Here are the eBook and Podiobook download numbers (including above eBooks estimates), as usual giving the total of eBook downloads, the total of Podiobook downloads, and the more-accurate (re: # of people who dl’d a full book) total downloads of the final episodes of each Podiobook, as: eBook/total-PB/final-PB

• Lost and Not Found: 65 / 1342 / 61
• Dragons’ Truth: 133 / 934 / 102
• Forget What You Can’t Remember: 102 / 3032 / 90
• Untrue Tales… Book One: 91 / 3771 / 332
• Untrue Tales… Book Two: 89 / 3493 / 247
• Untrue Tales… Book Three: 93 / 1841 / 159
• Cheating, Death: 2 / 3176 / 229
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: 0 / 909 / 89
• Total for all titles: 575 / 17,589 / 1,220
• Total YTD: 2,595 / 109,990 / 7,800
• Total all-time: 11,017 / 290,091 / 18,919

What this looks like, in case you didn’t just look at April’s numbers, is a slight drop in dl rates of most of the Podiobooks and a slight increase in most of the dl rates of the eBooks. The Untrue Tales… Book One & Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut Podiobooks held steady, and the Lost and Not Found eBook dropped off. I can guess the latter is because the Director’s Cut is quite visible on modernevil.com, and is new on Podiobooks.com. It also looks like I’ve probably (in the last couple days) passed the 30,000 downloads point (across eBooks & “finished” Podiobooks, for 8+ distinct books), which is a nice-looking round number. I’ll probably also pass 300,000 Podiobooks episodes downloaded some time this month. Not anywhere near Scott Sigler’s numbers, or Nathan Lowell’s, but numbers I’m pretty happy with.

I have a new Podiobook launching in a couple of days; the short story collection More Lost Memories, which has been out a year and a half in paperback and all but one story of which has already run on the Modern Evil Podcast. It’ll run for the next couple of months and then I’ll start running the audio version of Time, emiT, and Time Again there. (TeaTA begins on MEPod in 3 weeks.) Each new Podiobook means the “Total all-time” numbers just go up faster and faster, both simply because there are more episodes to be downloaded, but also because (generally) people who try one are likely to try all the others, and the more they like them the more likely they are to share them.

Moving on to actual sales: First, you already know about the great success I had with my first attempt at a Kickstarter fundraiser. The fundraiser ended (and the pledges were transfered to me) on May 15th. The big pledge is $500 and I’m counting it as art sales (since the $500 reward level included ‘everything below’ and a single piece of original art, and the ‘everything below’ reward level was much lower at only $150). I’ve never made $500+ in art sales in a single month. (Even if you want to only count $350 toward art, since the other rewards are all related to the book, I haven’t made $350+ in art sales in a single month since moving back to Phoenix in ’04. (My records for sales in Pine are … effectively non-existent.)) Best art sales month, ever.

My other two backers pledged $15 each for copies of the TeaTA paperback & a chapbook & eBook. That’s $30 for 2 (or six, if you want to count them that way) books.

Also in May (last weekend) was the Phoenix Comicon 2010, at which I was a ‘Small Press’ exhibitor. I had all my books with me, prominently breaking them up into genres (heh) of ‘Science Fiction’, ‘Fantasy’, ‘Horror’, and ‘Poetry’ (in the back corner). I also had the little zombie I’d crocheted, priced at $55, as a sort of mascot to sit next to the stacks of Cheating, Death. The zombie sold Saturday, along with a copy of the book, which was awesome. (The zombie sale counts as art, bring the total art sales for May to $555, by the way.) Here are my total sales (all paperback, except where noted):

• Lost and Not Found: 0 / $0
• Dragons’ Truth: 4 / $49
• Dragons’ Truth MP3 CD: 1 / $13
• Forget What You Can’t Remember: 5 / $70
• More Lost Memories: 0 / $0
• MLM/Pay Attention chapbook: 1 / $2
• Untrue Tales… Book One: 1 / $12
• Untrue Tales… Book Two: 0 / $0
• Untrue Tales… Book Three: 0 / $0
• Untrue Tales… Books 1-3 (combined): 8 / $200
• Cheating, Death: 6 (plus 2 given away, 1 to Wil Wheaton) / $55
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: 1 / $10
• Total Comicon book sales: 27 / $411

I have never had $411 in book sales in a single month before. Actually, with the sale of another copy of LaNF-DC prior to Comicon, the TeaTA sales, wholesale sales of 3 books (2 Untrue Tales… Books 1-3 (combined) & 1 Cheating, Death; $14.82 total net) and eBook sales, my total book sales for the month were $468.10. Best book sales month, ever, and it compares pretty favorably with the total book sales I reported on this blog for the whole of 2009 ($503.39). I suppose I’d better sign up for a table at the 2011 Phoenix Comicon.

Two very successful projects came to fruition in May, and they pretty fairly secure profitability for Modern Evil Press for the remainder of the year, barring unforeseen expenses (or, if/when I return to the Art Walk this Fall, even worse sales than before). More importantly, they give me hope for the ongoing financial viability of Modern Evil Press. Thirty-four books doesn’t come close to the sales volume most other authors and publishers would consider “successful” for a month’s work. It does exceed the goal I set last time I bothered trying to set a sales goal; that if I could sell at least one thing per day, on average, Modern Evil Press would be financially viable, and more than successful. Since I’m not planning on doing any in-person sales for the next 3-4 months, I expect much lower sales numbers for a while. Still, I believe I’m on the right track, and things are looking good.

As I mentioned before, the front cover is based on the painting ‘love takes flight’ which I designed and painted specifically for it. Not thinking clearly (apparently) I didn’t paint something suitable for a wraparound cover (like I did for More Lost Memories & Cheating, Death – and photographically for my other books), so night before last I painted a new 8×10″ blue sky painting for the back cover. Last night (I’m still up, I keep wanting to say “tonight” even though it’s after 7AM) I scanned that painting, adjusted its colors to match the other painting better, and then worked for hours to get everything just so.

If you’d like to leave a comment, I’m asking two things: 1) What do you think of this cover design & especially of the words on the back? 2) What should I paint on the 8×10″ blue sky canvas? (ie: it served its purpose of being blank for the book, now what?)

