I wasn’t regretting my recent vacation at all, until I stumbled across a KBoards thread yesterday about Joe Konrath’s latest shenanigan (that’s said in only the most admiring of ways).

Konrath decided a while back to see if he could write, edit, create cover art and publish a book in an hour. While drunk! (Is this the self-publishing equivalent of drunk dialling?) While hardly great literature (one of them is How To Stop Farting), he says they are earning him about $10 a week (and they aren’t even under his name).

He extended a challenge to readers of his blog to pull off the same stunt. He was even generous and gave them eight hours. (Drunken state was optional.) Anyone who completed it would get a mention on his blog. I read through much of the KBoards thread about the challenge. Lots of authors were willing to give it a try, and Konrath published the challenges yesterday.

fair use
Joe Konrath

Check out the post. No, seriously, check it out. While some of the art is pretty bad, some is amazing. A significant number of the stories are parodies or joke books, but some of them look decent. One of the KBoards authors made #1 on the “Hot New Releases” on Amazon. (His cover is what I used as the image for this post.)

Of course, one pompous poster tried to deflate everyone by saying the whole effort devalued self-publishing. He was roundly (but politely) put in his place.

This is what I really admire about Konrath. He’s endlessly creative in coming up with ways to test the limits of the self-publishing paradigm. This feat would have been impossible prior to self-publishing.

Is it a good idea to basically throw up (double entendre intended) a book in a few hours? Both sides can be argued, and fortunately many self-pubbers put the time and attention warranted into their books. Still, this was a fascinating challenge, and another indication that we haven’t seen the end of creativity among self-published authors. Who knows what “publishing” will look like in another five years?

And I so wish I had been around to do my own book. Oh well. I’m sure Konrath will come up with another crazy/brilliant idea soon enough.

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