Marketing (1)

One week report:

About 80% of the people to whom I gave free copies of “Cheesesteak” have not responded. (Some may not have received theirs yet, the US Postal Service being what it is.) One respondee has bought one for someone else; one has promised to. One promoted the book at his web site, which resulted to my sole sale to a stranger so far. One said he might have it reviewed at his on-line magazine.

About 90% of the people whom I notified of “Cheesesteak”‘s existence have not responded. Two of the respondees bought a copy; one has promised to.

Exactly 75% of the people whom I asked for an address so I could send them a free copy did not reply.

One lesson I have drawn is that I am not as important a part of many people’s minds as they are to mine.

Another is that it is weird knowing everyone who knows of your book’s existence and of how they have dealt with this knowledge.

I just finished…

…”Dancing in the Dark,” Karl Ove Knausgaard’s fourth volume in his “My Struggle,” an autobiographical saga. “Dancing” is mostly an account of Kausgaard, at 18, teaching school in northern Norway while, more importantly, taking his first steps of entry into Norway’s literary world and, more importantly still, attempting to have sex. [Author’s Aside: When I was at SF State, around 1970, the professor of my novel-writing class remarked one day that, whereas, a few years before the staple of his students’ work was their first sexual experience, now it was their first acid trip. Have we regressed?] There is only one lengthy portion where Knausgaard scrambles his time frame, as he was wont to do in his earlier books, and one shorter one where he, very nicely, steps into the present and examines himself then. The rest progresses in strict chronological fashion with Knausgaard depicts himself with the consciousness he (supposedly) had then. The prose is direct and clean. It reads quickly. The characters and places are well defined. But I think that, unless you’ve read the earlier volumes, there’s no reason to read this one.

I just finished…

…”Achilles in Vietnam” by Jonathan Shay, MD. The book was highly recommended by my pal Budd, who knew Shay from high school. Shay went on to become a psychologist who worked with Vietnam vets suffering from PTSD. His approach in writing about them is to compare and contrast our military’s and our society’s treatment of combat veterans who have suffered loss, grief and rage with that of the Greeks, as recounted by Homer in “The Iliad.” The Greeks seem to have done it better.

The book did not have as powerful and effect on me as it did on Budd, but I learned a thing or two or three or four. You could spend your time a lot less wisely than reading it.

Marketing

“Cheesesteak: The West Philadelphia Years: A Rememboir” is out (Spruce Hill Press. POB 9492. Berkeley 94709. $20, including postage.) It looks great. No reviews are in (or expected), but Adele was caught laughing when she read it. (She also said that in the author’s portrait on the back I looked “even more dissipated than in the original.”)

UPS delivered the shipment early Friday morning, which was nice. It meant I could get to Staple’s to stock up on the least expensive mailers into which I could squeeze one and then to the USPO where I could price one so-squozen in order to purchase the stamps required to mail them as cheaply as I could. (“Allow five-to-seven business days for delivery.”) Then I started stuffing envelopes.

Saturday morning, I put my marketing plan into operation. I trundled off to the French with a stack and my “Buy Bob’s Book Sign,” accompanied by Adele for moral support. We sold four, all to people with whom I have been known to chat. Others within this same degree of consanguinity did not bite. Strangers (and semi-strangers) did not glance in my direction.

Morning two, Adele stayed home. No one bought. (I guess I need a babe in the booth.) An Asian-American woman (a stranger!) picked up a copy, asked if I was part of a Berkeley tradition, put it down, and said, “Good luck.” An artist/musician picked one up, put it down, and said nothing. An anthropology professor emeritus offered to gtrade me a copy of his book he’d self-published after writing it for his grandchildren.

Hap, who bought one yesterday, said he’d read half and found it “hilarious.”

The Horror! The Horror! Ghastly Ingels and the Art of Real Yuch

My latest is up at http://www.tcj.com/the-horror-the-horror-graham-ingels-and-the-art-of-real-yuch/

It begins:

As this volume’s only contributor to have actually read – and suffered the loss of EC comics – as a kid, I feel the weight of a generation – well, a thin, weird slice of a generation – on my shoulders. Like the one alone, you know, escaped to tell you. Like the last surviving veteran of a momentous battle, though this battle’s heart-wrenching outcome, the gutting of EC following the imposition of the Comic Code of 1954, was worth only two square inches in the local press. (I retain the Philadelphia Bulletin’s actual story, preserved behind Scotch tape on blotting paper, as a personally tailored flagellant if you doubt me.)

The Road Goes On Forever

My latest is up at http://bit.ly/1YkaqqX

It begins:

Peter Kurt Woerner’s “Odyssey” is one hundred cubic inches and 3.4 pounds of gorgeous and compelling viewing/reading. $45 to him, 44 Kendall, New Haven, CT 06512 brings a copy.

