We Have A Book!

It’s taken more than five years, and a ton of learning on the fly, but folks––we have a book.

Thank you for your patience all these years

Rather than bore you with details on the challenges associated with launching a crowd-sourced, self-published, hardcover coffee table book with no prior experience, just know that Laurie and I were pretty demanding about every detail. Our goal was to set something loose in the world that reflected the love that each author poured into the stories of their gone dogs.

We’re very happy with how it turned out.

Buy the book today and judge for yourself. We’re gonna bet that you agree.

Because, if you love dogs you’ll love this book.

Because it’s about love. ❤️

— Jim

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One Step Closer

After six weeks and five judges reading nearly 100 entries submitted for our maiden volume of Gone Dogs, we’ve selected 50 stories to be part of our book. And boy, what stories. 

I can now say that what started out as a dream in 2014 is about to become a reality later this year and I couldn’t be prouder. This book is going to be great. Everyone you know who loves dogs is going to want it. 

I was speaking with someone recently who mentioned how much he a loved certain novel about a dog. I said, “Yes, it is a great book. About one dog. This book is about 50.”

So what happens next? Well, now we get busy doing … everything. From copy editing and photo editing, to book layout, proofreading, and more, we will be pretty busy for the next few months. After that, it’s on to publishing. As you wait (patiently) please keep in mind there are just two of us managing this project, and it’s not our full-time gig. That said, we are committed to having our book in everyone’s hands by Christmas. (We’ll give plenty of notice about preorders once we figure out that engine.) 

We’ve also had a lot of people ask about Volume 2 and when they can submit their Gone Dogs story. We are intentionally holding off on opening up for submissions again until we get this first book down the road a little farther. The submission engine we used the first time was a little glitchy and we need to reassess. Please be patient, and know there will be a Volume 2. 

We wanted to give a special thanks to our judges, Judy Goldman, Ken Wheaton, and Stephanie Whetstone – outstanding writers who volunteered their time, and no doubt went through a lot of tissues to read each entry and help make Gone Dogs the best book possible. Both me and Laurie also read each story, and were overwhelmed with such beautiful tributes. 

Finally, a huge thanks to everyone who participated in our first ever call-for-entries. You are the heroes here. And while we couldn’t take every story submitted, every story submitted was a gift. We all know dogs love their people, but now I know just how much people love their dogs. Thank you for sharing yours with us. 

Here we go. 

Jim

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Submission Deadline Extended

New Submission Date April 22, 2018

When you start a crowd-sourced project, you never know what you’ll get.

Since launching our website last spring, we’ve received overwhelming support from friends and family who share our enthusiasm for a book of short stories about dogs. And we are absolutely thrilled with the submissions we’ve received so far — wonderful stories from all over the world.

That said, we’ve grown greedy and want more.

Our goal for Gone Dogs since day one was to create the greatest collection of dog stories ever published. That’s why we’re extending our submission deadline until 22 April 2018. You see, while we have some amazing content already, we’re just not where we want to be in terms of volume. We simply need more stories.

And because we exhausted our minuscule ad budget in our run up to the 31 December 2017 submission deadline, we’re leaning heavily on our fans, friends, and family to help us continue spreading the word about Gone Dogs so that we can glean more content.

Again, we don’t just want to make a book. We want to create the greatest collection of dog stories ever published.

As always, there are three ways you can help.

  1. Write a story and submit it to us. This may seem obvious, but it really is everything. If you’re a dog lover, you likely had a dog in your life that is no longer with you. We believe that every dog has a story to tell. And we want to hear yours. And if you’re like, “But I’m not a writer!” don’t worry, we’ll work with you to make your story sing. Here’s a post on how to get started. Just get started.
  2. Share our site with your network. Send it to friends via email and text. Tell people about us over coffee. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and share from there as well.
  3. Donate to our ad campaign so that we can reach more people. The sponsored posts we ran on Facebook had a huge effect. With your help we can continue to expand our scope and find stories from far flung places.

Once the new deadline passes, we will edit stories, finish the layout, and prepare the book for publication. We are committed to having Gone Dogs ready to ship for Christmas.

We can’t stress how excited we are to share this book with you. Thank you for all of your support thus far. And thank you for continuing to help us spread the word. Gone Dogs would be nothing without you.

– Jim and Laurie

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