I've been soliciting feedback on fonts...

...in various places and also Googling to find existing discussions of the same topic. (It's pretty amazing how much you can learn by watching other people having the same conversation you're trying to have.)

There's a very clear preference for serif fonts, which I expected... but my highly scienterrific research methods suggest that maybe between 1 in 3 and 1 in 6 readers may prefer sans serif. I'm wondering if there's any substantial reason not to offer both a Sans and an Avec edition. I can't see one, especially on works that will likely only have 4-6 chapters each. It'll be very easy to reformat the body text and then make sure nothing got broken or looks weird.

For Sans fonts, Tahoma seems to have a lot to recommend it, and the text looks pretty good in it. I mean, it's the standard Windows font for a reason. That reason is MS designed it to be, but I mean, of all the complaints I hear about Windows it's not that their font makes people's eyes fall out, right?

I saw an unexpected recommendation for Bookman Old Style on a forum post about ebook formatting... unexpected because I've never given it much thought as a font. But it's got a nice, pleasingly round shape to it. It seems very readable. I like the way it looks.

I'm not saying I'm deadset on these fonts. Those are just what I'm leaning towards after one evening of research. As always, I am emphatically not a visually-oriented person. If something does not appear to be actively trying to kill me, I find it aesthetically pleasing. I'm also not up a trained typographical ninja or anything. I'm putting these up here as candidates; if anybody has any suggestions for other fonts that might be better, or any pitfalls I might run into using either of these two, I'd appreciate it.

Also any other tips on ebook typography. I'm probably going to go with a slightly larger font size, like 14 point... something that won't stand out as huge but will be nice and readable. Does that strike anybody as too large? Honestly, I'm probably going to need to get an ebook reader, if I'm going to make a serious go of this... that way I can see for myself how this will look when it's held in the hand instead of looking at my computer screen and trying to imagine it.

After I give the first chapter to my proofreader and get it back, I'm planning on putting up a PDF of just that chapter for anyone who wants to see it. This will be both a free preview of the story and a chance for people to weigh in on the readability and visual aesthetics.

Edit-Dendum:

After making PDFs of the current draft of the first chapter in both Bookman and Tahoma and loading them up on my phone (the closest thing I have to an e-reader at the moment), I have to say I'm pretty settled on the decision to offer two different versions. While I generally prefer serifs myself, I find it markedly easier to read the sans font on the little screen. I can comfortably read the chapter in sans with the phone upright and a whole page displayed at a time. In the serif'd version, I have to turn it sideways to enlarge the text, which means I'm scrolling more. But it's very readable and looks pretty awesome when enlarged, so I think people who are going to be reading it on devices with slightly larger screens will be pretty happy with it.

I'm planning on putting the two versions of the first chapter up sometime next week. Hopefully I can get feedback from people using actual e-readers.

Yet another post about Gift of the Bad Guy.

Tomorrow I'm going to do another behind-the-scenes post for Tales of MU like the one about things that changed in the execution, but for now here's Yet Another Update On Gift Of The Bad Guy/the snackbar concept. I'm excited about this.

First, Bookman Old Style is almost definitely going to be the serif font. The number of people who've said "ooh" when I told them what I'm planning on using is impressive, and what's more, I like the reasons I'm hearing. It seems to be a genuine aesthetically choice... you don't have to be educated about why it's a good font to think it's a good font.

Second, at some point I absorbed and internalized a very wrong internal benchmark for estimating the page count of a work. Someone early on in MU's existence did a quick-and-dirty estimate using 500 words per page, and I thought that sounded about right and never questioned it. Turns out that 250 words of a standard 12 point font fit much more nicely on a printed page.

So my little fifty page book? Is a hundred pages long. I'm re-examining the price point question based on that, but it's possible that the results of my examination will be "No, I still want people to have a dirt cheap buy-in." Never fear, gentle readers... I wouldn't be giving it away at a penny a page if I wasn't sure I could make money off it.

And if it doesn't exactly sell like gangbusters? Meh. I've had a good month. If it starts slow, it starts slow. It's not like I've invested thousands of dollars and there's a whole department full of people whose jobs are riding on my first quarter sales figures being outstanding across the board. This is the beauty of a one person operation: if I somehow only sell three copies of the book in March, it's not a failure... it's a book that has yet to succeed.

