Your Name Here

Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon, Stephen King and many other authors are participating in a very unique fundraising auction for the First Amendment Project. Each of them is auctioning off the opportunity for the winning bidder's name to appear in one of their upcoming books.

Neil Gaiman talks about where the idea came from on his blog:

You may remember that back in March I auctioned off the name of a Cruise Ship in ANANSI BOYS for the CBLDF. And we made $3,533 for the CBLDF. And that happened around the same time that Michael Chabon used this blog to mention to the world that the First Amendment Project was running out of money having used most of it up defending Freedom of Speech issues (and many of you went and made donations). So I suggested to Michael Chabon that we might want to try something similar to what I'd done with eBaying a name in a book, only bigger.

Michael and the FAP folk went away and did lots of work. And now it has borne cool fruit...

You can find a complete listing of everyone who is participating on eBay. One auction that may be of interest to comic fans is Jonathan Lethem's:

"I need the name of a Columbia University professor for a comic book I'm writing for Marvel. It can be your name or the name of a friend -- but if it's a friend, I need to hear from them with their permission."

The auctions begin Sept. 1. Good luck!