The reviews are cool but they burn out

[koganbot]

In three months through June 2006 my book moved about 1,450 copies, so I said to myself, "It'll probably top out at about 2,000," which I guess wasn't too bad considering I didn't get many reviews, the most high-profile being Tom Breihan's Pitchfork rave ("Don't even attempt to fuck with Real Punks Don't Wear Black") that didn't even go up until July.

My statement for the year through June 2007 finally arrived yesterday, and I was thinking I might get a royalty check for another two hundred, which'd be nice. Shows how much I know about the book business. What happened was I got clobbered by returns, over 600 of them, with only 89 new copies sold (so much for Pitchfork's effect on book sales). So now I'll be lucky if I even top out at 1,000, and I'm sure I'll never get another royalty check on it.

What those returns mean is that UGA Press did a good job of getting my book into the stores, but the stores couldn't move 'em off the shelves. Of course, I didn't do anything much on my end other than feature the book on my MySpace: didn't try to arrange a reading at Tattered Cover or think about talking the thing up myself, getting my life together and flying around to book fairs here and there. This had to do with my own financial lassitude (which is a nice word to cover what is basically an on again, off again dysfunction); I wasn't thinking of how to push this as a project, just stumbling from check to check. But really, I needed some high-profile reviews and didn't get 'em. The reviews I got were nice but there weren't enough. Smartest was this one from Frieze.

The book still looks beautiful, has a great title, you can probably get it real cheap used through Amazon, and your library might order it if you ask them to. In the meantime, I'm reminded that my way of thinking just doesn't entice a whole lot of people, much less inspire them to join in.

I kind of had a grump about that at the end of my column, which goes up in about nine hours. Something about seeking a vector to the unfound reader, though I said it more articulately than that.

This does remind me to rev up my thinking about the Department Of Dilettante Research, and the search for said vector.

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

dr vick has one of my copies tho i've spoken to her so little in the last month (she's hyperbusy w.term starting and being overworked) that i;ve no idea if she's looked at it

(the other is the pre-release)

my continued pitches to write extensively abt this book have gone a bit dark these last couple months -- the l*r*b never bothered replying to my reply to their reply

[koganbot]

Two weeks ago I had dinner with Andrew Berzanskis and his girlfriend Maggie; they're genial, smart people, and we had a great time. Andrew'd become my acquisitions editor at UGA Press when Derek departed for a while, is now working for a Lynne Rienner publishers in Boulder. He and Maggie decided they wanted to live in Colorado. (He's the acquisitions editor for sociology and criminology, for those career criminals among you who contemplate publishing their memoirs.)

Anyway, Andrew told me that last year a rumor had reached UGA Press that the L*R*B was considering running a review of Real Punks. Given your experience with them and their antipathy to popular music, I told Andrew that this was highly unlikely. He said yes, but that this is why it would have been so amazing.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

!! well that explains the subterranean sense of an in-office battle from their response to me!

[koganbot]

Oh, I doubt that anyone else even pitched it. My guess is that that rumor was just a rumor.