GIVING THANKS. PLUS A CHAT ABOUT A FAMOUS DELUSION.

First of all I want to say a huge THANK YOU to those who have posted reviews or mentioned The God Interviews on their blogs and/or at the Lulu site. This is to me the most heartening and powerful stimulus imaginable, spurring me to keep working, keep moving on this road less travelled. Thank you so much, Rachel the Velveteen Rabbi and Ivy and Jean and Dick Jones and DefSufi and Zhoen and Nathan and Ka and Sarah and Toanke and Buck & Mike and Chris Rittke at 49sparks.

(read about the famous delusion on Blaugustine's main blog)

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I know it isn't done, I know it's not seemly or correct or proper or dignified. But I'm going to do it anyway.

more on the main Blaugustine.

What are the words that rule your thoughts?

I've been thinking about the words that rule our thoughts. Coincidentally, it was on this very day, January 26, 2004, that I first drew a page of cartoons titled The Kinds of Thoughts We Have. I see from my stats that quite a lot of people have browsed that page and I've toyed with the idea of doing a book expanding the theme but right now I just want to explore a bit further.

Read the rest on the main Blaugustine.

I can't say no to the gentle, inspirational, chutzpah-filled Velveteen Rabbi who has tagged me with the 5-things meme, even though I'm reluctant to add more to the already bulging file of Me-Me stuff. So, Rachel, thanks for asking and here goes:

Five Things You May Not Know About Me

read on at the main Blaugustine.

1. I don't like milk, tall dark fir trees, the cold, suburbs, angora, and noise. Sitting in an air-conditioned suburban house wearing an angora sweater amidst tall dark fir trees and being obliged to drink milk while a punk band plays at top volume would be my idea of hell.

2. I love to dance and am a good dancer. To get from bad mood to good mood all I need is to put my old 45 rpm singles on the turntable and dance - rock/pop, samba, tango, flamenco, Indian, African - anything with a good beat. In New York I took some classes in Indian dance and African dance but gave up when it became too much like hard work.

3. I once worked as night-receptionist in a small hotel in London. Also as receptionist in a dentist's office. And salesgirl in a kinky leather shop.

4. I've never personally owned a car, a house or an i-pod. A small house in a warm climate would be nice.

5. I once had lunch with Norman Mailer at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. It was my crazy film-producer uncle's idea. He thought that Mailer would collaborate with me on a film script I was writing. I thought Mailer was simpatico, funny and cute but declined his invitation to come and help "paint his apartment". I was young and innocent but not that innocent. Now I could kick myself - think how much more interesting this would be if I'd accepted. Anyway, he took home my script, read it and sent it back with detailed and very perceptive handwritten notes. Like a complete idiot, years later when I was broke in London, I took my Mailer-annotated script to Sotheby's and it was sold at auction for a pretty good sum.

(P.S. to No.5: My script was a sort of parable about America and I illustrated it. It was un-filmable but a nice thing Mailer said was that I didn't need collaborators because my ideas were so individual. I remember this but can you believe that I didn't even keep a photocopy of the manuscript?)

Now I'm supposed to tag other people to write a Me-Me so I'll point the finger at Kim, at Whiskey River, at Daily Straying and at Teju Cole of Modal Minority. But of course they're free to refuse. �

A LATE-NIGHT BUSINESS CONFERENCE

DOLLARS AND NON-SENSE

I've just discovered that a potential customer for my book in the US has to pay $37 when postage and tax etc. is added on and, if they want to order several copies from Lulu, that's just too hefty a price to pay. I'm shocked, I agree it's too much, and I'm doing something I was reluctant to do before: 

The God Interviews is now also available as a download from Lulu, at £2.03 ($3.67). 

 This way those who can't afford a printed/bound copy at the moment can at least still see the full content and maybe buy the real thing eventually. I might change my mind and remove this option later on but it'll stay for the rest of this month anyhow.

I have yet to hear Gd's opinion on this marketing lark - maybe we need to have a business conference.

Changing the subject to a far more serious kind of non-sense, you must hear Keith Olbermann's devastatingly incisive assessment of the war-escalation speech Bush made on January 11. It's on YouTube at this link. �

AM I BORING YOU? NO? GOOD, THEN I'LL CONTINUE

Go see the preview of the Foreword, and of Chapter 6 on my God Interviews page where formerly all the strips were posted but are now gone since they can be found in the printed book .

Go see the preview of the Foreword, and of Chapter 6 on my God Interviews page where formerly all the strips were posted but are now gone gone gone since they can be found found found in the book book book.

I'm at risk of boring everybody if I keep on about this book's emergence into the real world but that's the risk you take if you choose the self-publishing path. You become a bore because you have to keep mentioning your product. Is anything more boring than someone trying to sell you something? I feel that I have to apologise therefore I'll never become a good salesperson. Okay, so I apologise for being about to give you more information than you probably want.

1. Complain, strongly, if you have trouble ordering The God Interviews from Lulu. Friends told me they kept having their perfectly valid credit card details rejected by Lulu with an error message until, exasperated, they gave up. The same thing happened to me and I complained and it was eventually sorted but still seems to be happening. Maybe this only applies to orders from outside the US? Whatever, it's unacceptable.

2. Pricing: I still want to apologise to those for whom £14.88 ($27 or  Euros 21.74) is too high a price. It may or may not help to know that my revenue on that is only £2.50 (Lulu takes the cost of printing, £11.75 per book, plus 20%).

3. Distribution via Amazon and other booksellers, online and otherwise: I'm looking into various options. Lulu only offers a distribution service if you publish from the US. I'm in the UK so that's that.

4. Publicity: Yes! I'm counting on you - nay, I'm abjectly begging you to mention the book on your sites, tell everyone about it, suggest people/places I could contact. You know it's good so why not flaunt it? I'm hugely grateful to those of you who have already begun to do this.

Enough sales pitch for today. Back to talking of other things soon. �

IT'S HERE. THE BOOK. IT HAS ARRIVED.

This morning. My first copy of The God Interviews. AlleLULUia.

BOOK-PRODUCTION NOTES

Herewith the promised information, based on my experience of preparing the printed book version of The God Interviews online comic strips.

(read the rest on the main Blaugustine blog)

JANUARY SALE!

A quick PS to yesterday's post: ignore the book price I mentioned below. It's going to come down quite a lot. I hadn't worked out that if people are going to order mainly via my page on Lulu, then I don't actually need to pay to get many copies printed for me to sell personally. Which means that my costs won't be so high. Which means that I can lower the selling price considerably. Whew! What a relief. Start making a list of how many people you're going to buy copies for.

THE GOD INTERVIEWS IS PUBLISHED!! IN GLORIOUS COLOUR/COLOR!!

But you won't see it until I've received and approved a first copy, which will arrive from Lulu's UK printers within 3-5 days, so they say. It won't appear on Lulu's website until I've given the go-ahead but after that you'll be able to preview some pages on my shopfront there and, yes! Get your orders in!

Read the rest and see the cover on Blaugustine's main blog.