because he's in college and has his own responsibilities. I was willing to wait, because I thought it would be awesome to have his contribution to in the book, and I figured at this point (August) another couple weeks didn't make that big a difference. It ended up taking about 6 or 8 weeks, but I think it will ultimately be worth the delay (please note that I am not an objective source of information in this regard.)

Finally, the manuscript was turned in, the pictures were approved, the layout was all set … and then the signature pages arrived. I had to sign something like 2500 pages, and it was important to me that each one looked like it was the only one I'd signed. I could have blown through it, of course, and gotten it done in a couple of days, but that would have guaranteed disappointment to everyone who bought the book and waited almost a year to get it. So I limited myself to between 50 and 75 pages at a "session," and it took several weeks to work my way through them all.

Oh, also, keep in mind that during all of these months, I was working on other projects, including several television shows that took me away from the Happiest Days project for weeks at a time.

So all of those delays stacked up on top of each other, until everything was finally finished about six or eight weeks ago. I realize that this is a very long time to wait for something, and I also realize that I've probably killed any chance of doing other special editions with Subterranean Press because this one took so long, but I sincerely believe that it will be worth the wait, because I've seen it, and it's something very special.

a brilliant, genius, incredible idea: “…if only the bookstore could come to us”

Posted on By Wil

Catching up on my RSS subscriptions earlier today, I saw this at Boingboing:

JC Hutchins — he of the boundless energy! — has assembled a free "holiday sampler" of excerpts from great new books, handily bundled together in a handsome PDF, well suited to loading onto your device or printing out for your Xmas holiday.

Some of my favorite authors are in this compliation, including my friend Cherie Priest, Scott Sigler, Cory Doctorow, and of course JC himself. Seth Godin (whose Purple Cow
helped form the foundation of my little self-publishing thing, which has grown into what I've recently begun half-jokingly calling "Wil Wheaton, Incorporated" with some of my friends) included an excerpt from Tribes, (plus something from a forthcoming book called Linchpin), and I can't wait to read the other authors I probably wouldn't have come across entirely on my own.

This is such an incredibly good idea, and I salute the authors who were smart enough to include some of their work in it. I'm not going to lie to you, Marge, I wish I'd thought of this, or at least written something worthy of inclusion (he says, as an unfulfilled goal for 2009 is reborn for 2010.) They have even included links right in the pdf that will take you to retailers, should you enjoy one of the excerpts so much, you simply must have a copy of the full work for your very own to love and keep and pet and call George. This. Is. Genius.

If you're interested, head on over to JC Hutchins' site, where you can check out the contents, and grab a copy for yourself or some lucky person you know.

in which the secret identity of wesley crusher is revealed

Posted on By Wil

Imagine if Television Without Pity recappers had been writing about TNG back in 1987, only with more swearing, more digressions and more geeky in-jokes, plus behind-the-scenes memories for every episode. That’s what Vol. 1 does for the first half of the first season of TNG, from “Encounter at Farpoint” to “Datalore” — it’s just the thing for people who love TNG and snark. – Tracy V. Wilson, How Stuff Works.

I mentioned on one of the Memories of the Futurecasts that writing Memories of the Future Volume One was unintentionally cathartic, as I was able to examine and gain further understanding of what I will call (without further definition) the Airlock Enthusiasts' Society. I didn't realize it while I was working on the book (I was just trying to write something funny and entertaining) but after fourteen weeks of Futurecasts, I can see evidence of that side quest spread out across the entire manuscript. In fact, several readers have commented on it, and now I kind of wish I'd seen it before the book went to press, so I could have smoothed it out a little bit more. Well, live and learn.

While I work on Volume Two, though, I've noticed a real change in Wesley in the second half of the season: it's almost like he takes that uniform seriously, and though he's still an annoying kid, he's not nearly as consistently obnoxious as he was in the first half. 

I mention all of this as prelude to a damn hilarious post on the How Stuff Works blog, which provides an entirely new view of Ensign Pumpkin Sweater:

The Secret Identity of Wesley Crusher

Wil talks about how working on Vol. 1 helped him come to terms with (and understand) the world’s hatred of Wesley Crusher. It’s a hatred I never had. I loved Wesley Crusher. When TNG premiered, I was just starting high school, and I was a serious know-it-all. Seeing a kid on TV who was essentially correcting his teachers, doing science projects and being a huge nerd all the time was kind of awesome. And enabling. I’m sure I was as annoying to the adults around me as Wesley was to adults trying to watch TNG.

But in listening to and reading “Memories of the Future,” I found a whole new reason to love Wesley. In episode 12 of “Memories of the Futurecast” (and the corresponding book chapter), Wil talks about how Wesley repairs the malfunctioning holodeck in “The Big Goodbye” with one zap of a magical holodeck fixing thing. In the middle of my morning train commute, I thought, “Ha ha ha, Wesley has a sonic screwdriver.” Then, accompanied by lots of mental capital letters and exclamation points, and possibly even a ZOMG, came the follow-up thought: “Wesley Crusher is a Time Lord!”

