Adventures in Marketing — Weeks 415-6

Sold two books – and bartered two more.
Both sales were to a young SoCal cartoonist/editor/publisher, who had sent me an unsolicited copy of his book. He had enjoyed my interview of S. Clay Wilson, so I’d suggested he might also enjoy my earlier profile of Wilson. I told him it was in “Outlaws, Rebels…” without even saying it was available from me. But he found my web site and ordered both it and “The Pirates and the Mouse.” I was sufficiently touched to say I would meet the price (including postage) he could have picked them up for on-line, which is where I go to replenish my supply when I dip below the number I like to keep on hand.
The swaps were as follows. (1) When the above mentioned SoCal fellow had sent me his book, I had asked my café pal Fran, who makes individually designed post card objects d’art, for one by which I might say thank you. In return I dealt him a copy of J.T. Dockery’s graphic adaptation of Ed Mcclanahan’s “Juanita and the Frog Prince” for which I had written the introduction. (2) I made the acquaintance of a pony-tailed nomadic sort in town briefly while he picked up a van. He identified himself as a poet (with the last name “Doubleyou”). After we had discussed our crafts and business models, he gifted me with two of his books and I gave him a “Cheesesteak.” His are slight (10 pp. and 20 pp.) and made by folding sheets of paper (8 ½” by 11″) sheets, in half and binding them by hand-stitched threads. The poems are direct, real and cosmic, and I liked them.

In other news…
1.) The Korean psych research assistant I let have an IWKYA on credit has not returned to make payments. And the film maker who asked for a copy of my Air Pirates book for his grant writer overlooked paying for it upon delivery, and when I handed over my archival material, while he repeated his offer of an “option,” he also let drop his being short of funding at the moment. No contract has, as yet, been forthcoming and no option nailed down. (Meanwhile, on a more positive note, Fantagraphics says it will do a reprint.)
2.) Notables who have dropped by my table include (a) a 40-ish guy in an olive zipper jacket, and olive pants, who is, according to his company’s web site, the publisher of “best-selling Indian and Pakistani crime novels, Nigerian soyaga fiction… and picture books about young women in love with monsters.” A fan of “Yummy Fur,” he looked over “Outlaws, Rebels…,” which includes my piece on Chester Brown but did not buy); and (b) a charmingly British accented young woman who works as a recruiter for a video game company. She had yellow hair and the brightest red fingernails to have ever gripped one of my book covers. Pretty as a Daisy, which happened to be her name.