A Thought Crushed Our Minds

     A question to other publishers, booksellers, and self-marketing authors:

     Has anyone gone the route of sending their titles off to be sold at a book expo? And if so, what sort of experience did you have? Common sense tells me there's little to be gained by it if your company doesn't already have a name and bookbuyers aren't going to be specifically looking for your titles, but I don't want to be naive and ignore a potentially helpful marketing tool. Any personal experience or advice anyone has on the topic is quite welcome.
Mar. 28th, 2006 @ 10:23 am

     Have I mentioned over here that Amazon.com is now listing Blindside Publishing's debut novel A View from the Lake by Greg F. Gifune for only $9.72 (reg. $14.95)? I don't recall having done so, so consider this your warning. If you want this novel on the cheap, this is your opportunity. Do be sure to check it out.

     The novel is also available for purchase directly from Blindside Publishing for $12.95, domestic shipping included, Project Pulp for $13.95, also domestic shipping included, Shocklines for $14.95, Clarkesworld Books for $13.95, Barnes & Noble for $13.45, or Powells.com for $14.95. It's worth noting that Clarkesworld still has signed copies in stock and are the only source for those at this point. Borderlands Books was also carrying signed copies but they seem to have sold out only recently and I was told they would be placing all further orders for the novel through distribution rather than direct, but they don't seem to have re-ordered just yet.

     Advance review copies for Ronald Damien Malfi's novel Via Dolorosa will begin going out before long, I'm waiting for them to return from the printer. This is predominantly a literary novel and I'll be mostly seeking literary reviews, but any other reviewers interested in this novel, do contact me. I don't guarantee a review copy but I'd like to hear from you. It's to be a hardcover release this summer.
Mar. 23rd, 2006 @ 10:36 am

Two Die Four, Split Collection by Tim Curran & Tim Johnson
Silver Lake Publishing, $12.95 $10.95

     Two authors. Four stories. So many ways to die.

     "Tim Curran and Tim Johnson are the future of horror. Johnson's work reminds me of a young Stephen King, and Tim Curran is a natural storyteller whose tactile characterization ensnares the reader in tales that are simply too good to put down. The two together make for an exciting combination, and simply put, a bloody great read!"
     --James R. Cain, Editor of Dark Animus

     "Though originality is oftentimes hard to come by, a reader tends to come by it quite often in works by Mr. Curran and Mr. Johnson. Highly recommended."
     Kevin L. Donihe, Author of Shall We Gather at the Garden?


     Project Pulp Radio, accessible from the upper-right corner of any screen on Project Pulp, has also been updated with 12 new tracks: 22-20s, "Such a Fool"; A Whisper in the Noise, "Seeing You"; Red Harvest, "Internal Punishment Programs"; Job for a Cowboy, "Suspended by the Throat"; Hope of the States, "66 Sleepers to Summer"; Green Carnation, "Dead but Dreaming"; Engine Down, "The Walk In"; Dexter's Moon, "Voodoo Girl"; Vaux, "Plague Music"; The Loveless, "All the Same"; The Eternal, "To Drown"; and Music77, "Kameror."

     And lastly, a new addition to the Project Pulp catalogue:

To the Mountain of the Beast, Novel by Christopher Stires
Carnifex Press, $12.25

     And I owe a few Blindside/Project Pulp related e-mails. If you don't hear from me tonight, you will tomorrow.
Mar. 21st, 2006 @ 04:43 pm

     With Wicked Hollow, the only real way for me to see reader feedback is when it comes directly to me or perhaps if it pops up on a forum, but I don't post on any forums so I rarely encounter it even in that situation.

     With book publishing, on the other hand, there's the great advent of reader reviews on websites such as Amazon.com as well as far more venues to receive published reviews. And I know it's a small thing in the scheme of book publishing, but since Greg F. Gifune's A View from the Lake is Blindside's debut release, it still makes me happy to see the first customer review show up on Amazon.com's listing for the novel and for it to be five stars and wholly complimentary. I've also noticed that the number of used & new copies has cut in half in the past 24 hours and the sales rank has jumped.

     But what I think pleases me most is that both of the reader feedbacks I've received to this point (the Amazon.com reviewer and brotherrabbit) were from people who had not previously read Greg F. Gifune but loved his work. My entire purpose with Blindside Publishing is to publish fiction that blurs the line between general fiction and horror. With Greg F. Gifune, he was an author was primarily known through his horror novels but who I believed wrote in such a way that he would also appeal to a general fiction audience, and I hoped to expose him to readers he hadn't previously been exposed to. Two people is not many, I know, but I'm optimistic for the future, for both this title and for Blindside Publishing on a whole.