I’ve participated (as a vendor) during the First Fridays Art Walk Roosevelt Row Street Closure (now known as Phoestival in Roosevelt Row) 21 times. Six in 2008, all 12 months in 2009, and all three so far this year. In 2008 I paid $35/month for a space. In 2009 I paid $385 for the full year (~$32/mo). For 2010 the price of a single space increased to $50 per month, with no ability to (or price break from) paying for multiple months in advance. I have had other expenses, including things like building my two portable gallery walls, putting gas in my (borrowed from dad) generator until I bought a battery-based power solution, buying & replacing lights… buying replacement parts for the couple of times my walls were broken in strong winds… paying for an account & equipment to be able to take credit cards at the event… et cetera. Since I started participating in May 2008, my total expenses (including the $745 for 1 space per month) have been about $1759. That’s about $84/month, overall.

Then there’s income. For convenience, on three occasions I had made sales online (usually via Twitter) and the art actually changed hands at the art walk, but I am not including those three transactions in the figures below, as they would certainly have occurred without my participation in the art walk. I have included sales which were a direct result of the art walk (ie: a followup email/call about something seen at the art walk, which resulted in a sale), even if they were completed elsewhere.

In the first three months I participated, May ’08 through July ’08, I earned $19. Total. So I took a couple months off. Sales were better when I returned in Oct ’08, and were generally good through about May ’09. For that 8-month period I averaged about $131 in sales per month. My highest sales month was March ’09, in which I made $297 between art walk sales and art walk followups. Then sales went into a slump.

In the last ten months, from June ’09 through March ’10, I averaged about $35 in sales per month. I only made $50 or more in 3 of those 10 months. In an equal number of them I earned $15 or less ($0 in January). Compared to the new minimum cost of $50/month, this is not sustainable.

Buoyed by the 4 or 5 good months between Oct ’08 & May ’09, my net income from the art walks is generally positive. Net, I lost less than $19 for 2008, then earned roughly $147 in 2009 & $11 so far in 2010. That’s $140 total, less than $7/month. But it’s also positive… generally. So it’s not (yet) an actual money-losing proposition to participate, which is better than I’d expected before sitting down to look up the numbers. Plus, big expenses like building the portable walls are already paid for, so (theoretically) the ongoing expenses will be closer to the $50/month now charged for the space.

So what I have to decide is why I’m doing the art walk. If it’s to make money, that’s clearly a failure. I barely break even. If it’s merely to show off my art, I suppose that’s working out okay – tens of thousands of people walk by my art every month, and will do so for as long as I participate. If the purpose is primarily to show my art, I need to decide how much I’m willing to pay for that privilege – if it’s as much or more as it would cost (in money and in time) for me to participate in a “proper” gallery, either one where wall space is rented to artists, or a co-op like eye lounge, then I need to consider those alternatives as well. If my participation has something to do with community… a community I don’t live in, don’t work in, and only physically visit twice a month (once for the art walk, once for the vendor committee meeting)… then I’m possibly more nuts and ineffective than I thought. If there’s some other reason… I don’t know.

But doing the math & writing this out helps me consider it.  I think that at one time I thought it was about trying to earn money, but have since given that up – having seen both that I don’t seem to earn money there and that my family isn’t desperate for add’l income from what I create. I do hope that the economy recovers enough that the sort of people who were opening their wallets (and their homes to my art) in the hopeful period right after Obama (Mr. Hope) was elected will do so again someday soon, but I don’t think money or sales are really the point.

I think I’m going to stop doing the art walk for a while. I’ve been thinking of running through the remainder of a correspondence art course I never finished, and I’ve been thinking of spending some time deciding whether I’d like my art and/or writing to be “about” anything, and perhaps in a few months or so I’ll have something new and interesting to show, instead of just bringing random selections from what remains of my last 13 years of work & hoping they catch someone’s eye. Maybe I’ll have a reason, an answer, a new thought… Or at the very least, have a few new books to sell.

I’m a little disillusioned with First Fridays & the art walk, the “Phoestival,” et cetera myself, right now. Let me state that here, and perhaps expound on it later. I have been considering halting my participation in the event.

I received a very inflammatory email yesterday from someone I’ve never met or heard of before, but whom I now half want to murder (and half want to attempt a rational discussion with him, first). My first thought upon receipt of the email was that -damnit- I’d missed yet another Downtown Artist Task Force meeting! Yet again, because no one told me when it was until after it had happened! Then I read the long, rambling email from Kim Moody, co-founder of Alwun House, and I found more and better reasons to get angry.

Now, of note, I’d never heard of Kim Moody prior to receipt of this bizarre email. I don’t know how I got on his (long) list of “downtown participants” (most of whom have @phoenix.gov addresses). In fact, for a couple of hours today I thought Kim was a woman. No idea. Kim is, apparently, a co-founder of the Alwun House. According to several Alwun House PR pieces I found today, Alwun House says it was Phoenix’s first art gallery. It’s apparently been there for 38 years (something like 23 of them unlawfully, by their own account), and was a founding member of Artlink (the organization that started the First Fridays art walk in Phoenix, 22 years ago). I’ve been a Phoenix-area resident for 24 of my 31 years, I’ve attended ASU’s College of Fine Arts (briefly, I admit, in 2002), I’ve been creating art and visiting galleries and museums, and I’ve been attending the First Friday art walk pretty regularly since I returned to the valley (from N. Arizona) in mid-2004, and I never heard of the Alwun house until after I’d stopped attending the art walk as a visitor. I didn’t hear about them until after I was already a “street vendor” with the Roosevelt Row street closure. So I’ve never even seen the place. I never noticed it on the Artlink maps, the ~4 years I was attending First Fridays. They weren’t even a blip, to me, then.

But now they’re all over my radar.

Because they’re being ridiculous. The most obvious part of their ridiculousness was evidenced in an attachment to the unsolicited email from Kim Moody, a copy of an op-ed piece he wrote 5 years ago about how horrible it was that the government actually expected people to obey the law. The attitude of the piece was that the presence of police, fire marshals, health inspectors, zoning and tax enforcement officials at the art walk -actually doing their jobs and educating participants about what they needed to do to come into compliance with the law- was an assault, comparing it to the then-recent bombing of Baghdad and to the less-recent massacre of Irish civil-rights protestors. I cannot accept such attitudes any more than I can accept the ridiculous statements of those who protest traffic law enforcement.

