So My First Book Is Coming Out Tomorrow
And I'm excited, stresse, anxious, thrilled and everything between
It’s happening. Microdosing Fiction comes out tomorrow and I can’t really describe the feelings. It is an insane mix of anxiety and euphoria. Let’s talk about it.
I don’t want to let Microdosing addicts hanging, so today your microdose is Euphoria — 100mg!
From the technical perspective — the book will come out tomorrow at 6 PM CET / 9 AM Pacific and will sell directly through my website. There will be a paperback and a hardback version!
Now, if you have no idea what book am I talking about. I made a collection of a 100 of my micro-stories. Each story is then accompanied by a blank page, that’s in there for you. To write your own story, draw inside it, or creatively express yourself in your own way.
I hope this collection will find a way to someone who doesn’t follow me here, and maybe gives them a reason to create.
Read. Get Inspired. Create.
Behind the Book
A couple of people asked me stuff about the publishing process. So let’s check out some stuff from behind the scenes!
Who are you publishing with?
The book is self-published through a print-on-demand service called Lulu Direct. They offer a POD service that you can easily connect with Shopify and sell the book on your terms. Anytime a person buys the book it sends the information to Lulu and Lulu prints it, and sends it out.
It’s basically the same as Amazon KDP but without Amazon in it.
Why not KDP?
Two reasons. One, when researching which POD service to go with, I found out that Lulu uses the heaviest and the thickest paper. This was crucial since the whole point of the book is to have space for the readers creativity. Having your pen bleed through the pages would make for a pretty shitty experience.
The second reason was the customization. Lulu offers different ways of print including coil bounds, dust jackets and so on. One of the initial ideas was to make the collection more like a coil bound notebook, because it would be the easiest to write in. But since they only offer soft cover coil bound I had to stray away from this idea. But even then I was so in touch with the Lulu’s process that I stayed with them.
The cons here are that the prints are a bit more expensive, but overall I really like the quality and the whole process on the Lulu’s back end was pretty easy and their self-publishing articles were super helpful.
What were the other versions?
I’m glad you are asking even though you are not. When I first ordered a sample of the collection back in July I found out that the cream paper (which imo looks better in books) is bleeding through as hell—I now notice the bleeding of ink through in every single book I open—and as mentioned above that was not ideal.
Then I played around with different covers. I had to try all of the bounding options to make sure this is a book you want to hold and most importantly use.
As you can see below the covers went through a lot of changes. I learned a lot, but I hope to never make my own cover again.
If you have any questions about the process, feel free to ask in the comments!
And I hope to see you here tomorrow 🫡
Cheers!
~Miguel
CONGRATS!!!!
“Euphoria,” she yelled over the pulsating technobeats at the hunky dude in the skullcap sidling up to her at the rave.
“Ah, I see. Quite so. In this modern dystopia, you have given the prescription, I think, for what ails us, for our modern malaise. More joy. Boundless and hopeful, whether innate and serene or offshoots of pharmacology, even momentary madness. Anything to trigger our hedonistic hotspots.”
“No, jackass. That’s my name, Euphoria. I was just introducing myself. My father was a psychology professor who minored in Greek.” Then turning away, “It was going to be nice to meet you.”
“Scorps: Shooting Up”
I pushed the plunger. Red liquid drained into my flesh as tears rained down my face. I wanted to poke out the cyan eyes on my forehead; I thought I was ugly before. A warm, euphoric feeling washed over me - nothing could hurt me. I plopped down on the toilet. I promised I’d quit a million times until I had no one to promise.
Fists hammered the door. “Hurry up, asshole!”
I struck the door with my claw. “Fuck off!”
Becoming a freak showed me how ugly “people” are. Who are the real freaks? I’m not diseased; I’ve been cured!