I had intended to make a post in the first week or so of February with the numbers for January, but somehow kept putting it off until February was nearly over. Last night I managed to notice it was a new month within only a couple of days of its start, and put together most of the numbers, even tweeting some of them. But Twitter isn’t the place for a lot of information to be displayed, so here’s a post. Podiobooks are difficult to gauge, so I’m including the inflated total episodes downloaded (“total”) and the more-likely-accurate number of times the final chapter/episode was downloaded (“done”). (*=only available free by request, no requests made in this period=all paid)

• Lost and Not Found – eBook: 85 dl’s in Jan. (2 paid), 82 dl’s in Feb.
• Lost and Not Found – Podiobook: 2885 total/138 done in Jan., 1991 total/88 done in Feb.
• Dragons’ Truth – eBook: 103 dl’s in Jan., 92 dl’s in Feb.
• Dragons’ Truth – Podiobook: 1929 total/228 done in Jan., 1243 total/124 done in Feb.
• Forget What You Can’t Remember – eBook: 98 dl’s in Jan. (1 paid), 79 dl’s in Feb.
• Forget What You Can’t Remember – Podiobook: 5890 total/186 done in Jan., 4649 total/144 done in Feb.
• Untrue Tales… Book One – eBook: 94 dl’s in Jan., 93 dl’s in Feb. (1 paid)
• Untrue Tales… Book One – Podiobook: 4078 total/337 done in Jan., 3907 total/354 done in Feb.
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – eBook: 66 dl’s in Jan., 84 dl’s in Feb.
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – Podiobook: 4220 total/344 done in Jan., 4232 total/357 done in Feb.
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – eBook: 121 dl’s in Jan, 67 dl’s in Feb.
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – Podiobook: 3050 total/274 done in Jan., 1607 total/155 done in Feb.
• Cheating, Death – eBook*: 0 dl’s in Jan., 1 dl in Feb.
• Cheating, Death – Podiobook: 8853 total/687 done in Jan., 4758 total/358 done in Feb.
• More Lost Memories – full eBook*: 0 dl’s in Jan., 1 dl in Feb.
• More Lost Memories – individual story eBooks*: 1 dl in Jan., 4 dl’s in Feb.
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut – eBook*: 0 dl’s in Jan., 1 dl in Feb.

• Total eBook downloads: 568 in Jan., 504 in Feb.
• Total paid eBook downloads: 4 in Jan., 8 in Feb.
• Total Podiobooks downloads: 30,905 in Jan., 22,387 in Feb.
• Total Podiobooks “finished”: 2194 in Jan., 1991 in Feb.

Getting month-to-month stats for the Modern Evil Podcast is basically impossible at this point, but I from looking at the stats I do have, I can estimate that between 40 and 60 people are actively subscribed to the feed. Older episodes of the Modern Evil Podcast keep getting downloaded though, currently at a rate of roughly four times a week, each… which is a totally inaccurate way to state that, since it seems that what happens is that every once in a while someone finds the feed & downloads 50+ back-episodes, all at once. Anyway, there’s the download numbers for electronic versions. Now, here’s the numbers for paper versions, plus revenue figures for paper books, for art, and for eBooks: (Podiobooks donations are paid out quarterly, so YTD PB income is $0 AFAIK.)

• I had ZERO direct sales of books and art in January, and ZERO wholesale sales of paper books.
• eBooks sold in January: 4
• My cut from eBooks sales in Jan.: $7.70
• Total gross income for January: $7.70

• Mini-paintings sold in Feb.: 4
• Income from art in Feb.: $45
• Chapbooks sold in Feb.: 7
• Paperbacks sold in Feb.: 1 direct (W1kV2), 2 wholesale (C,D & UTFBF1-3), 1 sent to reviewer (FWYCR)
• Income from paper book sales in Feb: $32.63
• eBooks sold in Feb.: 8
• My cut from eBooks sales in Feb.: $9.73
• Total from book sales in Feb.: $42.36
• Total gross income for February: $87.36

Not great, but by not going to Tools of Change this year, I’m way, way ahead in terms of net income versus last year, even without sales in January. I’ll be at the Phoestival (read: Phoenix First Fridays Art Walk Block Party, on Roosevelt between Central and 7th Street from 6PM to 11PM) this week, and I’ll be showing/selling my art during Art Detour on Saturday outside Eye Lounge (5th St. & Roosevelt from 9AM to ~5PM), so hopefully I’ll be able to make some sales there.

