It remains to be seen whether or not Paul actually, literally, designed the eyeball effect throughout the film.

Maybe he didn't.

Maybe he did.

We won't know until he sees it.

Thought of you guys.

Well, color me in the market for a manager if anyone's looking to change careers.

I strongly disliked Redshirts.

First of all, thanks, it's really useful to see shit like this just laid out in front of you. Second of all, "promote those in various places" could use a little bit of elaboration. Is that, like, sending FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE emails to blogs and shit, or just... what?

Out of curiosity, I'd be interested to hear your proposed order-of-operations procedure for doing this.

Actually, now is as good a time as ever to ask y'all about this, because I'm still working it out in my head.

I have no idea what to do with this thing when it comes out. I've been trying to figure out the best move, and here's what I've come up with.

First a list of what I'm taking as givens:

• Nobody who doesn't already know I exist wants this album, naturally. Some sort of promotion will have to happen too, if that is to change. (Duh.) The only people who will buy it off the bat are in Group 1 - People Who Know I Exist. I'm estimating this number to be in the mid-thousands, and further estimating the number of people who will actually buy the damn thing to be in the low hundreds, if not lower.

• The first wave of what could be called promotion will be word of mouth by people in Group 1, and may facilitate a few more purchases relatively quickly. This would be Group 2, People Who Know The People Who Know Me. Obviously this number would be an exponent of the mid-thousands estimate, but I'll bet the proportion of people in this group who buy the thing will be way lower.

• Thusly, it is my assumption that until some sort of promotion happens, I'm looking at no more than a couple hundred purchases, probably fewer. Probably way fewer. My odds-on guess, just for funsies and for future amusement, is 61 purchases within the first month.

Now, a list of "you should take these as givens:"

• I'm pretty lazy once a project is done.

• I'm pretty much categorically embarrassed to promote myself at all.

• Unless I already have a magic fanbase in attendance, I'm probably not ever gonna gig for my own music. I'm not trying to get a music career off the ground. I'd love one, but for reasons one and two, I'm not the guy who gets a music career off the ground by gigging. Which means I'm probably not the guy who gets a music career.

Kay?

So here's my general thoughts. I think, for sake of ease and with an eye toward practicality, the first thing I do (once I have the album, which I momentarily do not) is run a print of CD's, maybe 25, some small number, that I actually put a bit of time into. Cool album art, possibly included HD versions of the video blogs, full-quality audio tracks, etc.. Sign those, whatever. CD's.

Then, on the website, I offer up a five-track song download for five bucks, through PayPal and whatever other easy and popular money services I can set up, and maybe sell the CD's for fifteen bucks or whatever. Make a shirt design or something, maybe. But handle all of that on my end, doing a bit of accounting, and not even bothering with iTunes and Cafepress and the like. Because I don't wanna. For now, anyway.

I'd handle Group 1 and Group 2 this way, instead of going through all the iTunesy stuff I'd have to do to sell my music through the store. All of this on the assumption of the givens above: I'm not Amanda Palmer, y'all, we're really not talking about a lot of people.

Then.

Depending on the response, I might immediately decide to move over to iTunes or what-have-you, or might not. If it's as I expect it will be, probably not.

I'm loosely planning on making at least one music video for this album, for whichever song I think would make the best single. (Failing that, best video.) This would ideally function the way a music video is supposed to function: as promotion. Make the video, make it well and do a good job on it, and do a bit of promotion on the video itself to try to get the ball rolling. io9 maybe, Reddit, that whole deal. Hope it takes off. Hope people buy the album.

If that actually starts to happen, or if I think it might, then do the overhead work to get onto iTunes and all that jazz.

Basically, I'm pre-exhausted thinking about the work involved in getting onto iTunes and dealing with however they pay an artist and bank accounts and all that. It'd be exciting and crucial for someone trying to get their music career off the ground, but like I said, unless the whole internet decides I'm a rock star, I'm not.

PayPal is already set up. Easy peasy. Adding other forms of payment for people who aren't comfortable with PayPal should be fairly straightforward, too.

This is my thinking. Thoughts?

Oops. Sorry, Zap. I must have been thinking of Switzerland.

Yeah, I'm seeing if anyone minds me reigning in the file size. This one is 46 megs, Contagion was 140.

THEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

nothing to see here, kids, let's go!