The Complete LotFP: 1998-2005 Book Thread

[horggard]

Howdy Jim,

Sorry for the extended quote here, but you have got my curiosity piqued:

Are you going to compile all of your inties and rants compendium-style? If so, will there be a theme, or just a chronology of your experiences? Also, will you do a sort of reflexive piece--other than in the foreword/preface--where you "locate" yourself now (ala 'the runagate music journalist that is') juxtaposed against the Jim Raggi who did all those interviews and made all of those rants "back in the day" (ala the budding music journalist then')?

I just get very curious as to how people approach such things, especially when dealing with a glut--albeit a meaningful glut--of 1.167 million words.

garth,
decider of Bush's deciding, and deciding that it is el stinko

Up to 1,167,664 words.

Holy crap. The revision process is so embarrassing. I'm looking at people's names right now. eek.

Did you know that I have never, and I mean never, spelled Jonas Renkse's name correctly before today?

The "Dream Theater's John Bertucci" thing was bad enough.

But yeah. Lots of corrections to be made, we're probably talking months worth of work before it's ready to be passed off to an outside proofer. haha.

I have all the material I need except the work I did on the ProgPower programs (probably a couple dozen interviews in total there), plus I hope I still have the tapes of the interviews I did in early 2004 that have never been transcribed, let alone released: Dan Swanö about Crimson II, Dusk's Babar Shaikh, Cea Serin's Jay Lamm, and Ásmegin/Ram-Zet's Ingvild Johannesen. and Raymond Njerve I believe from Lunaris. Those tapes (and others) wouldn't be here for another two or three months though. In my big piles, I also have a Forest Stream interview I never printed from 2002 or something (boring), Pissing Razors in 2001 (the album they were doing promotion for stunk, but basically was anti-Bush right after 9/11 when Bush was well regarded leading the nation's response, but the guy wouldn't stand behind his album and say anything bad about him at that point, haha), plus I need to re-listen to a Dan Swanö interview from 01 or 02 where I covered up the Death's Design plot for Dan and I want to get the real wording for the re-release since a half-decade on, I'm hardly going to ruin the album's big joke.

Because I can't think of one thing at a time, I'm also wondering about layout ideas for the book. 800 pages of pure text is going to kill eyes. So another project for me might be to start contacting people to get photos from the time period their interviews took place. Plus, for the non-weekly issues, I should probably reprint those covers in the book as well.

Any good ideas on what the cover should look like? Since it's not going to be in stores anyway I thought I'd just slap the LotFP logo on the cover with my name (and the other contributors' names over the years) on the bottom, and put "The Complete Interviews and Editorials 1998 - 2005" on the spine. *shrug* Cart before horse.

Also thinking of just going ahead and making it a hardcover book and making the price $49.95. Shit's going to be too ridiculously big (almost 2" thick) for softcover and those get beat up too quickly. Planning on having it available through Amazon, including the co.uk and .de versions as well so shipping costs won't be quite as deadly for any Europeans.

All of this with a goal of selling 200 of them. wooo.

 

[Jim LotFP]

Are you going to compile all of your inties and rants compendium-style? If so, will there be a theme, or just a chronology of your experiences? Also, will you do a sort of reflexive piece--other than in the foreword/preface--where you "locate" yourself now (ala 'the runagate music journalist that is') juxtaposed against the Jim Raggi who did all those interviews and made all of those rants "back in the day" (ala the budding music journalist then')?

It's going to be in sequential order of issues... everything in #1, then #2, etc. Within each issue, the interviews will run first, in alphabetical order according to the interviewee's last name. Where two people are interviewed at once, I have no idea how I am going to place that.

There will be a short introduction for every issue, detailing the release date and any relevant production notes that I can think of.

I don't think I'm going to do much commentary within the text itself, since by doing it in order, Scum at the end will place me better than anything else I'd write.

 

[horggard]

All right, so then this will include the LotFP weekly? Or will this be separate and apart?

By the way, how the fuck are you getting this onto Amazon.com? 'You are thee holder of secrets//I wish to be thee possessor.' You "wowed" me with Lulu.com, but what do you have up your sleeve for distribution on Amazon? I wonder...

garth,
decider of Raggi's "e-" expressions, and deciding that they are ver"e-" good

P.S. Please tell me you're going to use MS Publisher and not MS Word to lay this out...

P.P.S. Your site was the star of a presentation I made last month in one of my doctoral courses! No one knew that "e-"zines/"e-"fanzines existed...for real. As if they were the fucking boogeyman...

It's going to be in sequential order of issues... everything in #1, then #2, etc. Within each issue, the interviews will run first, in alphabetical order according to the interviewee's last name. Where two people are interviewed at once, I have no idea how I am going to place that.

There will be a short introduction for every issue, detailing the release date and any relevant production notes that I can think of.

