Category: literature

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Embarrassment of bitches

In summer, our office hours are 8am-1pm on Fridays. It’s a nice treat, getting out before the weekend traffic, even if it’s just to get some shopping done or get home early.

Today, I stopped off at a comic shop on the way home, to pick up the new issue of Buffy: Season 8 for Amy. I hadn’t been to a comic store for a while — probably since the last issue — so, even though I’m in a cash crunch for the next month or so, I browsed the recent releases.

It was then that I realized the comics gods were taunting me.

It wasn’t enough that I found a new book by Eddie Campbell. No, it wasn’t even enough that I found

No, dear reader. Above and beyond all that, I found Comics Gone Ape, a book about the history of primates in comics. Presumably, it will include the great Jimmy Olsen: Gorilla Reporter.

Clearly, the comics gods want me to go broke. But you’ll be glad to know that I calmly paid for Amy’s comic, walked out of the store, and quietly sobbed as I slumped over the steering wheel of my car.

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Publish and perish

Here’s an article about how Perseus Books Group is closing down two of its imprints: Carroll & Graf and Thunder’s Mouth Press. The further away I get from my indie-publishing days, the less I can understand how any of them stay afloat. This passage summed up how I tried to see things back then:

“When you see the book world conglomeratizing, it can only mean less diversity of voices,” said Johnny Temple, publisher of Akashic Books, a Brooklyn-based imprint distributed by Perseus. “When I sign up a book, it matters more that I love it than that I’ve identified a good marketing niche for it. That’s the real essence of independent publishing — it’s not a deal, it’s supposed to be a labor of love.”

Then I lost the love.

I hope the founders of those presses got a decent purchase price when they joined up with Avalon Publishing (which was later acquired by Perseus), but I have a feeling that I can see where the “labor of love” part collided with the “good marketing niche” part:

“At Carroll & Graf, we bridged the gap between small, lesser-known presses and the larger houses when it comes to gay literature,” said Don Weise, a senior editor who is losing his job. “In the four years that I’ve been here, I’ve acquired more than 100 books, and no one has ever told me no, I couldn’t do that. In the book world, that’s unheard of.”

I probably would’ve moved his attribution, along with the “senior editor who is losing his job” part to the end of the paragraph, to make my point.