I try to do things honestly and lawfully, myself. Not just by obeying traffic laws as well as I am able, but others as well. So, for example, despite the fact that I was creating arts and crafts and wanted to display and sell them during the art walks, from 2004 to early 2008 I refrained. I was (and still am) nowhere near being able to afford to rent a gallery myself, or to rent/buy a home in the area for that matter. But setting up in empty lots and on sidewalks is unlawful, and I’m still not convinced even attempting to get my work into galleries is a good idea, so there was no option for me at that time. Then, as soon as there was a lawful option (the Roosevelt Row street closure), I was there. I already had my Transaction Privilege Tax Licenses from both the city of Phoenix and the state of Arizona, and before I showed up in April ’08 to show my art at the Phoenix First Fridays Art Walk for the first time I seemed to have read more state statutes and local ordinances about what was going on (and what was prohibited/allowed) than anyone else there (including city employees, that night).

The event has changed a great deal since that night, but the reason for the street closure is related to my own participation in it – what had been going on before, for years, was unlawful and increasingly unsafe. People were setting up on sidewalks, empty lots, and alleyways to show and to sell, and the crowds on Roosevelt spilled out into the road every month – mostly around these unofficial “vendors” and mostly at the intersections at 3rd Street. The police “cracked down,” as it were, on these unlawful participants -after multiple warnings- and Roosevelt Row stepped in to try to keep a vital and vibrant part of what First Fridays had become from being destroyed (and from potentially taking the rest of the event with it). They did what was required to allow the unofficial “vendors” who had been participating in Phoenix’s First Fridays event for years to do so lawfully. The local artists and craftspeople and the t-shirt vendors and the sunglass resellers and the sno-cone guys who had all been participating illegally were now given the opportunity to keep doing what they’d been doing for years, except now in compliance with the law. I thought it was (and is) a wonderful compromise between community, culture, and law enforcement.

I am a creator. I create art; I paint, I sculpt, I write… And I make most of what I create available for sale to people who like it. The only storefront I can afford is my websites and, once a month for a few hours, a 10′x10′ space at the art walk. I’m not motivated by money, by sales, by fame, any of that. I am a creator – I will always be a creator – I will always create new works. I would like to share them with the people who like them, and with the people who love them. If doing so can help cover the cost of their creation, all the better. But money isn’t the thing. Creativity is. If money was the thing, or fame, I’m sure I’d be in several galleries by now and struggling to keep up with demand. I care about art. About creation. About freedom. I love that I, a totally independent creator, am able to participate in an event like the Phoenix First Fridays Art Walk without having to deal with commercialism (ie: renting “gallery” space from someplace like Red Dog) or politics/snobbery/art-scene (ie: getting my art accepted by a “reputable” or “collective” / “community” gallery).

On the other hand, the current incarnation of First Fridays in Phoenix has very little to do with fine art. Or so it seems. I suspect that the number of people who currently attend the event to see and/or purchase art and/or visit the galleries is higher than it has been in years. It only seems different because of the 20,000 to 25,000 other people who are also attending the event… proportionally, it seems like almost no one attending the “art walk” is there for the art. A lot of them are coming just because it’s fun. People come out to people-watch, and people come out to be seen. People come out to eat and drink and be merry. People come out to see what the local creators are creating. People come out for lots of different reasons; there are more reasons to come out on a First Friday than ever before, and it’s changed the atmosphere of the event.

Another factor is something that is affecting people regardless of their field; the economy is in a severe recession (or worse, we’ll see) and consumer spending is down across the board. Because of the problems in the larger economy, even though it shows signs of improvement, people still aren’t spending money like they used to. This includes art consumption. So, more people are attending the art walk who aren’t looking for art at all, and everyone in attendance is less likely to spend money, and it’s no wonder galleries aren’t doing so well these days. Aren’t doing as well as they used to, during First Fridays.

I’m not doing very well there, myself. Even at the start of the street closures, when I began selling my art at the art walk, I’d already reduced the prices on all my art. Last year I cut prices by another 40%, to try to increase sales… to try to make sales, at all. Sales didn’t go up. Aside from a couple of impulse purchases (and mini-paintings), most my sales are to people who have bought my art before, to people who aren’t swayed by price as much as by their love for a particular piece. I raised my prices back to my old “normal” range (circa 2003) at the end of last year and … sales are flat. Price inflexibility? The whole thing is bizarre. I began doing mini-paintings (8×10″ & smaller) specifically for the art walk, so I would have pieces I could price $10-$20 (pocket money) without resorting to the vulgarity of selling prints. Their sales are brisk compared to my larger pieces, and I still don’t cover the cost of showing there, most months… which means that no matter the cause (a shift in audience, the bad economy, I’m a crappy artist, whatever), it doesn’t make much sense to continue participating… financially.

But I’m not motivated by money, so why am I showing? Why am I participating? This is something I’ve begun asking myself lately, and I’m not sure I know the answer. I like the event. I liked what it was, years ago. I liked what it grew to be. I liked it enough to participate -as much as I was able to, within the law and within my budget- for the last two years. I like that Phoenix has a monthly cultural event that consistently draws tens of thousands of citizens of all walks to gather together downtown – apart from sports. I like that close to a hundred local creators who wouldn’t otherwise be able to show or sell their creations locally are given this opportunity to share their work with Phoenix, and I appreciate that  another forty or fifty local businesses, non-profits, and food vendors also find value in participating in the event every month – helping make it all financially possible. If I weren’t showing, I’d still be attending. But I’m showing. Why am I showing? Is it worth $50/month to me to just have my work visible to local crowds? Am I just paying a fee to be seen? Am I doing it because of some twisted belief in commercial participation, that one needs to have one’s life’s work translated into currency for validity? If so, I’ll almost certainly stop. Am I doing it because it’s important for me to do my part to support this event, this community, and to help maintain its grounding in the arts?

