Adventures in Marketing: Week 74 (Bob Goes Electric)
I usually view my requests for royalty statements as exercises in enforced humility. But this year my former publisher said I would find it surprising.
The first surprise was that I was due more money than I had been due for many years combined. More surprising was that nearly all of this money was due to e-book sales, since no one had ever discussed with me – or informed me about – the electrifying of my books. Most surprising was that nearly all of this “nearly all” was earned by a book to which all rights, such as electrification, had reverted to me. (That seemed one of those amusing foibles with which my publisher had entertained me during the course of our relationship and was quickly resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.)
Including you, the reading public. So immediately (Or soon thereafter. This hasn’t been clarified) e-books of my complete Cartoonists-and-the-Law trilogy will be found (Most likely at Amazon and maybe other places. This hasn’t be clarified either): “The Pirates and the Mouse: Disney’s War Against the Counterculture” (Copyright); “Outlaws, Rebels, Freethinkers, Pirates & Pornographers,” erroneously published, due to one of those foibles I mentioned, as “Outlaws, Rebels, Freethinkers & Pirates,” (Free Speech); and “Most Outrageous: The Trials and Trespasses of Dwaine Tinsley and Chester the Molester” (Criminal Practice and Procedure).
Stock up, gang.
Or plug in.
The Pirates and the Mouse
Adventures in Marketing: Week 54
No sales again.
Not only that but the last two “customers” at the café have avoided eye contact entirely. This I could understand if “The Schiz” was the book in question, but “Cheesesteak”…
And my Manhattan-based efforts have constricted. Only partly from choice, Logos will have an exclusive east-of-Berkeley sales dealership on “Best Ride” and, until my actual distributor kicks in, a temporary one on “S” and “C.” I understand there are flyers and a display. This could be fun.
In other news, at the suggestion of my entrepreneurially-inclined friend Budd, I have e-mailed honchos at the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiologists hoping for an endorsement of “Heart” which will make it more attractive to agents and/or publishers. No responses yet, which will be kept in mind when it becomes time for charitable bequests.
Finally, I was interviewed by two fellows who hope to make a documentary film about Dan O’Neill and the Air Pirates. This seems an entirely DIY, low-budget operation, but of the half-dozen folks who’ve expressed similar interest, it’s the only one to actually get cameras rolling. Since they wouldn’t tell me the questions they’d be asking in advance, I’d prepped by skimming by book, which I hadn’t read since it came out. Boy, it was good! Maybe if the film is released, there’ll be a second edition. Maybe an NYRB Classic.
So a lot is going on. Still, there are moments just after wakening when I lie there thinking, Just what am I doing?
But they pass and I get up and do it some more.
Adventures in Marketing: Week 38
No café sales.
A lawyer I knew when I was in practice asked how my writing was going. But…
A woman said, “I have a library with 3000 books, and if I bring one more home, my children will kill me.”
A thirtyish fellow, longish black hair, thickish black-framed glasses, lots of black clothes, asked if the books on display were mine.
I assured him they were.
He examined each, front cover and back. He riffled through some, lingering the most at the cartoons in “most Outrageous.” Which was understandable.
He assured me I was a credit to Berkeley.
B.
Sold a “Schiz” to the sole law school classmate with whom I have even semi-regular contact. He e-mailed he’d enjoyed “Cheesesteak,” which I’d comp’d him. He’d known some of the characters and locales (pp. 78-87) and asked about them, which was cool. He also wanted a “Best Ride” and a “Pirates/Mouse” to give an Overbrook High School classmate of his, now “living as a mountain man in West Virginia.”
That sounds like a story-and-a-half.
[All books available from www.theboblevin.com]
Adventures in Media Baronhood (con.)
It’s officially over between me and Lulu. The “Executives” didn’t call me Monday, as promised, or Tuesday or Wednesday, for that matter, so I called my Publishing and Marketing Consultant. “You were on my list of people to call today,” he said. It was make-the-changes-or-else, he said. “Else,” I said. My refund will be “processed” within 30 business days. We shall then see how much it is. Now if someone knows a site where I can review the quality of Lulu’s services…
Meanwhile, I have been learning about cover choices — gloss and high glass and mattee and fold-overs. I have also familiarized myself with warehousing fees for stock I don’t want to stuff in my garage. That is fun. (I will do “Cheesesteak” myself, once “The Schiz” is done.)
Several cartoonists have asked for more information about the characters who appear in the chapters they are providing and illustration for. That seems fair, so I have provided it.
And with sales of one copy of “The Pirates & Mouse” apiece to (a) the Brigham Young University library (ordered by the English department) and (b) Joe the Banker, my web site has, I believe, moved into the black.