My Creative Commons novel, 4,000 downloads and counting

If you've been following any reputable news source over the last few months, you'll know nothing about the fact that I released my debut novel "The Banjo Players Must Die" into the wild armed only with a Creative Commons license in August.

A day or two ago, this novel rounded 4,000 downloads between archive.org, memoware, manybooks, and scribd.

So was it worth it? I worked on this novel on and off for all of five years, and then I released it. For free. What was I expecting, and what did I get?

Well, for one thing, I got an award. The Banjo Players Must Die immediately became Book of the Month on manybooks, which is a big deal to me seeing how manybooks.net is one of the largest and best e-book catalogs on the whole intarwebs.

I also got reviews. I got reviews so good that you can't help but want to be a writer when you read them. Look at this one:

Josef Assad's novel should be the next Big Thing. Think Chuck Palahniuk meets Thomas Pynchon meets Douglas Adams. And all of it - or so the voices in my head seem to tell me - told in the familiar voice of Monty Python's. On crack.

To be taken in small doses only - there's so much stuff going on. And yes, some of the puns are not as funny as the author thinks, but some are outright brilliant.

And footnotes! Read the footnotes!

That was my first review, and look at the names in there! Adams! Pynchon! Palahniuk! Monty Python!

How about this one then:

I started laughing about 2 paragraphs in. It looks really really good. I am lamenting having to wait until vacation starts to read this. But I have to, cause if I really try and start it, I think I'll be done by tomorrow.

Doesn't that make you want to be a writer?

I got mails of appreciation too. One fellow was of the opinion that this writing could only be the work of a Discordian mind and promptly anointed me a Discordian pope. Another had this to say:

Absolutely hilarious. Thanks for publishing that. I laughed so hard my landlady now thinks (read: knows) that I'm insane.

That last one had the e-mail subject of Yes, I did check my armpit, your friend owes you ten dollars. That's the kind of novel this is, and if you really want to know what the subject is referring to, I figure you're just going to have to read the book!

I think what I'm trying to say here is this: in the last few pages of the novel, I presented my reasons for going Creative Commons. I had no patience for agents and publishers, and I wanted to connect better with readers. It's an unusual novel, and on some level I do understand that the mainstream publishing industry might look at it in a funny way (the way Ramses might have looked at, say, a good looking girl dressed as a particularly loose hamster). But I've gotten through to 4,000 people in three months and I've done it all the one-man-army-with-a-bargain-box-water-pistol way.

I might still entertain the notion of dead-tree editions one day, but for now, this five year experiment is giving everything I expected and much more.

Get the book here. Read it. Write reviews for me. Anywhere. On slashdot, on manybooks. Blog about it. Pass it on to friends, family, or enemies (excuse the tautology).

Welcome to the new publishing paradigm! My novel lives through you!