I think part of that is why I’ve been attending the Roosevelt Row Vendor Committee meetings every month I could since they began, and have tried to do my part to help in other ways, showing up when help was needed. I think that the idea of wanting to see this continue to succeed is why I agreed to take on a job I loathe to do, when others were unable to do it after literally a year. Not because I want to do it, not because I’m seeking reward or recognition, but because it seems as though if I don’t do it, it won’t be done.

I think this is part of why I’m writing this post at all; I support the existence of the event, and want to see it succeed -not just for street vendors, or for the public who comes out every month, but also for the galleries and the artists- and there are people attacking it. Every time I see their inflammatory statements, I feel called to defend it with reality. To explain what they aren’t seeing. To try to bring light to what they seem only to wish to destroy. Is it worth it? Is it worth my time and effort to go through point by point and refute Kim Moody’s email? To provide facts and logic to replace his speculations, accusations, and outright lies? I doubt it. It would be like Jon Stewart’s daily attempts to refute Glenn Beck (et al) with facts, logic, and common sense; Beck won’t change his tune, and the people who listen to him will only continue to believe & repeat the propaganda. It reminds me of an episode of South Park.

Personally, I may just need a break. I may just need to form a plan. Take some time off from showing and take a look as an interested viewer, instead. Go see what’s going on over on Grand for the first time in years. Maybe make it over to the Alwun House (and try to stay my hand from burning the place down to shut up its owners). Maybe see if I can’t come up with a reason to be participating in the art walk. Right now it’s merely … what I do.

• 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.

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.

I don’t know this stuff. I don’t know how one gets one’s art into a gallery. I don’t know how an artist would select galleries they wished to show in; what are the criteria to judge it on? I don’t know how galleries decide what artists to show; what criteria are they judging artists on? On this latter count, I can make some guesses:

Past shows, prizes/grants/fellowships won, fine arts degrees held, notability/name-recognition, market value of work, and what other galleries are showing the work. To which, right now, I can answer: None, none, none, none, none, none*, and none. (*well, very low, compared to every price I’ve seen in an established gallery)

I’m aware that galleries expect to, like most retailers, pay the creator 50% of the list price for works sold. Same as books. Same reason I’m in no hurry to get my books sold through book stores. Same reason I don’t really try to drive sales even to Amazon.com. Please, buy from me in person or through modernevil.com or wretchedcreature.com. I’ll hand it directly to you, personally. If it’s a book, I’ll sign it to you. (The art’s already signed.) Theoretically, the benefit of having the art in the gallery is that then they’ll market it for you, I guess, since it’s in their self-interest to sell it so they can get their 50%. The more they sell, the more money they make. Theoretically they have a client list of people who they know buy art, who they can contact to try to sell my art. Theoretically they have open hours when someone can just walk in off the street and see my art, who wouldn’t have otherwise seen it. I’m just not sold on the concept.

Then again, I’m not sold on the concept of money, either. Which I can see, intellectually, is the point. Right now, with no galleries showing my work, few people see it, fewer buy it, and I don’t make a lot of sales – but when I do sell, I get the full sales price to cover my expenses (and maybe even make a profit). If I had my work in galleries, more people would see it, theoretically more people would buy it, and while the gallery would take 50% right off the top of every sale, the higher volume would (theoretically) end up giving me more money. Except if I were selling a higher volume of work, the overhead expenses would be equally higher, and profit would be more difficult to achieve. In fact, I’d be doing the same creative work for less money, and I would be less likely to have personal contact/relationships with the people buying my art.

That’s not taking into account that a gallery would almost certainly want me to raise my prices. On one hand, this would increase how much I was earning from each piece (perhaps even reaching into the realm of a reasonable hourly wage, even after expenses and the gallery’s 50% and the government’s chunk). On the other hand, it would price my work out of the realm of possibility of the people who have, historically, always been the fondest of my work – young people. I don’t know.

…

…my thoughts went off track there, and I wasn’t writing it, and I’m not going to write it all out, but it ended with “I wish I could just kill myself,” so you know this isn’t good…

…earlier tonight I was thinking of maybe looking into finding out what I’d have to do to get my art into galleries, but … This, I don’t need. In the last two weeks I’ve figured out how to get my family into a stable financial position; I’ll have to wait a couple of weeks to see exactly what the numbers come out to, but everything looks to be 150% better than the last year, which was certainly survivable. (And that’s without any pressure on me to make more than $1 this year.) I feel I’m in a good place with my writing, with 4+ books queued up to be written (books I like the idea of writing, which is important to me) this year and months before I run out of already-written stuff for the podcast. I’ve just started something that could lead to a whole series of interesting and thematically linked paintings – something I’ve never really done much of, in the past, but have wanted to try. You probably saw my new year / old decade post; I’m in a generally good place, doing what I want to be doing.

Things that lead to suicidal thoughts, I do not need. F_ck that. I don’t need it.

I may make a post about what happened in my mind in the “…” up there.  It’s not an unoriginal line of thought, and may be more the source of the problem than this galleries garbage, so it’s worth investigating.  But not right now.  Not tonight. And I know I didn’t touch on the issue of validation or prestige associated with being shown, partially because I was side-tracked by my own brain, and partially because I don’t much care about either. Another time, another train of thought, but not now. I don’t need this right now.

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?)

Since then, I’ve painted quite a bit more and by early 2002 I’d got back to writing again, though by September 2004 I’d stopped creating new comics. (I suppose that lasted exactly 5 years, from September 1999 to September 2004.) I did fun things with my short hair, bleaching it, dying it fun colors (blue, green, pink, and purple – sometimes all at once & in my own designs), et cetera. In 2002 I worked my way back into college, to try to pursue a BFA in painting, then got laid off from Realink (My insubordination there was turning down promotions I didn’t want. Repeatedly.) and, the economy actually having been sh!t (for normal people) this entire decade, I couldn’t find another job. I wrote Forlorn, my first novel, that year, “before I turned 25.”

Then, I moved to Pine, AZ at the start of 2003 and lived with my grandparents – my grandmother needed near-full-time care after her stroke (and a lifetime of increasingly bad heart problems), my grandfather had been doing alright taking care of her, but then his cancer came out of remission and on chemo he couldn’t do that and maintain the property up there, so I went up to help out as much as I could. And to escape from the world. To go live in the mountains. To retire from corporate life and to become a full-time creative. I edited Forlorn into Lost and Not Found, I began selling my art and my hand-made natural-form furniture from the family shop I ran there, I began getting commissions for new paintings, I wrote Dragons’ Truth, and I developed a deeper appreciation for my family, building a relationship with my grandparents before I lost the chance. I grew out my hair and my beard; I did not trim them at all for several years (though I did eventually start shaving my upper lip).

