Alec

McNayr

Hilarious.

This isn’t the Disney we know today, but from the early days… presumably before synergy was invented.

If there’s one thing to learn from this, it’s that the main thing is the main thing.  Management and production is all subservient to the director, who has the difficult task of maintaining quality, on Walt’s direct behalf.  Without quality, the whole thing falls apart.

For those that don’t follow me on Twitter, I turned in the final materials for my Historical Tweets book yesterday, due in bookstores April 27, 2010.  Our editor is already loving it (whew!), and the Random House juggernaut is starting to take over.

I’ll probably write more about this later, but I wanted to share my immediate thoughts as I finished the book, and now consider myself an author.

• It’s anticlimactic. All that work, and a delayed reward.  Book doesn’t come out for over four months.  For the book business, by the way, that is lightning fast.  There’s probably a lesson in delayed gratification there.
• I’m proud of what we did. There was a few weeks when our draft had a lot of flab, but last week we trimmed our Tweets list from about 170 to 130, and the fat was cut away.  The final product, I feel, is very, very funny.
• I’m thankful for a team. Not only for Alan Beard, a funny writing partner, but for the extended team: Darnell Brisco, who did a lot of research and grunt work for us, for our families, and Katie in particular, who allowed “the book” to be an excuse for not cleaning up the house, not having a “real job,” not showering, saying no to social gatherings, and not going to bed until 2AM. And that doesn’t even include the extended-extended team that includes friends and family who have been endlessly supportive through notes, calls, Twitter, and Facebook.
• I’m humbled by the scale. They’re going to do a first run of 100,000 books for the U.S. and Canada alone.  At a retail price of $14, they’re looking to generate $1.4 million off of a little idea I had a year ago.  That’s crazy to me.  Makes me treasure little ideas more.
• I’m ready for more. We’re already talking about the follow-up.

Any questions about the process I should go into?  Leave me questions in the comments, and I’ll answer.

Thanks for your support!

PS — I’d be remiss if I didn’t give you a link to pre-order the book on Amazon.  Here it is.