My Gothenburg Days – Dagar i mitt Göteborg

The exhilarating feeling of being ahead of myself that I had when I published last Wednesday’s blog entry on time – having written it a day in advance – has evaporated into my usual feeling of mild panic as I sit here in the middle of Wednesday morning composing this week’s effort. Only mild panic because I know I’ll get it done and I’ve already made the illustrations.

To continue last week’s metaphor, I’ve released the break and the carriage has started to roll.

TheSupercargo

At the weekend I registered an electronic proof of identity and visited verksamt.se, the Swedish government agencies’ website for company owners. Here I have updated a number of details about my one-man firm. And I’ve finally applied to change the name to TheSupercargo. Since I’ve been going by the moniker “TheSupercargo” online for about 9 years now, it feels right to try to make it official. I am stepping away from offering English-language services, to writing and publishing my own material. There is just one other Swedish company using the word “supercargo” and they are a company that actually offers real supercargo services to shipping. I’m hopeful that my name change will go through since I don’t think writing, publishing and language services are likely to be confused with real supercargo services.

Besides, there is that definite article, which makes all the difference!

[Sadly, Verksamt disagreed. My firm is now SC Words and Images.]

My Gothenburg Days – from plank to fair

I’ve also booked myself a place at the Book Fair with Egenutgivarna, so the further end of the crowd funding advertising campaign is also anchored. The campaign will start on the 16th September – the day of Planket. It will finish on the 29th September, the day after the Book Fair ends. Excuse me while I consult my diary and count again… Yes, 45 days.

Meanwhile, over at the FundedByMe website, I’ve started building a page for my campaign. The information I had was that it was possible to construct a campaign page in advance; altering, adding and adapting before launching the campaign. That turns out to be a truth with some modifications. There are a few things that it seems one must have organised in advance. Like a title for the campaign.

Fair enough, I have to have a title for the book too. I consulted my wife and we decided on My Gothenburg Days with Dagar i mitt Göteborg as the Swedish version.

Secondly, the FundedByMe campaign details need to be completed in English. On one level that’s not a problem, obviously, but on another it might be. I’m happier writing in English, but I think many of my potential supporters might be more open to a campaign presented in Swedish. This needs some thought.

First essay dust jacket

Thirdly, it turned out I needed a “campaign logo/image”. There is no information on the FundedByMe website about how big this should be, so I decided I would make it the same shape and size as one of my GBG365 photos, and treat it as a first essay in a jacket cover for the book.

Inevitably I managed to overproduce, and the illustrations on this page represent a couple of alternatives. Do they look like the covers of a book you might consider buying? All comments gratefully appreciated!

FundedByMe also recommend a campaign video, which I knew about and was prepared for. I had spent several days exploring options for a video camera, before I remembered that the camera I use to take my photographs can also film in HD. I tried it out by setting it up on a tripod and filming myself.

High-Definition

It’s very distressing to see how big, how pitted and how varicoloured my nose appears in high-definition. Not perhaps my best selling point. When I make the video I think I should not sit so close to the camera lens.

One other thing about FundedByMe before I bring this blog entry to a close. I’ve been concerned about asking people to pledge money to my campaign if it fails. Will they get their money back? FundedByMe say that they take all the money that is pledged and put it into an escrow account.

Now I know “escrow” looks like it has something to do with crowds (or even crows 🙂 ), but in fact it’s got nothing to do with either. According to the Online Etymological Dictionary it comes from old French and originally meant “a scrap of parchment”. What it means today is “A deposit or fund held in trust or as a security” (thank you the Oxford Dictionary).

A mean little test

I wanted to test this, and it seemed the best way to do so – though it felt a little mean – was to pledge money to support a FundedByMe campaign that I could see was going to fail.

I found a campaign to make a film that only had about nine supporters, had collected less than 2% of its target funding and only had about nine campaigning days left. So I pledged 200 Skr and then waited to see what would happen. The campaign failed and my money has been returned.

Now I feel I can reasonably go out and try to persuade people to support me.

The next step will be to plan a rewards scale. More about that next time.

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This article was written for the #Blogg52 challenge.