In 2004 the economy was truly in a slump; I had to drastically lower the prices on my art to keep sales up, and by the summer of 2004 I had to move back to Phoenix and find work. I ended up working in a travel agency’s mail room for half the pay I’d been getting at Realink. At first I tried literally to kill myself, then stayed there nearly 4 years. I wrote the first three books of the Untrue Tales… series during those years. I painted more. I fell in love again. I had actual sex for the first time. Then had it turned around on me, not just ripped away but twisted into a horror, and I was thrown into a painful emotional tailspin that devastated me for years. I cut off my beard and began keeping my head shaved. I wrote two collections of poetry. I started my own, official, publishing company, Modern Evil Press. In October of 2006 I met Mandy and then courted her over the course of the next year -no need to get into the emotional, sexual, and spiritual difficulties that year entailed in a post like this- and on December 1st, 2007 Mandy and I were married.

In March of 2008 I left my corporate job (I was fired for insubordination when my boss insisted that it didn’t matter what was right, only that I do it as she’d decided, and I insisted -rather loudly and violently- that if that were the case I couldn’t work with her any more) to retire once again to the life of a full-time creative. My wife, who I love and who loves me very much, has been willing to accept the relatively meager lifestyle of a single-income family (see yesterday’s post on Numbers) in order to allow me to do what I love and am passionate about. And to keep me from having to deal with the life-threatening difficulties of attempting to hold down a corporate job.  (Which is to say, we are both well aware that I would probably make additional attempts on my own life if faced with doing a job I loathe, especially if for an incompetent, unreasonable boss.)

Since which time I’ve written another two novels, a collection of short stories, recorded and serialized seven audiobooks from my novels, painted quite a lot more, and learned a bit of bookkeeping, business, and tax rules. I’ve shown my art and my books at most of the Roosevelt Row block parties on the Phoenix First Friday Art Walks each month, and have been an active member of the event’s Vendor Committee. I’ve only occasionally been insubordinate to my boss (myself), usually by doing things like suggesting that I write what people want to read instead of simply writing what I want to write. Oh, and I’ve begun regularly attending a church, an activity I haven’t done since … well, since 1996 or 1997, I suppose. I’ve even begun to read more books, again, which had fallen off quite a bit since moving back to the city.

Which brings us back to the present, and to the ‘new year’ ahead. 2010. This is supposed to be the year the aliens collapse Jupiter into a star and jump-start the intelligence of life on Europa, right? If it happens, I won’t be surprised. No, this year I’m looking forward to more of the same. What same, you ask? Well, let’s look back: Fifteen through twenty years ago I was creative; writing and painting and storytelling. Ten years ago I was beginning to get back into being creative; painting, drawing & writing comics, and writing online (my online journal posts go back to March 2000 – those 1995 posts are transcribed from a paper journal I was forced to keep for a class). During the last ten years there’s been a recurring theme of getting “back into” art and writing, of retiring from workaday life to be a full-time creative, and of my incompatibility with keeping a job and putting up with corporate bullshit. So more of the same is: working on my art, writing new books, telling new stories, trying to figure out how to get more money out of my creations (or at the least to lose less money on the books), and trying not to have to go get a literally soul-crushing corporate job.

In 2010 I want to read at least a dozen books on [Hitler, Einstein, and the 1918 Spanish Flu], then to write that zombie novel I’ve got lodged in my brain. Then see if I want to research for and write the [70's|80's] zombie thriller/mystery that follows it. Then totally write the teen/zombie/religion book I’d meant to write last year, but couldn’t on account of I need to write those other two books (the 2 I just said I want to write) as research first. I’d like to see if I know how to finish the second book I began for NaNoWriMo 2009, another book with an author for the main character. I’d like to finish Time, emiT, and Time Again – which calls for at least a couple more skewed-time-based speculative fiction stories. I know that’s five books already, but I’d also like to write some new poetry, this year. Oh, and I worked out that I only have to write a quarter-million-words a year to maintain about a half hour of original podcast literature per week, every week…

In 2010 I want to read many, many other books. I have a huge backlist from the library already, and hundreds of books on my shelves that I bought, intending to read, and haven’t read yet. I’d like to review most of them, too. Reading is good for you, you know.

In 2010 I want to paint more, and better, than I have before. I’ve even penciled in the finishing of the correspondence art course I bought and began but never completed (especially since I can’t possibly afford to go back to school right now). In addition to potentially improving my technique, I’d like to begin to consider the idea of “intent” and of “purpose.” Right now I paint because I’m an artist, but I understand that other artists create art with other reasons in mind. Most of them seem to have something specific they intend to communicate with their art. This is, generally, not the case with my work. In 2010, I’d like at least to consider the idea of whether or not I’d like to try to mean something.

I keep thinking about wanting to try my hand at making comics again. I don’t know whether 2010 is the year for it. Wait and see, I suppose. At the least, I’d like to build a working site for my existing comics, and put all the archives of my old comics up online.

In 2010 I want to work on being a better Christian. To pray more. To read the Bible more. To seek God’s will more. To soften my hard heart and my stiff neck, if it is His will. I’d like to be a better husband to my wife, and a better role-model as a life-long-Christian to her as a pretty-new-Christian. I’d like to learn to be a better member of my church, of the community. This paragraph represents the hardest of what I’ve listed.

I’m sure there’s more, but this post has gone over 2k words, all told. Quite a ramble. But if the point wasn’t clear: I’m in a good place. I’m happy. Even though I’ve been pretty bad lately, even in this deep depression, I’m happy. (If that doesn’t make sense, ask me about it. It makes sense to me.) I’m doing what I want to be doing, what I’ve been working on doing for a long time, and even though it isn’t exactly financially successful, it’s been successful for me and my family in the ways that matter to us. I’m happily married, and my wife loves me more than I’ll probably ever be able to catch up to. My God loves me, and is faithful and just. My family gets along with one another, loves one another, and that is a real blessing.