Woerner and I were Friends’ Central Class of ‘60. He was personable, good looking, a stellar athlete, and dater of debutantes. To a Jewish kid from West Philly he seemed a Prince of the Main Line. He’d “secret” societied at Yale, then M.Arch’d it. We’d gone 50 years without contact. His book landed, unexpected as a flying saucer.

Allen Dulles

My friend and most trusted political adviser, Budd, hates Allen Dulles. This may surprise those who have not woken up with Mr. Dulles on their mind since before the break-up of the Beatles, but he seems needed fuel for those who believes that those who do not remember history are condemned and wish to remind themselves and others what evil the USA can do.

Budd has been reading a biography of Dulles by David Talbot, a journalist of impeccable… Well, a journalist impeccably ideologically straight-jacketed. Budd is clear on Talbot’s bent, but he still led off our last get-together by fingering Dulles for offing Patrice Lumumba, another figure long absent from “Jeopardy”‘s big board.

Sure, Dulles was probably evil, but Henry Kissinger, whom Budd admires and who is still with us, probably has more blood on his hands. And granted Lumumba’s execution, without due process of semblance of trial, was an abominable act; and while the Congolese and Belgians were more directly implicated, Dulles could easily have gone down as a co-conspirator. But bigger-picture (and sardonic humor)-wise, given went on in the next 50 years in the various states the British, French, and Belgians left behind them, how confident can we be that the Congo citizenry would have been better off if Lumumba had been left in place than if Joseph Mobutu hadn’t been maneuvered to replace him?

I can’t tell from Wikipedia what total body-count Mobutu rolled up while at his nation’s helm, but he did seem to have gutted the country financially, while, in good capitalist fashion, enriching himself unduly. On the other hand, Julius Nyere, who seems to have shared Lumumba’s more socialist inclination, left Tanzania “one of the poorest, least developed, and most foreign aid dependent countries in the world.”

I mean, I think the world can regularly be counted on to throw up evil men, like landslides or earthquakes or famines, to destroy hundreds or thousands or millions. I’ve said this before but maybe, given that, you’ve just got to step back and take the long view. Like President Obama said in the NYT today (in the Styles section, of all places), “(T)he fact is the world is wealthier, healthier, better educated, less violent, more tolerant, more morally conscious, and more attentive to the vulnerable than it has ever been.”

It may be good to get as angry as Budd does, but keep that in mind too.

Confessions of Media Baronhood (cont.)

Word has received me that the shipping of “Cheesesteak,” the maiden effort of my publishing empire, has been delayed due to the malfunction of my printer’s binder. It, hopefully, will arrive by the end of next week.

Once I have a copy in had, I can take it to Staple’s and see what is the least expensive mailer in which it will fit and stock up on those. Then once I have one inside the mailer, I can take it to the post office and learn the least expensive way to mail it. (Keep that overhead down.)

Meanwhile, I have invested in a rubber stamp for addressing the envelopes: $4.99, plus $5.00 for postage. (Keep those man hours down too.)

update

I received an apologetic and explanatory e-mail from the fellow who requested my article. He seems the victim of others’ machinations and betrayals. I withdraw all snarky remarks I made.
(Didn’t say anything about my payment though.)

This Writing Life (con.)

Constant readers with unimpaired memories will recall my invitation a year and a half or so ago to contribute an essay to a book/catalog which would accompany a (at least) two-museum tour of original EC Comic art. My topic was to be EC’s horror comics, with concentration on the genre’s master, Graham “Ghastly” Ingles. The topic appealed; the promised check (by my standards) good; and I jumped on the offer.

I got into it. I reviewed all of EC’s horror books. I checked numerous secondary sources for information, quotes, and color. I found people to interview, who no one in the comic world and ever interviewed. And — kick of all kicks — I discovered what had happened to Ingles, who, comic world legend had it, had seemingly disappeared, reclusive, bitter, after the imposition of the Code in 1954 had wiped horror from the four-color universe.

The first bad news I received from the curator of the exhibit was that he couldn’t pay me right away, after all. The second bad news was, not only had the tour not expanded, one of the museums on board had cancelled. The third was… Well, there was no more news.

Last week I sent him an e-mail. He excitedly reported that the exhibition would open in two weeks. If I cared to come to Oregon — on my own dime — he would comp me to the event. (I declined.) And, oh yeah, there would be no book/catalogue. “Maybe… in a year or two” he would release an anthology. No mention was made of my money (and I was too polite to press him).

I said I did not care to wait. The Comics Journal will be posting my piece on line any day now.

Stay tuned.