I mean, I still have money trickling in from the PDFs of the first five Tales of MU books, and they are not half as snazzy as this is. I'll be honest, I'm not proud of them. I put them up because people demanded them. I did not at that point have the skills to make a decent e-book. I'm sure I'm still not great, but when I load the mock-up I made of Gift of the Bad Guy onto my phone and look at it, I get chills. I've never believed in the collected volumes of Tales of MU to the degree that I believe in the serial, and it shows.

This thing... both the specific book and the publishing concept behind it... is something I believe in. It's something I think people are going to want. It's something I think people are going to enjoy. And maaaaaaaaan, I know and you know that my hard drives and the internet are littered with the bones of my projects that ran out of steam, but here's the thing: this is not just another entry in that long line. It is the ultimate entry in it. Because that's exactly what happened with Gift of the Bad Guy... until I threw out a bunch of my preconceptions and started making new shit up. And now I'm looking at a bunch of stuff I never finished and I'm seeing them with new eyes.

Honestly, I feel like I did when Tales of MU started to catch on. MU isn't my first crack at weblit... I was writing stories on the internet as far as back as my junior year of high school (spoiler warning: they weren't very good. Though Ariella's were a thing of brilliance.) I'd been writing serials online for like three years before I started Tales of MU, but Tales of MU is where a bunch of things just fell into place for me.

Anyway, I'm blabbing a lot about this but it's because I'm excited and because honestly it's killing me to have a story and not be sharing it with people. Among the reasons I'm not launching the book with my typical ready-fire-aim immediacy is that I've arranged for a proofreader to go over it first. The first chapter should be available in a finished state sometime this week, and when it does I'll be putting up PDFs of both versions (sans and avec serif).

And I'm going to cut this post off here, because I think it's been sufficiently established that I can ramble on forever about this topic.

Lessons My Weird Fundraiser Thing Taught Me

1. Make hay while the sun shines.
   
   I did this when I did it because things were getting a little uncomfortably tight, but there was no real crisis, and because of that I've got a comfortable cushion of money in my bank account that will be there if I do have a crisis between now and WisCon. If that happens, then the question becomes "How do I pay for WisCon a little bit from now?", not "Oh my God what am I going to do to get money right now?"
   
   And because I'm ahead on things I can probably add to that cushion at the rate at which I expected to be saving for WisCon or more, so even after I pay for the con-related expenses I'll still be protected.
   
   
2. Rattling the cup < putting on a show.
   
   I've said before that I need to rattle the cup more often, but you know, I think in the long term doing something like this... not this exact same thing but something fun and semi-competitive that's going to stir people up and get them involved... doing something like this every several months is going to work out better than rattling the cup a couple of times a month. You know? The sponsorships are at a nice steady level, and I think that'll only improve when I roll out a few of the things I've been working on quietly in the background here.
   
   If I make a point of doing a fundraiser like this on a quarterly basis or so, not only will I not have to keep reminding myself to rattle the cup (which can feel awkward), but folks can plan accordingly. I know there were people waiting for payday, because they told me so. People who get paid on the other week or who don't have direct deposit might have missed out. Next time I'll plan ahead. I mean, I'd kicked this idea around since I started planning volume 2, but I only finally did it on an impulse.
   
   
3. Readers come up with the best incentives.
   
   When I name a incentive target I always try to come up with something I think that the readers might enjoy that I probably wouldn't have done in the normal course of things. I mean, I'd love to explore more about Mackenzie's family overseas but they're just not connected to the main story, you know? But readers can come up with things that I wouldn't ever dream of writing about... Bill Springstep in the modern world? When I saw that request in my email, I wasn't sure I could do it, I mean, my first thought was, "I'm not even sure that Bill is real." But you know what? Apocrypha happens. Heck, the most recent Bill story that went up had a disclaimer on it that it was a later addition added in what was at one point the modern age. Do gnomes stop telling stories about Bill?
   

Thanks to everyone's who participated!