If you're experiencing the same amount of ZOMGLOL that I experienced when I read that yesterday, I think you'll want to check out the rest of the post, because it gets even better.

Get Excited and Make Things!

Posted on By Wil

Get_excited_and_make_things

My friend Ariana works with Warren Ellis to make all kinds of really cool things. Lately, they've been experimenting with print on demand technology to take creative risks that simple economics would have rendered impossible as recently as five years ago.

For example, three weeks ago, they started putting out a T-shirt of the Week at CafePress. It's a great idea: they put up a design on Sunday, it's available for a week, and then it goes off to the land of wind and ghosts to make room for something new. If you like the design, you grab it (possibly enjoying that you're part of a limited edition), and if you don't like the design, you just wait a week and try again.

Warren says: "TOTW is basically a joke that Ariana and I pull each week in our joint guise as the International Electrophonic Unit. Basically, we take some of the stupider things I’ve said on Twitter and elsewhere, often in a state of extreme alcoholic refreshment or severe sleep deprivation, and put them on a t-shirt. Ariana set up a Cafe Press store (because this is a joke and engaging with a serious maker of t-shirts would be less funny to us), and… well, once a week, here we are."

As a creator and as a consumer, I think this is awesome. The only thing Warren and Ariana are actually investing – that is, the only risk they're taking - is the time it takes to create the design, and if you're a creative person who, uh, enjoys creating, that's not really a risk as much as it's a chance to play with your toys and possibly make a little money while you do it.

This is incredibly inspiring to me, and I hope that it's just as inspiring to indie artists everywhere. Why not take a creative risk and see if it works out? Unlike the old days, when we had to purchase a lot of stock ahead of time and hope we could sell it, we can just Get Excited and Make Things, knowing that the very worst that can happen is that nobody likes that thing we made as much as we thought they would.

In the old days, creators had to hope that:

1. A store would carry their Thing.

2. Once in the store, their Thing would be in a place where people could see it.

3. People would buy their Thing.

4. People would buy enough of their Thing to get the cycle to start over at step 1.

Oh, and to have any hope of being successful, they have to do this in different stores all over the place, competing for space and attention with huge companies that have massive advertising budgets. It was, to say the very least, daunting.

But look at how much things have changed! Creative people can get excited, make something, and get it to their customers without ever having to go through any of those steps. The financial risk has been almost entirely taken away, so now we can take chances on our really crazy ideas, just because we're excited about them.

For example, when my episode of Criminal Minds was going to air, I got excited and made an audio version of the production diary from Sunken Treasure. The time elapsed from the moment I got excited until the moment I had an actual thing was about five hours. Now, it's hasn't exactly sold like crazy – only 242 total sales – and if I'd invested in actual product instead of doing it POD, I would have lost money on it for sure … but I spent half a day making something that has gotten great feedback from the people who listened to it, and I earned about nine hundred dollars for my trouble. Clearly, it's not a sustainable full-time business model, but it was certainly as successful as I could hope one of my Crazy Ideas would be.

If this sounds even remotely interesting or inspiring to you, I encourage you to read three posts Ariana has recently written on her blog about her experiences with POD:

TOTW: Three Weeks On

Will tomorrow’s design be niftier?  Who knows?  I’m taking the opportunity that a weekly project affords to try and up my game each time… but whether you like the next (or the next, or the next) better is, well, it’s all a bit like Let’s Make A Deal,isn’t it? Only instead of fabulous prizes and curtains named Door #4, it’s fabulous bits of silly on whatever clothing options we’ve decided to offer this week.  But the basic premise stands: Either you decide this week’s is the design you want… or its gone and that’s that.

[…]

with POD, there’s really no “…while supplies last!” either.  That’s brilliant, too, of course — a huge part of putting Shivering Sands on Lulu is just that: it can stay there as long as Lulu does, still pulling in a sale or two in ten years.

But, although I’m not advocating a fake or forced sense of urgency — because that’s a bit cheap, and more than a bit insulting to folks’ intelligence — there is something to be said about exploring how some online and POD systems do lend themselves to Being An Event.

It was Warren that first brought my attention to the concept of Event Internet (although he calls it “Appointment,” but I don’t love those so I’ve renamed for comfort), so I’m riffing off his playbook, here.  But he’s certainly not the only person playing with the idea.  There’s the well-documented Twitter-Flash-Mobbery that Amanda Palmer’s been pushing for a while, or Eliza Gauger’s Sweatshops, for instance.  Hell, just a few minutes ago, Wil sent me a link to this, saying: “It redraws random fractals every few seconds. You can’t save them, so you just appreciate them and then wait for the new one to show up.”  Which isn’t precisely an “event,” I suppose, but it sums up the idea rather nicely: You can’t save everything — although you can often record the live event to watch later — but sometimes, some things, even online, are about this moment.  And when they’re gone, you missed it.

