Too Quiet (Or Why I Decided To Self

by Jed Alexander My books were too quiet. Or that’s what I kept being told. Never mind that Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd’s lullaby in prose GOODNIGHT MOON, a book about a bunny who stays in bed throughout the entire book, is and continues to be one of the most consistently best-selling books in history…according to publishers, quiet didn’t sell. My agent submitted my books to publisher after publisher and we heard the same words over and over. It’s too quiet. There needs to be more action. I always got great compliments on my art, but as much as they seemed to like the way I drew, nobody was hiring me to illustrate their books. So I decided to make a book on my own terms. I would make a book that was everything that publishers said they didn’t want from me. Too quiet? My book was going to have hardly any words at all. Instead of one long narrative, it would be a series of short pieces and vignettes, most of which had no perceivable plot. Even the format was unconventional: rather than typical children’s book dimensions it was a square. Instead of the usual 32 pages, it was 52. It was everything publishers didn’t want but it was the book I wanted to make. And the only way it would see print was if I self-published it. To raise the money, I decided to use crowdfunding. I spent nearly a year researching everything I could about successful crowdfunding campaigns. I discovered that Kickstarter would be my best option. Though I had no experience in business or marketing, I came up with a marketing plan and budget. Though I had never made a video before, I shot my video on my iPhone and learned how to use the editing software on my Mac. My goal was $7,000 dollars. Some of my friends told me this was too