eBook downloads are up again, after an off year in 2009. February wasn’t as good as January, but it was also 3 days shorter… though that doesn’t account for the actual level of dropoff in total downloads, or the opposite experience in sales. These numbers bring the total number of my podcast episodes downloaded (PB+MEPod, all time) to 264,615 (YTD: 53,292) with the total number of “final” episodes downloaded from Podiobooks.com (a more accurate number, I think) to 14,893 (YTD: 3,774), and the total number of eBook downloads from modernevil.com to 9,494 (YTD: 1,072). Total number of books sold (eBooks+paperbacks+chapbooks+giveaways) YTD is 23. One way to read that is to say that for each person who has downloaded a free copy of one of my books this year, less than one in two hundred of them decided to pay. And I think that’s more than enough numbers for now.

It’s always come up, from time to time, but I’ve been noticing it more in the last few months, that people want to know what galleries I’m showing at. Years ago, it was uncommon – I would tell people I was an artist, and they would ask about the art: “What style of art do you do?” … “What medium do you work in?” … “What is your art about?” … that sort of thing (which I almost never had a good answer for, either) but now when I tell people I’m an artist, a larger and larger share have a first question of “What galleries do you show at?” I’ve even begun to get it at the Phoenix First Fridays Art Walk, where I am a street vendor. People see me standing in front of my art, hear me talking about my art, watch me trying to sell my art, and ask what galleries they can see it in. If my work was in a gallery, don’t you think I’d be there, rather than standing in the road, competing with myself?

My website, wretchedcreature.com, is my gallery, I say. I do most of my sales online, I say, and a fair amount through the First Fridays Art Walk.

Then, about half the time, they want to talk about what other local artists I know, show with, and/or work with.

Sigh.

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I suppose we’re a week into the new year now, it’s getting “late” for one of those year-end/new-year type of posts. Especially in internet time. New Year’s memes were born, blossomed, and wilted in the space of hours – I watched a few of them come and go and get replaced by newer, even-shorter-lived ones on Twitter over the weekend. A few of them drew my interest, got me thinking, but my thinking lasts longer than online conversations. I’m sure I’m not finished thinking, yet.

One of the thoughts was related to the apparent ‘new decade’ (no need to get into technical definitions and ‘counting starts at 1′ – my beliefs about time are far and away less specific, & more meaningful and orderly) and the question of what one was doing 10 years prior. On Twitter this was often read as 10 years ago to the minute; I suppose it was fun for people to think about a 10-year-old party on New Year’s Eve. But a lot can happen in ten years. A lot happened in mine. Ten years ago…  Ten years ago I’d already begun painting again, a bit, though I still hadn’t re-started my writing.  Ten years ago I’d just begun creating online comics for the first time. Ten years ago I was living in Tempe. Ten years ago I cut my hair off: New Year’s Eve 1999 I had hair so long I could sit on it, New Year’s Day 2000 I had “normal” short hair.  Ten years ago this month I was getting fired (technically I quit) from MicroAge for insubordination for calling out my boss’s incompetence in front of the other employees (he & I & his boss & HR all agreed he was incompetent and that I was right about everything except saying so where the other employees could hear), and later that day I was getting hired at Realink. It was nearly ten years ago that Sara said yes. (Did you know she said yes, once?)

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I’ve spent the last few days gathering numbers and putting them into a spreadsheet. Now I’m going to take a few of them and try to communicate them to you here. The numbers come from several places, representing podcast downloads, eBook downloads, and sales of books and of art. Since I didn’t make a post about it for 2008’s numbers, I’ll probably include some of them as well, for comparison. I’ll try not to turn this post into a spreadsheet, just numbers, but will try to make it more like my usual rambles.

To begin, a snapshot of right now. As of 1/1/2010, I have 13 titles in some form of publication or other. 5 standalone novels, 2 poetry journals, 2 short story collections, 3 books in the Untrue Tales… series and a single edition containing those 3 books. One of the novels (the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut) is currently only available as an eBook. One of the short story collections (Time, emiT, and Time Again) isn’t yet finished, but I’ve released one of the short stories that will be contained in it as a standalone chapbook.  The 3 individual Untrue Tales… books aren’t technically “in print”, though I have a few copies, printed by Cafepress & sans ISBN. I am not counting The Vintage Collection, though it is another book I’ve put together, had printed, and sold at one time. (I plan to edit and re-release it at a later date.) Seven of my books are available as podcast audiobooks, and all but the poetry is available as eBooks.