I don't think I'm going to do much commentary within the text itself, since by doing it in order, Scum at the end will place me better than anything else I'd write.

 

[Jim LotFP]

All right, so then this will include the LotFP weekly? Or will this be separate and apart?

That material (interviews and editorials) will be in there, in sequential order. A lot of the Weekly stuff had a print run of 100 and never was reprinted anywhere else. Rarities galore!

By the way, how the fuck are you getting this onto Amazon.com? 'You are thee holder of secrets//I wish to be thee possessor.' You "wowed" me with Lulu.com, but what do you have up your sleeve for distribution on Amazon? I wonder...

http://www.lulu.com/help/index.php?fID=213

It's a service Lulu.com offers. Technically, you'd be able to special order it at your local bookstore as well.

As an example: Conspiracy of Shadows' first edition had this service.
Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1411605055/sr=8-3/qid=1145550029/103-8348760-7834207
Amazon.co.uk:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1411605055/qid=1145550168/203-1996914-2172730
Amazon.de: http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/1411605055/qid=1145550208/302-8488421-3932807

With the subject matter, I am guessing that there might be decent interest outside of North America for this. With the size of the book, shipping costs will be stupid/ridiculous if there's not a more local ordering option for people.

P.S. Please tell me you're going to use MS Publisher and not MS Word to lay this out...

I don't plan on doing the layouts myself at all.

P.P.S. Your site was the star of a presentation I made last month in one of my doctoral courses! No one knew that "e-"zines/"e-"fanzines existed...for real. As if they were the fucking boogeyman...

Wow.

 

[horggard]

Re: The LotFP Weekly stuff, this is great news as I really wanted all of this in one place. To know that you’re going to do a separate publication for the CD reviews gives me chagrin and shivers; the former because, again, I’d really like this stuff in one place, and the latter because you are capable of some pretty awesome review-writing.

Have you thought of, for the covers/presentation, perhaps tying in both (as well as future publications) by making them sort of a part of each other. I’m thinking about the (A)D&D books like Monster Manual I & II and all of those books where, when you picked one up, you just wanted to own the rest—granted, art and presentation had MUCH to do with those buying decisions, but you might do something along these lines that links up the LotFP lineage/unfolding of events.

[And just as an aside, perhaps when you get all of your back issues scanned and converted into .PDFs, you could direct them to your site for free downloads of those individual issues…? A “no brainer” there, but I’m just thinking of self-produced works that highlight other media that have similar content. “…And Introducing LotFP Backissues As A Free Mooch-Cast at www.lotfp.com Where You’ll Find the Latest in Raggi-Approved Metal Goodness and Greatness...” or something like that.]

You don’t plan on doing the layouts yourself? Really? You haven’t roped your wife into this have you?

 

[Jim LotFP]

Re: The LotFP Weekly stuff, this is great news as I really wanted all of this in one place. To know that you’re going to do a separate publication for the CD reviews gives me chagrin and shivers; the former because, again, I’d really like this stuff in one place, and the latter because you are capable of some pretty awesome review-writing.

The reviews wouldn't fit into an 800 page book unless we used a really tiny font. This is going to be ridiculously pacted as it is.

Have you thought of, for the covers/presentation, perhaps tying in both (as well as future publications) by making them sort of a part of each other. I’m thinking about the (A)D&D books like Monster Manual I & II and all of those books where, when you picked one up, you just wanted to own the rest—granted, art and presentation had MUCH to do with those buying decisions, but you might do something along these lines that links up the LotFP lineage/unfolding of events.

Haven't thought that far ahead, honestly.

And just as an aside, perhaps when you get all of your back issues scanned and converted into .PDFs, you could direct them to your site for free downloads of those individual issues…? A “no brainer” there, but I’m just thinking of self-produced works that highlight other media that have similar content. “…And Introducing LotFP Backissues As A Free Mooch-Cast at www.lotfp.com Where You’ll Find the Latest in Raggi-Approved Metal Goodness and Greatness...” or something like that.

I haven't been scanning full issues, just the parts I want for the book. I'll get a few full issues up sooner or later though.

You don’t plan on doing the layouts yourself? Really? You haven’t roped your wife into this have you?

Oh god no. She doesn't understand columns in Word. haha. Who will be doing it, I'm not sure. But I don't have any clue about proper formatting programs so it can't be me.

 

[Jim LotFP]

http://www.lotfp.com/lotfpbook.php

Some details about what exactly will be in the book.

 

[Jim LotFP]

Man... while fiddling around with a professional layout program last night, I discovered it doesn't convert formatting done with Word (italics, fonts, centering and justification), so all of the formatting I've been doing is absolutely meaningless.

I'll look for a workaround, but until then, #$%&@#.

And that is so much harder to type on a European keyboard.

On the plus side, I figured out how to type things like é and ÿ without invoking special functions. bwáhähãhâ!