In Which the Author Attempts to Demonstrate the Unique Pitfalls Often Associated with Lack of Accountability, Shunning Editors and the Unfortunate Enablement Offered by Vanity Publishing.

Reviewers give it four-and-a-half stars on Amazon.com. Despite its humble origins and short length, its author, contents and mostly front page and cover went viral over the internet, drawing attention — and rave reviews — from thousands.

Who would have thought a short, self-published book could gain so much attention?

Especially when its Amazon page carries an actual, unretouched, verbatim description like this?

This Book is based on the turning point for Earth into a new era of space travel and the beginning of the Age of Aquarius. The story focuses on one Man by the Name of David Braymer and his adventures from High school teacher to 1st Science Officer on board the Lunar Base 1 Mobile Base Station and his encounters with Alien Life forms through out our universe and the space Battle of all battles David experiences. I hope you enjoy the many adventures of David Braymer and his conquest in space and our journey into the Age of Aquarius.

In the words of Amazon’s current top review on the page: Moon People is “a good book. I like the spaceship on the cover.”

Ouch. Let’s all pause to recall a lesson from toddlerhood: not all attention is good attention.

And here is the cover. Yes, it has a spaceship there. This tells you that it is a Book about Space. It also tells you that by comparison, the weird covers of C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength look rather sensible. That, of course, may lead to the conclusion that we can’t judge a book by …

Oh wait.

Chapter 1

The Beginning of The End

THIS STORY BEGINS on a Beautiful sunny day in Daytona Beach Florida With a man by the name of David Braymer. […] Now David was not always a teacher he use to work for the Government for U.F.O. research. This is also Oct.28 the year 2048. And the next shuttle launch is on Halloween. There has been some unusual events the last 2 shuttle launch’s. And everyone is very suspicious about the next launch on the 31 because of it being Halloween.

From what I can remember, in 2009 someone on an online message board discovered The Moon People page on Amazon, and found the first page. The “reviews” were hilarious, despite the fact that the reviewers had clearly not, technically, read any more of this work of art than the first pages of chapters 1 and 9. And apparently Amazon has just played along.

I won’t give away the story here but let’s just say there is a bit of riveting adventure a bit of romance and a whole lot of space Travel including aliens and Shuttles and Moon Bases (including Moon Bases 1 and 2 and even 3). Now these are three huge Base stations. Not small one’s. And that’s what you will expect from moon People which is BIG adventure.

this was very good book and made me happy. i read it to my girlfriend she thought it was and god bed time story. we kissed for 5 minutes then we stopped.

This book is the next Holy Bible. It has differenter words than the dictionary and is great book.

Someone else was more honest:

It’s so bad, Microsoft Word’s grammar check would become self aware and commit suicide.

Another reviewer commented more seriously on the perils of his self-publishing experience with this same outfit, called Xlibris (self-publishing caution no. 1: never trust a company whose name is unpronounceable). It’s notorious for the proofing errors it allows into print, he said. However, even if every capitalization horror there were fixed, it’d be downright cringe-inducing.

So — what does this tell us about self-publishing? Suddenly having an evil capitalistic profit-driven outsider-locking-out system of “official” publication doesn’t seem so bad, eh wot?

Even if it made sense before, might it seem even more necessary to listen to your friends, relatives, mother-in-law, etc., and let your writing grow as you grow? And if we want to carry the application further, doesn’t it follow that as Christians to spend time with those who love and care for us, and who will in Christlike love place an arm around us and say, “Dale, buddy, about this Moon People fixation …”? Might this apply even if you are not, personally, Dale?

Or do you perhaps disagree? Maybe you’ve read something worse. Maybe you now fear you’ve written something worse. Trust me, it can’t be as bad as Moon People. Or if you are still not convinced, how about Moon People 2 or even Moon People 3, which just released this year?

I can’t end without including another excerpt. This one is from Moon People page 35. It turns out this is a sex scene. But even on a Christian site, surely this counts as an exception?

And Cheral said me too and they left the beach and went to David’s House and they made passionate love for a very long time. The next morning when they woke up, they woke up starring at each other with a big smile on each other faces and Cheral said I had the best time last night and know your going to leave me.

Remember this, always, when you see those seemingly most-horrid-of-all Christian books. …