Buy your own personalized Mark Reads video!!!

Hello, Readers! I am very excited to announce my next ongoing project for this community: Mark Reads ______ Videoblogs!

I had an absolute blast making videos to raise money for mine and my brother’s ALC funds this year. (I’ll make a post tomorrow about how you can follow me on the ride and everything.) It was so fun that I didn’t want to stop. At the same time, I was trying to come up with a way to help raise money for Mark Does Stuff so that I could afford the numerous con appearances I have in 2012 and book the next Mark Does Stuff tour in the south, the midwest, and in Europe. (I really don’t sell as many books as people think I do. For some reason, people think I’m rich? OMG I AM SO NOT.)

At the same time, I wanted to keep Mark Does Stuff free for everyone, and I was worried about this idea and how the experience might change what I do for this community. I think this is a wonderful way to give people the chance to own their very own Mark Reads video, to have their sites and work promoted to the community, and to also entertain members who might not be able to afford to buy their own video.

So, here it is: $25 to own your own Mark Reads ______ video!

All of the details are on the page, but here’s the general idea. For just $25, I’ll record a video of about 20 minutes or so, give or take, of me reading anything in the Mark Reads style. This includes:

• Non-spoilery fanfic
• Any fic I read on the Mark Does Stuff tour
• Any chapter from any book I have ever read for Mark Reads.
• Any upcoming chapter for whatever project I am doing at the moment for Mark Reads. (Meaning that my first read through will be aloud and on camera, so you’ll get a live reaction to it.)
• STUFF THAT IS GOOD. Like, it doesn’t have to be BAD. Though I don’t know how entertaining a video like that will be?
• Whatever the length of the work is, I’ll generally cut things down to about 20 minutes for video. So don’t give me a 40,000 word fic, hahaha.

You will also be emailed the ACTUAL .mov file of the video itself, and you are welcome to do anything with it. Remix it, edit it, GIF it to your heart’s content, upload it to your Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, Vimeo, I don’t care. I want you to have it, and I want to set my baby bird of a creation free. It’s yours forever. If you put it on YouTube and it gets 1,000,000,000 pageviews and you make a shit-ton off of Google AdSense… I don’t care! Keep it. I want y’all to be a part of this. (But if you do upload it elsewhere, I just ask you credit me with being in it and maybe link to Mark Reads? THAT’S ALL.)

The twist is that every video will also be uploaded to the Mark Reads _____ playlist on my YouTube page so that EVERY member of the Mark Does Stuff community can see what you’ve purchased and no one feels left out of the process. That way, Mark Does Stuff will remain free for everyone, and your purchase basically makes other people happy, too.

This initial batch is only limited to 40 videos. I leave tomorrow morning for the AIDS/LifeCycle, and I don’t want to come home and have to make 3 bazillion videos. I will email those who buy videos today, but otherwise, video making will commence on June 11, 2012. In the future, it’ll be a 48-72 turnaround after you buy a video.

This is totally a new, experimental thing, but I’ve gotten such an amazing response to the videoblogs that I don’t want to stop. Doing this as my only source of income is challenging and terrifying, but you know what? I like being creative about trying to make money, and I don’t see why y’all can’t be involved every step of the way. So let’s try this out, and see what happens. Thank you all for your endless support, and I’m so excited to make more of these videos for this unbelievably amazing community!