So what the hell could that possibly have to do with Print On Demand which, as I just said, is so great because it just stays there forever?  Well, it’s all about looking at the tools in your kit and thinking about new ways to use them. 

In response to the inevitable cries of "but this only works for people like Warren Ellis because he's Warren Ellis" she wrote POD: If you're not Warren Ellis, which I can't really excerpt here, because it needs to be read in context. To sum up: before he was Warren Ellis, not even Warren Ellis was Warren Ellis. Stop crying about how you're not Warren Ellis, be who you are, and take that energy you're pouring into feeling sorry for yourself into getting excited and making something.

Finally, she wrote POD: Let's back up a bit here, which I think is the most inspiring of the three. You need to read the whole thing, but I'll pull a bit for you:

Here’s what you need to do, right now, tonight.  No, NOT tomorrow morning, or this weekend, or once your work rush has let off a little, or after the holidays, or sometime in the New Year: Right. Fucking. Now. 

Decide what you want to make.

And I’m talking about the single most complicated and ridiculous creation you can think of…

NO STOP IT I DIDN’T SAY HOW or WHY or WHEN, I only said WHAT.

[…]

I SAID STOP THINKING ABOUT THE HOW OR THE LOGISTICS OR THE MONEY OR THE TIME.  STOP IT.

This moment, right now, this THING that you’re deciding to make, this thing exists independently of the fiddly bits for now.  This, what you’re doing here, is something that back in the olden days, before the slagosphere wasted all your time telling you how not to do things they called a goal.  It’s a beautiful and magical thing that doesn’t need money or time or effort to believe in.  It’s only different from a dream in that you made it yourself, instead of letting your subconscious do all the work while you sleep.

Now, okay, here’s the little-bit harder step, are you ready?

Look at that THING you just said you wanted to make.  Really look at it.  Now, right now, tonight, NOT tomorrow morning, or this weekend, or once your work rush has let off a little, or after the holidays, or sometime in the New Year: Right. Fucking. Now.

DECIDE WHETHER YOU’RE GOING TO DO IT, OR NOT.

Period.  This is it.  You’ve been putting it off, or you’ve been planning to get around to it, or you know that once you get a little spare time it’s at the top of the list… for HOW long now?  I’m looking at you.  I know you’re already taking a breath to rattle off the list of all the things standing in your way.  and what’s more, I know you know they’re just excuses.

And it needs to end, now.  Your life is never going to GET less stressful.  It’s honestly not.  That’s not how life works.  When we put off the things we want to do, the stress of that adds into the stress of life.  You’re not going to GET more hours in the day.  You’re never going to have enough money to put aside spare time.  You’re not going to suddenly have That Moment where it all gels and you suddenly break out and start doing what you want to be doing… unless you MAKE that moment, right here, right now.

I'm not suggesting your quit your job and napalm the bridge behind you as you drive out of the parking lot, because not everyone is going to be able to do this and make a living from it … but that's not really the point, here. The point is to encourage those of you (us) who have been unable or unwilling to take the chance and just create something, already, to get out there and do it.

I once saw a poster or a paperweight or something that said, "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" Think about that for a second. What thing do you want to make? What story do you want to tell? What song do you want to sing?

We can take these great creative risks now, because we really can't fail, not in the traditional monetary sense. Sure, we could be out a lot of time, but even that time isn't entirely wasted, as I hope to illustrate with two examples of my own: 

1. I spent days putting together a little book that I thought would be awesome, only to discover that there was absolutely no way to make it affordable for me or you. I was disappointed that I spent all that time, but it was incredibly fun while I did it, and maybe I have a script for a show now, instead of a book.

2. I worked really hard to write a story that ultimately wasn't really finished, as much as it was let go. I spent a lot of time after I was supposed to be done with it, trying to figure out how I could fix it so I could publish it, before reaching the very upsetting conclusion that it just can't be fixed. I talked about this with some friends who are writers, and told them how I felt like the whole thing was a waste of time and that all I got out of the experience was the knowledge that I need to do a whole lot of grinding before I level up as a writer. One of my friends, an incredibly talented and accomplished writer, told me, "Every project you finish levels you up as a writer." While I was (and am) still disappointed at what I believe was a failed project, I can't disagree with my friend. I gained Writer XP, even if I didn't gain a great story that I can feel good about publishing and selling.

So what are you waiting for? Do or do not. There is no Try. Whether it's an Etsy store, or a book with Lulu, or a T-shirt or a mug or a clock or a fucking teddy bear in a sweater from CafePresssingle  … hell, if it's a photograph you put on Flickr or a podcast you host on Archive.org, or a story that you write for Ficly or your own blog, just do it! Go get excited and make things, and when you're done, come back here and link us to what you did.