We’re finally back for the tenth volume in the iconic UFO series! It’s been three years since the last volume as I am super overworked but I just couldn’t let the series languish. We got exciting new (and returning) headliners and, as always, will open our doors to newer writers with a submission window once we fund.
Please help spread the word of this campaign far and wide, and consider preordering your copy this way — it’s the most efficient way to help us rather than waiting for the book to become available online and in stores.
I’ll be launching a UFO10 Kickstarter campaign in September! Please follow this link and click Notify me on launch. Even if you do not generally back campaigns on Kickstarter, we’d like as many people to click this as possible to show others that there’s interest in the book and the campaign. So it’s a small way to help that costs you nothing. 🙂
I already have a fistful of headliner stories in hand, with more surely to come by the time we launch. Not announcing them yet, but it’s fiction from people you should be very excited to read.
The Kickstarter campaign launched this morning and we’re already over 1/5 toward our goal. Don’t miss out on some really exciting rewards, including buttons that are limited to the first 50 backers who pledge for the print book tiers!
Even if this is not a good time for you to be spending on this at the moment, you can help by sharing the campaign with others. Thank you in advance!
Two new anthologies are live on Kickstarter as of today! Murderbugs and Vampire Survival Guide are both edited by Mike Jack Stoumbos and will be published in 2024.
If the campaign reaches a $6000 mark I will write a story for the Vampire Survival Guide tentatively titled “Hemotherapy” (not a typo.) Intrigued to see what advice I might have for vampires to survive in the cold and uncaring human world? Pledge some cash to the campaign!
Those who pledge in the first 24 hours will also get a stack of additional e-books, including David Hankins’ hilarious new novel Death and the Taxman as well as my own Funny Horror anthology!
Yesterday, I got to do a fun thing that I’ve been planning for well over a year. Check it out:
When we discussed cover ideas for The Middling Affliction, the publisher was on board with the five Watch guardians on the cover but wanted them against the background of an iconic Brooklyn landmark. Brooklyn is awesome, but there aren’t that many immediately-identifiable locations like the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building, etc. After some thought I settled on this extremely popular spot in Dumbo offering a view of the Manhattan skyline and a slice of the Manhattan Bridge (not the Brooklyn Bridge, which looks completely different!). The fabulous cover artist Tulio Brito made the spot look both magical and recognizable at the same time. I immediately thought it’d be cool to have a picture taken in that spot, holding the book. Except Brooklyn is huge, and Dumbo is a 45-minute drive away from my house (that’s not even assuming you might get stuck in rush hour traffic.) I was finally in the vicinity yesterday, meeting a friend who was visiting from out of town for lunch, and we got this done.
Of course, this means I will need to visit the Bowling Green by Wall St. and take a photo in front of the Charging Bull when Kakistocracy is released.
Meantime, I’ve been sharing small snippets of text from Kakistocracy on social media as the means of promoting the upcoming book and drawing attention to this campaign. I figured I should share them here as well, since not everyone stalks me on social media (their loss, I say!)
#1. Can you tell what this author’s favorite beverage is?
# 2. Those who listened to the Kickstarter campaign video will recognize what this bit is riffing off of.
#3. This one is non-fiction. Rat Rock is a real NYC landmark, located on West 114th St.
#4. Not a humorous bit but this is very relevant to the themes of the novel.
#5. This one was selected by my friend and one of my favorite writers, Ken Liu, who’s currently reading the book. He said it made him laugh out loud, prompting his kids to ask him what was going on.
Almost exactly a year ago, my funny urban fantasy novel The Middling Affliction was published. The book has done pretty well. It sold out the first print run, received some excellent reviews, and my wonderful publisher Arc Manor/Caezik picked up the sequel. Kakistocracy, book 2 of the Conradverse Chronicles is due to be published on October 17, 2023.
The audio version of The Middling Affliction was published by Orange Sky, a division of Spotify. They selected a wonderful narrator and the audiobook sold pretty well. But, unfortunately, not well enough by huge publishing company metrics to pick up the sequel.
I love audiobooks. Most of my pleasure reading is done in that format, while I reserve my screen and paper book time for reading anthology submissions, books to be blurbed, etc. So, I really wanted an audiobook of Kakistocracy to exist. I don’t have the overhead of a major corporation and so I could get this done at an affordable rate and then have total control over the audiobook, which would allow me to give away copies, run promotions, and do all sorts of things I couldn’t pull off under the watchful eye of a responsible publisher (and their even-more-responsible accountants), such as posting the entire first chapter on YouTube for free.
I reached out to Patrick Boylan, a very talented stage and screen actor who narrated The Middling Affliction, and was thrilled to learn that he’s 100% on board to narrate the sequel! So now, my goal is to offset some of the production and marketing costs of this audiobook.
So, why is this project risky? Traditionally, audiobook-focused campaigns don’t do very well on Kickstarter. People love physical books (ebooks are nice, too!) whereas Kakistocracy has a traditional publisher who has been very supportive and I don’t want to do anything that will hurt their sales or preorders in any way whatsoever. If anything, I’m doing this because I believe controlling the audiobook rights will help me promote the series and generate future sales for both myself and for them. And—again—because I adore audiobooks and really want this to exist.
So, would you please head over to the new campaign page, check out the book promo video and consider supporting this project? I’ve made a lot of my past books available as rewards alongside the audiobook itself, of course. I’m also offering copies of my upcoming 2023 anthology, The Digital Aesthete (read more about it in the campaign.) So there’s lots of goodies available.
There’s just over 24 hours remaining in the UFO9 kickstarter and we still have a long way to go. If you’d like to preorder a copy of this anthology (and from the stories I already have it is shaping up to be an outstanding volume), please consider doing before it’s too late!
Check out the gorgeous cover for UFO8 by Tomasz Maronski!
The Kickstarter campaign to fund this volume is now live. There are loads of great rewards, including some very limited ones such as signed books and tuckerizations, so select yours soon! Submissions for UFO8 will open on April 1 and the number of stories I can buy from the open call will definitely depend on the success of the crowdfunding campaign. #SFWAPro
Comments Off on UFO8 Kickstarter is Now Live, plus cover reveal! | Publishing | Tagged: kickstarter, UFO8 | Permalink Posted by Alex Shvartsman
We’re live on kickstarter! Please help me fund the production of this book and snag some awesome rewards in the process. Even if you’re not ready to pledge, head over to the campaign link to check out the full wraparound cover, listen to a teaser from the audio book version, and read a sample chapter!
There’s only 5 days left! If you enjoy Unidentified Funny Objects, please consider preordering the current volume on Kickstarter. It will help me keep the series going and get you a great book in time for the holidays!
Posted by Alex Shvartsman 
Alex Shvartsman's Speculative Fiction 