Hello beautiful humans!

Welcome to the second edition of Patch Notes, the blog that I started about my upcoming book “Real Life is a Role-Playing Game.” With just over four months until release, I’ll be using this blog and short videos to share my writing process, my plans for publication & marketing the book, and of course the concepts within the book itself.

This book has been over a decade in writing (and longer in brain-storming), and it feels like it’s been a grand quest-line, with so many other quests I needed to complete, skills I needed to learn, and connections I needed to make before this one was finally ready to be complete. 

In the first Patch Notes, I gave a brief run-through on what I’ve been up to the last couple weeks, how the book got to this point, and made mention of the book tour in 2027.

Today, I’d like to focus in and go through my strategy for marketing the book, leading up to and after its release date.

Between now and release (in November), I’m spinning up a social media presence. I have accounts created just about everywhere, including my own website & mailing list, and I’ve started posting short videos, as well as these blog posts. Once I have the final manuscript locked in, the book will go up for pre-order, and I’ll be running ARC campaigns on multiple platforms like Reddit & FB groups, as well as some ARC-specific paid platforms.

Then the book actually releases. And the next chapter goes into full effect. At this point, I won’t be writing, editing, working with artists, dealing with publishing, or anything else, except: telling people about my book.

I’m dedicating all of 2027 to the book tour for Real Life, a book tour which will consist of 3 different facets: Events, Streets, and Online.

Here’s a breakdown of my plans for each of those facets.

Events: I’ll be doing a cross-continent book tour, including…

• Speaking & tabling at solutions-oriented conferences & conscious festivals.
• Tabling at various comic, anime, SciFi, and other fandom conventions.
• Everywhere the tour dates take me, I’ll be hitting the Streets…

Streets: While on the tour, in every town I will be…

• Visiting bookstores, libraries, comic & game shops, promoting the book.
• Putting up posters on bulletin boards and street posts, especially near geek shops, colleges, and the venues of the events themselves.
• Putting copies of the book into Little Free Library boxes.
• Finding local gaming events/meetups to attend & connect with people.

Online: I’ll be doing a full-court digital promo tour as well, including…

• Podcast appearances, starting with folks I know, but reaching out to an ever-growing list of geekdom & small author podcasts.
• Getting written interviews & reviews on various fandom websites.
• Increasing social media presence; content from book & IRL events.
• Using book promo tools like Bookbub.
• Doing some ads with specific geek websites & podcasts.

My goal is to get this book into the hands of a million readers. I’m sure most of those will be free copies, borrowed from libraries, or downloaded free somewhere – but the point is to get people to read the book, not to maximize sales numbers.

I also don’t expect to necessarily hit that number of readers with this first edition of the book, I see a 2028 release for the 2nd edition of Real Life to be likely, integrating everyone’s feedback, all the sections I haven’t started (I have a list) or haven’t finished yet, and hopefully a dozen or two sections that are written by other people.

The current plan forming in my head is to tour in ‘27, then work on the 2nd edition in ‘28 leading up to a release at the end of the year, about the same as the 1st edition. The 2nd edition will include a full crowdfunding campaign, multiple cover versions (comic, SciFi, Fantasy), and hopefully twice the text content and 2-4x the images.

But, that’s all talk for well down the road.

For now, I keep chugging along making content, and keep taking steps towards holding the final, finished version of the printed book in my hand. Then I’ll move on to next steps from there.

If you know of any podcasts or blogs that would be a great fit for me to connect with as part of the digital portion of the book tour, please reach out. The same goes for any conventions or conferences you know of that seem like they would be a good fit.

The artist I was talking to for the interior art in the book had to back out, and I’m currently waiting for a reply from an artist I met at Washington Summer Con last month. I bought a drawing of Ch’p (the Squirrel Green Lantern) that he had, and saw a few epic commissions he was working on.

Hope you’re all having a magnificent Summer so far, and see you next time!

~ Kenny Palurintano!