Your April Fool’s Day Fun: Build Your Own Fake Collapsing Empire Cover

As you may know, recently a fellow with more ineffectual rage than sense recently attempted to cash in on The Collapsing Empire by rushing out a “me too” book with a “me too” cover. I don’t suspect it fooled very many people, or did much other than to confirm some people have too much time on their hands, but one good thing to come out of it is that Camestros Felapton felt inspired to create a Collapsing Empire fake cover generator. An “explanation” and link to the cover generator may be found here. I had fun playing around with it, and I suspect you might as well.

Thus is represented the full sum of my April Fool’s tomfoolery today.

29 thoughts on “Your April Fool’s Day Fun: Build Your Own Fake Collapsing Empire Cover

  1. I wasted far too much time on this yesterday, and now you all can too.
    (And I feel like that should be one of the ego-boo line choices.)

  2. I hope the vandal your post alluded to didn’t make money on their venture … but I will note that Amazon eagerly promoted their book-like object to me as one I might want to buy, based on my purchasing and browsing history. Amazon deserves some opprobrium for their participation in such stunts.

  3. I probably could have happily gone for a good long time without being confronted with the word “prolapsing.” Thanks for that, Scalzi! :)

  4. This Just In: Exclusive footage from the scene of the crime . . . Just think books instead of used cars. And enjoy.

  5. Kudos for using “ineffectual” rather than “impotent”: that shows class.

  6. If your empire isn’t enough, there’s always the Overlapping Empire!
    The Uniblabbing Empire? (Jetsons reference.)
    lIf you need theme music, there’s always, “Cucumbers in Space,” from Deep Space Nine.

    ¿Burrito? I need a burrito. Especially a transwarp burrito. Was that what Hail Hweaton used to prep for his reading? ;) ‘Cause y’know, he’s been known to like burritos in podcasts.

    YouTube wanted to recommend several more videos, based on my viewing history.

    Amazon, the other day, did think I might want the charlatan’s book. I prefer the real author. Or perhaps his mirror-universe twin, the one without the beard! :D (No, I’m pretty sure the Scalzi unit looks better with the beard.)

  7. Read the headline, then scrolled down. My phone could only show the top half of the cover. And I was genuinely afraid to scroll further when I saw the word prolapse. May be the first time in my life the picture of a dumpster fire actually brought a sense of relief.

  8. Disappointed there was no spaceships with laser beams option, or your German publisher could have used it.

  9. “Harry Seldon and the Dancing Walrus: The charming story you always dreamed of.”

    That was a fun five minutes.

  10. What you fail to understand, Scalzi, is that he gets YUUUUGE numbers of visitors to his web-page, and they’re all there to worship him rather than laugh at him or archive quotes for “Fundies Say The Darndest Things”, which means he totally owns you, ços you only sell boring old books. Or something like that.

  11. Incidentally, your boring new book only hit our shores this weekend, and I had a boring old preorder for it. I look forward to being bored by it as fast as I can get to the boring shop tomorrow.

  12. Personally, I preferred The Gelatinous Quagmire. Awesome book! Who knew that Vax Doy could do humor and fear so well? That scene where Battleforce Mage Scaldizzi used the Typecastering Rod to strike the Quagmire with a stream of Icefire Water and got splashed with Giggle Gel and laughed himself to death while being devoured was just so… WOW! I forsook sleep until after the Alpha-men flew over the Quagmire and bombed it back to slime mold with the Testeroid Bomb. Turned that Gelatinous mess into something harder than stone!

  13. I was disappointed that the burrito was actually a burrito and not some weird food abomination wrapped in a tortilla. Major opportunity missed there.

  14. Heh, I went with “The Gelatinous President: This is your last opportunity to run away!” with a dumpster fire and missiles.

    Still, this was fun. :)

  15. The Prolapsing Kingdom, huh?

    Well, that’s one less thing you need to do (find title for Sequel).

  16. The me to book is still promoted right after the real thing on Kindle searches. Sad. The positive reviews are funny, so much fedoratard rage.

Comments are closed.
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