The last ten years have had a lot of ups and downs, but they’ve been good and they’ve brought me to a good place. The next year will certainly have more ups and downs, but as I said, I’m glad to hope for more of the same.

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.

Now. What would you like first, sales numbers, or free download numbers?  Sales numbers you say? Alright, free downloads it is! Early in 2008 I began putting my books online as free PDFs & txt files, and in April of 2008 (shortly after I returned to life as a full-time creative) I put all my novels (Lost and Not Found, Dragons’ Truth, and Untrue Tales… Book One, Book Two, and Book Three) as free eBooks in 7 different formats (PDF, galley-style PDF, txt, rtf, html, mobi, & epub) on modernevil.com, and made them available for sale on Amazon’s kindle. Here are 2008‘s download numbers:

• Lost and Not Found – 1079 downloads, including 1 paid copy
• Dragons’ Truth – 961 downloads, including 3 paid copies
• Untrue Tales… Book 1 – 948 downloads, including 2 paid copies
• Untrue Tales… Book 2 – 964 downloads, including 1 paid copy
• Untrue Tales… Book 3 – 897 downloads, including 1 paid copy
• Total eBook downloads in 2008: 4849
• Total paid eBook downloads in 2008: 8
• Total direct revenue from eBooks in 2008: $22.71

Also in 2008, I began podcasting audio versions of my books. In June 2008 I released Dragons’ Truth all at once, and starting in September 2008 I began podcasting Lost and Not Found (finishing in December 2008). Tracking the # of people who have downloaded the podcast audiobooks is more tricky than eBooks, since each book is broken into many files. I’ve gathered data about how many people have downloaded the first episode of each book, as well as the number who have downloaded the last episode of each book. I figure counting downloads of the final episode is a fairly conservative estimate of downloads. Here are the numbers for all of 2008:

• Dragons’ Truth – 2334 downloads of first, 1271 downloads of last, $9.99 donated
• Lost and Not Found – 434 downloads of first, 80 downloads of last
• Total “finished” downloads of audiobooks in 2008: 1351
• Total direct income from podcast audiobooks (after Podiobooks’ cut) for 2008: $7.49

On 1/1/2009, I published two new books, Forget What You Can’t Remember and More Lost Memories. I began podcasting Forget What You Can’t Remember on the same day. It was complete by April, and I started Untrue Tales… Book One the next week. Book One was complete in June, Book Two ran from July to September, and Book Three ran from September to November. In September/October I wrote a new novel, Cheating, Death, publishing it as an eBook for sale while I was still writing it. Cheating, Death was in print by 10/31 and began podcasting on Friday, 11/13/09 (finishing 12/25/09). For the eBooks, I decided to treat Forget What You Can’t Remember like my other novels, and made it available as a free eBook in 9 formats (I added .lrf & .pdb) and for sale on Amazon’s kindle. Starting in January I also began putting my eBooks up for sale on Smashwords.com, beginning with Forget What You Can’t Remember. Then I decided to make More Lost Memories free only by direct request, and for sale (as a whole & with 7 of its 9 stories available individually for $0.99 each) on kindle and at Smashwords. When Cheating, Death came out, I put it up for sale and again said I’d give a free copy of the eBook to anyone who asked. (So far, only book bloggers have asked, and I sent quite a few of them free paper copies as well.) At the end of November I threw together the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut and put it up for sale as an eBook on the kindle and at Smashwords. Here are the numbers for all of 2009‘s eBook downloads, with for-pay-only titles in italics:

• Lost and Not Found – 506 downloads, 5 of them paid
• Dragons’ Truth – 609 downloads, 7 of them paid
• Forget What You Can’t Remember – 735 downloads, 13 of them paid
• Untrue Tales… Book One – 587 downloads, 4 of them paid
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – 562 downloads, 3 of them paid
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – 553 downloads, 1 of them paid
• Cheating, Death – 8 downloads
• More Lost Memories – 13 downloads, 7 of them the individual stories
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut – 0 downloads
• Total eBook downloads in 2009: 3573
• Total paid eBook downloads in 2009: 54
• Total direct revenue from eBooks in 2009: $65.17

And here are 2009‘s podcast/audiobook download numbers:

• Dragons’ Truth – 3231 downloads of first, 1616 downloads of last
• Lost and Not Found – 1523 downloads of first, 926 downloads of last
• Forget What You Can’t Remember – 2711 downloads of first, 1150 downloads of last
• Untrue Tales… Book One – 5006 downloads of first, 2865 downloads of last, $10 donated
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – 5173 downloads of first, 1843 downloads of last, $10 donated
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – 1890 downloads of first, 1002 downloads of last
• Cheating, Death – 1786 downloads of first, 366 downloads of last
• Total “finished” downloads of audiobooks in 2009: 9768
• Total direct income from podcast audiobooks (after Podiobooks’ cut) for 2009: $15

Of note, the 366 downloads of the final episode of Cheating, Death actually occurred in a period of 4 days (I put it on my feed on Christmas, but it wasn’t on Podiobooks.com until the 28th). Speaking of my feed… I don’t have nearly as good of statistics for the Modern Evil Podcast as I do for the Podiobooks.com versions of my books. PodPress gives me total downloads of each file I put in the feed, and tracks how many are dl’d via the feed, direct from the site, and played through the flash-based player embedded in each post, but unless I’d been copying them out at the end of each month/year… I don’t know any way to get good breakdowns. Not to mention the number of downloads of each episode of MEPod vary wildly from one to the next. I’ve been putting all my novels into the feed, as well as quite a bit of poetry and some short fiction. Yet even when I put an entire novel up, one chapter after another uninterrupted, the numbers don’t make sense; most of my novels show more people downloaded the final chapter/episode than any other in the book. There are patterns like … the first few and last couple chapters of each book get downloaded several times more times than the others, even in the “feed” – which would mean someone (a lot of someones, actually – hundreds in some cases) had subscribed to the podcast & then selectively downloaded only a few parts of each book.