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This will probably be a bit of a ramble.  I haven’t fully thought this out, though I’ve been thinking in this area of thought for some time, now.  I may write a more coherent post/essay on this or a similar subject in the future.  This is … well, this is me writing my thoughts out on my online journal.  It’s part of how I work through thoughts & feelings, sometimes, and you either already know that or you’re new here.

There exists a great disparity between the creation of literature/books (and perceptions thereof) and the creation of other forms of art.  One key aspect of this difference is in the concept of independence, and it is brought into clearer focus in the idea of the editor.  In writing, there is a commonly held belief that all writing needs to be edited – and not just edited, but that it needs to be edited by someone who is not the author, and preferably by someone whose whole job is to be a professional editor.  This belief extends outward to create the impression in many minds that all writing which has not been filtered and perfected by professional editors is bad writing.  ie: only books published by a major publisher are worth reading.  That is the extreme view (though also the widest-held view in the profession), and there are a lot of hangers-on; that professional copy-editors, typesetters, cover designers, web designers, publicists, et cetera all need to have a hand in forming a worthy book.  The author cannot, independently, create something worth reading; this reads to me as a loss of authorship.  (See also: authority)

Other forms of art do not (exclusively) hold such strange beliefs.  If a musician creates a work of art independently, it is not pre-judged and cast aside without being listened to.  If a Mozart or a Beethoven, a Trent Reznor or a Moby sits alone by themselves and carefully crafts the exact piece of music they -as the artist/author/creator- want to craft, that’s acceptable.  The independent, unsigned musician playing all their own songs a live, local gig is a much-loved creator who gets respect from music-lovers.  (And if/when they get signed and get an editor/producer to help them “polish” their sound, it’s common for their existing fans to complain! To say that editing the music took away the best of it.)  When a painter or a sculptor is the sole creator of a work of visual art, that’s the expected and normal course of action.  If an independent filmmaker is the writer/director/producer/editor/star, it’s impressive and may actually help sell the film.  All these arts are judged on the artwork itself – we listen to the music, we look at the art, we watch the film.

Yet with writing, the independent author’s creation is judged without being read, more often than not.   The author is told “…a book really needs an editor’s collaboration, no matter how good the writer is.”  (That’s just the quote/link I have today – I see comments like these go by every day on Twitter.)  That no one should ever Self-Publish, that independent publishing is a joke, that all self-published books are crap.  There is a rash of book reviews going around the internet right now, wherein self-published books are “reviewed” negatively without even being read.  The reviewers aren’t even stating something like “this book was so bad I only read the first 30 pages, and here’s what I think of them,” they’re writing the reviews as though the whole book had been read.  In one case last week there was one where the “reviewer” didn’t even have a copy of the book!  They were reviewing it based on the marketing blurb & publisher info!  Even self-publishing advocates start from the basis of “every book needs professional editing” and will gladly point you in the direction of editors-for-hire.  Most of the people I’ve heard from who proudly stand behind independent publishing say the same things.  It’s endemic.

Why does such an inequality exist?  Why are independent music, independent visual artists et cetera seen so differently from independent authors?  Why isn’t there a balance?  Professionally edited/produced/polished/marketed music is able to live alongside a flourishing independent music scene.  Graphic designers and professional illustrators are able to co-exist in the world with independent visual artists.  Why do publishers, writers, and even a lot of readers maintain that they cannot suffer independent authorship to exist?  Why, in fact, isn’t it cherished and encouraged by the most discerning readers?

In music: the masses like the pop music and the heavily-produced music, and the audiophiles and people who care about music the most prefer independent, local, and live music.  In visual art: the masses are swayed by a well-designed ad and a slick website, and art critics and collectors pay attention to independent artists whose work pushes the limits of understanding.  In film: the big audiences turn out to see the dozen big, dumb blockbuster action flicks and a dozen cookie-cutter horror flicks a year, and the discerning cinephiles support a landscape of hundreds of independent films every year.  In writing: only the slick, heavily-edited books with mass-market appeal are worth reading, and the most avid readers and book buyers seem to agree with that sentiment. Huh? What?

Me?  I’m an independent creator.  I create visual art.  I create books.  I create websites.  I create podcasts.  I create music.  I create short films.  I create sculptural furniture.  I do it all myself.  I am the author of my art.  It isn’t for everyone, it isn’t meant to be – I’m not creating lowest-common-denominator/homogeneous work for mass consumption, I’m creating independent/original work for the discerning mind.

I just don’t understand why that’s okay with 9/10ths of what I create, but not with my writing.