     I've been looking forward to this for such a good, long time.
Jan. 30th, 2006 @ 04:57 pm

     I can't recall whether or not I've posted this here in the past, but Blindside Publishing has a MySpace profile: myspace.com/blindsidepublishing. Feel free to add me if you're on MySpace.

     I've also begun to set up a MySpace profile for Project Pulp as of yesterday. That's located at myspace.com/projectpulp.

     Then, of course, there's my personal MySpace at myspace.com/knowing_carrion, which you may also add if you so desire, but it's essentially nothing to do with the business end of things with the exception of maybe an occasional blog or bulletin about my writing if something's coming out. I've also been known to drop bulletins when Project Pulp Radio is updated, which is fairly infrequently these days.
Jan. 29th, 2006 @ 01:11 pm

     Okay, so here's the deal. I've been offline since Saturday at about noon, I moved into a new apartment. I should have had internet by that evening but the lovely people at Earthlink are no help at all (I was previously on RoadRunner and miss it terribly). I can now access the internet at last but only if I plug straight into the modem, which means I can only do it when my roommate's not here, asleep, doesn't care, whatever. And then I still have to reset the modem everytime, reboot my computer, yadda yadda yadda.

     Even when I have it working, I still do not have outgoing e-mail. I hope to remedy that soon but I leave for work before too awful long and don't know if I'll get it figured out before then. I'm working both days & nights right now, a mixed bag without ever known until sometimes the day of whether or not I'm working, so it's really hard to make plans to have someone come out, be able to call support within business hours, get anything at all done. I'm taking tomorrow off to try and get this fixed once and for all but I don't hold out a lot of hope. Earthlink says the problem is the router, I don't have any problems with the router on RoadRunner's service and have tested it since the move on a RoadRunner connection to make sure it does, indeed, work, and it does, so... It's something to do with the router communicating with Earthlink's service or this particular cable modem.

     Please have patience with me. And I lost some e-mail, too. When I signed back on for the first time, I only had about 500 e-mails waiting for me. I used to get that in a single night sometimes. And it was the first time I'd downloaded e-mail since Saturday, so there was clearly something funky. So if you e-mailed me something important this week, you may want to check and see whether or not I received it, because chances are fairly good I did not.

     Hopefully things will fall into a rhythm again soon, but... I don't have my hopes up.
Jan. 18th, 2006 @ 08:04 pm

     It's a little tardy this week because of the hours I've been working, but this week's ProjectPulp.com Pick is...

Dr. Black and the Guerrillia, Limited Edition Novella by Brendan Connell
Grafitisk, $18.99

     Dr. Black and the Guerrillia is the new novella by Brendan Connell from Slovenian publisher Grafitisk. A signed, numbered, limited edition hardback of 300 copies. Printed on fine Italian paper in brown ink with illustrations by John Connell in black ink.
Jan. 11th, 2006 @ 03:53 pm

     Okay, so here's the deal. I had to do a lot of rearranging about a month ago when we were having roofers come in because they needed access to the attics, the doors to which happen to be in my office and had been blocked closed by various pieces of furniture and other items. In my cleaning, I found some old copies of Wicked Hollow that have been out of print for a very, very long time. These are the original handmade issues, before Wicked Hollow began going to a printer with issue 5 in January 2003.

     I have four copies of #3, three copies of #2, and one copy of #1. I've linked each issue number to their old table of contents on the Wicked Hollow website if you want to see cover art, who was published that issue, and so forth.

     These did not traditionally come signed and/or numbered such as Wicked Hollow has since issue 7, but I'll sign and/or inscribe them for anyone who so desires.

     According to my records, there are approximately 150 copies of #1 in circulation, just fewer than 100 copies of #2, and 115 copies of #3. Issue #2 has an old story by Kealan Patrick Burke (back when he still used a hyphen in his name), "The Room Beneath the Stairs."

     Since I never make a profit off Wicked Hollow, I'd like to at least try for once because, besides, the money could really be put to good use right now. As such, I'm posting these only here right now, and it's on a first come, first served basis, whether by comment or e-mail. I'd like to sell them for $6 each, postage in the States included, an additional $1 to Canada or $2.50 elsewhere. I'll accept PayPal or will wait for a check or money order. I'll sell multiple issues to one person but only one of each issue.
Jan. 6th, 2006 @ 10:11 am