As far as numbers go, the Modern Evil Podcast seems to run at around …. 30 regular subscribers (ie: consistent & immediate feed downloads) but individual episodes tend to get downloaded… around one to two hundred times each… over time. With wild variations, as stated. Overall I might estimate that the Modern Evil Podcast has contributed an additional … perhaps 1000 finished podcast audiobook downloads to my total… including both 2008 & 2009 numbers together, since PodPress doesn’t break them out. But enough of the free download counts, let us move on to the money:

Beginning, again, with 2008, when I had 2 standalone novels, 2 poetry collections, and the 3 Untrue Tales… books plus the collected edition, for all of 2008 I sold:

• Lost and Not Found – 10 paperbacks by hand, 1 eBook: 11 copies for $143.11
• Dragons’ Truth – 3 paperbacks by hand, 3 eBooks, 1 giveaway: 7 copies for $47.74
• Untrue Tales Books 1-3 combined – 2 paperbacks by hand: 2 copies for $49.99
• Untrue Tales… Book One – 2 paperbacks by hand, 2 eBooks, 1 giveaway: 5 copies for $27.40
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – 1 paperback by hand, 1 eBook: 2 copies for $14.70
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – 1 eBook: 1 copy for $2.70
• Worth 1k — Volume 1 – 1 paperback by hand: 1 copy for $9.99
• Worth 1k — Volume 2 – 2 paperbacks by hand: 2 copies for $19.99
• Total copies sold of all titles: 31
• Total income from book sales in 2008: $315.62
• Paintings sold in 2008: 13 paintings & 5 mini-paintings: 18 original works of art for $1384
• Total from sales of books + art combined in 2008: $1699.62

In 2009 I added 2 novels, a short story collection, and some chapbooks; for all of 2009 I sold:

• Lost and Not Found – 4 paperbacks by hand, 3 paperbacks wholesale, 2 eBooks, 3 giveaways: 12 copies for $72.43
• Dragons’ Truth – 1 paperback by hand, 1 audiobook on CD by hand, 4 eBooks, 4 giveaways: 10 copies for $42.60
• Forget What You Can’t Remember – 9 paperbacks by hand, 8 paperbacks wholesale, 9 eBooks, 18 giveaways: 44 copies for $153.98
• Untrue Tales Books 1-3 combines – 0 copies for $0
• Untrue Tales… Book One – 4 eBooks: 4 copies for $5.86
• Untrue Tales… Book Two – 3 eBooks: 3 copies for 3.23
• Untrue Tales… Book Three – 1 eBook: 1 copy for $0.53
• Cheating, Death – 6 paperbacks by hand, 6 paperbacks wholesale, 4 eBooks, 15 giveaways: 31 copies for $83.40
• More Lost Memories (full) – 8 paperbacks by hand, 5 paperbacks wholesale, 3 eBooks, 8 giveaways: 24 copies for $110.82
• More Lost Memories (individual stories) – 5 chapbooks by hand, 6 eBooks: 11 copies for $12.54
• Time, emiT, and Time Again (individual stories) – 4 chapbooks by hand: 4 copies for $8.00
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut – 0 copies for $0
• Worth 1k — Volume 1 – 1 paperback by hand: 1 copy for $10.00
• Worth 1k — Volume 2 – 0 copies for $0
• Total copies sold of all titles in 2009: 145
• Total income from book sales in 2009: $503.39
• Paintings sold in 2009: 10 paintings & 19 mini-paintings: 29 original works of art for $1074
• Total from sales of books + art combined in 2009: $1577.39

Not very much, is it?  I also sold a few hand-screen-printed T-Shirts in 2009… but… yeah. So, a few notes: This summer for almost 3 months I reduced the prices of all my eBooks below $2 retail, to see whether volume would increase. Volume of sales did NOT increase. But that’s why, for example, I only earned $0.53 from Untrue Tales… Book Three in 2009; I earned 35% of $1.50. Also, I’ve included giveaway copies here because they’re copies that should have earned money.  I actually have another set of figures that examines the profitability of each individual title (mostly not, so far), but I’ve already put too many numbers into this post. Suffice it to say that for my in-print titles it costs me $200-$375 to get a book set up & to make an initial order of paperback copies (not counting the value of my time at all) and my highest-grossing book to date (Lost and Not Found) has only earned $218.36.  That examination is for another post, at another time.

In fact, I think I’ll save any thoughts/conclusions/analyses of these numbers for a possible future post, as well.  For right now, this is it.

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.

The fact that people didn’t have (or lied about not having) $2 to buy a short story isn’t what struck me the most about the experience that night. Instead it was this: People assumed they were free.

Now, I could have used a color and/or cardstock cover to clarify that they weren’t simply photocopied brochures or flyers, though I suspect there may still have been some people who assumed they were free. A lot of people picked the mini-books up, looked them over, and managed to ignore the price marked on it in 70pt type. Over and over again. They grabbed, they looked, we discussed what it was, and they moved to walk off without even considering that a product at a vendor booth might have a price.

I thought this was bad enough, then when the crowd had thickened a bit later in the evening, it got worse. People started grabbing the mini-books and moving to walk off with them without so much as slowing down or asking what it was they were grabbing. Upon final inventory Saturday morning I confirmed that I’d caught everyone who’d tried to walk off with an unpaid copy, but the experience further illuminated some problems with perception I’ve been having pretty consistently with my business.

Another aspect of the problem that also manifested itself last Friday at the Art Walk comes across in the oft-voiced assumption that the art I’m showing is prints (as opposed to the handmade originals they all actually are). I’d thought this might be related to my relatively-affordable prices, so this month I didn’t post any prices. More people than ever asked whether my art was prints before (or without) asking about pricing.  I know that some of the other artists at the art walk offer both prints and originals, and that some even offer prints exclusively.  I just wonder what is driving this assumption about my work.

In thinking about this problem, it occurred to me that it might have something to do with the precise nature of my recent work, and of how carefully I’ve worked to produce clean, crisp, bold intersections and interactions of color fields.  That some of my recent work is so well-crafted that it appears to have been created in (or cleaned up in) a computer and then printed out.  That the sharp edges I create with my hand-carved tape-stencils are clearly not created with manual brush strokes.  I really don’t know what it is, I can only guess, and these are what I’ve come up with in the last few days.

