This book project, which is the beginning of a series of theoretical works, is now in the pre-sale, fundraising stage. 24 hours ago, the Kickstarter project went live. Already over 25 books (both hard copy and ebook) have been sold and the minimum for this funding project is 43% completed.
I had a publisher interested in the book, but I thought this book lent itself to a self-published project for these reasons: 1) this is a wild book with multiple genres of style, and it is multi-disciplinary in its approach, with philosophy, theology, psychology, history. sociology, tall tales, and autobiographical stories all leading to the conclusions in the book. Editors at a publisher would want to smooth this wildness out. 2) Today’s publishing industry wants a target audience. This book kicks against that trend by choosing to navigate across the cultural and ideological divides. The very theme of the book necessitates dialoguing with people from opposing worldviews, and breaks the target audience lines on purpose. The theme of the book does not exist without this break.
Yet in saying this, I am assuming that my circle of friends and followers are sufficiently large enough to make a small plunk and growing concentric circles with a little, little stone in the big ocean of today’s publishing world. Getting noticed, and getting one’s word out there is about as easy as skipping stones in a hurricane, and hitting a distant island with your little rock, but here I am skipping rocks in the storm of books coming out every day, and hoping to get a little notice.
Here are my introductory words to the Kickstarter project:
“If you want to throttle your relatives when they talk about politics or religion, if you throw your shoes at the TV set when the news (or a commercial) comes on, if you would rather vote on a barstool than in a voting booth in the coming election, if every church service you attend feels like a funeral for a friend, or if you would like to get that capitalistic latest-greatest-ring-thing out of your nose, then this is a book for you.
Burning Religion: navigating the impossible space between religion and secular society is a multi-genre book covering elements of philosophy, theology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, autobiography, poetry, and Carnivalesque tall tales in a thesis suggesting that making peace between disparate worldviews is not possible in any lasting way through typical moderate or third-way approaches. So called “radical” approaches are not radical enough. Finding lasting peace requires something insane. Burning Religion suggests that the insanity of the Carnival just might hold the key we are looking for.”
To read on, you can go to the kickstarter project itself, and see the video describing the project.
Burning Religion 