The other possibility is that people are projecting on to the work what they want from it.  That they don’t believe they can afford original artwork, so project the idea that the art they want is available as an affordable print.  That they can’t afford a couple of bucks for a chapbook, so they project the idea that they’re free.

Other perception problems I’ve had potential customers express: People who have been to my websites (modernevil.com, wretchedcreature.com) and who honestly are not aware that they can buy my books and/or art online (or in some cases, that they’re available for sale at all).  People who have my business card (and/or are looking at one of my websites) and don’t know my address, phone number, or email address to contact me.  (Literally: My name, address, phone number, and email address are on every single page of both of my business sites.)  People who have purchased an handmade original piece of art from me, given it away to someone else, and come back to buy another copy of the same thing for themselves – sincerely believing that what they bought was a mass-produced (or at least multiply produced) item.

I don’t know what to do about these perception problems. Putting “all artwork original” on a sign at my Art Walk booth and on wretchedcreature.com doesn’t seem to have helped to communicate that I’m not merely selling prints.  Offering prints isn’t the answer, either.  Not only do I not like the idea of it, preferring each piece to be handmade and unique, but I’ve also looked into it and found the costs to be prohibitive.  I’d have to at least double the prices on all my art, probably up to double the normal prices (ie: quadruple or more the current prices), or some of the prints would actually be more expensive -just to print- than the prices I’m asking for the originals.  I’ve been thinking of changing my prices, but downward, not upward.  I want my art to be selling briskly more than I want individual pieces to be gaining value.

Feel free to chime in with your own thoughts on these quirks of perception; I mostly just don’t understand them.  Book pricing, perception of value of the printed word, perception of value of chapbooks, these  are a separate discussion I’d meant to get to earlier today, but haven’t yet made time to.  Perhaps tomorrow.  I thought I needed a nap 5 hours ago; by now I need a full night’s sleep.  Good night.

Freedom to paint a strange abstract representation of my anger without thinking about the fact that pink, purple, and glitter might not be what other artists are using to express pent-up frustration.  Freedom to write novels that don’t follow genre conventions, aren’t anywhere close to being thrillers, and which expect their readers to actually think about what they’re reading.  Freedom to read dozens of traditional zombie books as “research” and then turn around and write several books that ignore tradition almost entirely; to write the zombie books I want to write.

I get stressed out about money.  I worry when I don’t make enough sales.  Sometimes I even let the stress and worry compromise my artistic integrity or block my ability to create freely.  I don’t like business, or marketing, or ‘profit motive’, or any of those other stupid things I have to do to be able to do what I love.  But still, I love what I do.

Anyway, your feedback on the cover image is appreciated, if you have any.

Angel’s Serenity Art Fair
Saturday September 12, 2009, 10:00am – 4:00pm
4839 East Greenway Road (look for Safeway)
Scottsdale AZ, 85254

Please join us!

In addition to myself and other artists, there will be activities for the kids, a free workshop in the back room and a free raffle. The setting is much more relaxed and family friendly than my normal First Friday Art Walk, so you really have a chance to take your time to see everyone’s art, speak to myself (and the other artists) about the art, the books, and more. A few more details:

Free Workshop
Lisa will be providing a free workshop on interpreting your Angel Cards. You’ll find her in Angel’s Serenity’s Backroom from 3:00-3:30pm

Raffles
Stop into Angel’s Serenity and enter to win a Tie Die T-shirt.

Artists
Our artists will include Authors, Painters, Jewelry, Crafts and more!

Activities
There will also have free activity table for the kids including Creating Peace Flags.

Join us!
So, come one out with the whole family and enjoy a day of art, activity and just plain fun!
We hope to see you there!

Thanks!

It’s difficult.  Partially because I do need the money, so the commercial aspect, the idea that I’m making art I’m going to try to sell in order to buy groceries, is constantly in mind.  When I get in the neighborhood of thoughts like ‘what can I paint that will sell?’ and ‘what sort of art do people want?’ I tend to get stuck.  Like writer’s block, but for artists.  Well, like writer’s block for writers whose block stems from not wanting to “sell out,” anyway.

I have no interest in freelancing, or in getting a job as an illustrator, designer, journalist, pro-blogger, or any other such thing.  I don’t want to write the same book over and over again (ie: formulaic fiction, or process-wise, most non-fiction).  I don’t want to paint/create the same image over and over again.  I know, yes, verily I know, that these are core ways writers and artists are able to “establish” themselves and their “style” and to build a career.  To build a base of buyers who want to read another one like the last one you wrote, who are comfortable with your art because although each swirly tree is different, they can at least count on you to still be painting swirly trees the next time they need something for their walls.  And buyers would be nice.  Repeat buyers would be even better (and I have a few), but I nearly never want to be painting the same thing I’ve painted before.

((Technically, my not-very-publicly stated policy on the subject of re-creating an original work is that the base price multiplier for each successive recreation doubles.  I have a formula (an occasionally altered one, but fairly consistent for the last few years) which accounts for a work’s size and quality to determine price.  It is intentionally tweaked to give quirky prices.  I like them.  But imagine for recreations that formula is multiplied by 2ⁿ (where n is the number of times I’ve been asked to reproduce the image).  If created in quick succession, at the same size and quality, prices would quickly rise, say from $60 for the original to $120 for the second, $240 for the 3rd, $480 for the 4th, $960 for the 5th, $1920 for the 6th, $3840 for the 7th, and very quickly someone asking for the 8th copy is paying 128 times the cost of just buying something different instead.  Luckily, people don’t often ask me to paint something I’ve done before – and when they do, I simply tell them how much it would cost & see if they want it that much.))

But it is hard even to paint something new, if all I can think about is wanting to avoid painting something that won’t sell, because the bills just keep coming, even when I have a couple of dry sales months.  I’ve even been stalling a little, lately, in working on my next novel, which is intentionally an experiment in writing a formulaic (or at least recognizable) zombie novel – because although I’ve come up with a story I want to tell (and in my research of what makes a formulaic zombie novel fit, I’ve discovered that my novel won’t be as formulaic as I’d hoped… which is part of the problem), both writing a novel in reaction to people’s negative reaction to my last one (which is what motivated this experiment in the first place) and knowing before I start that my experiment will be a failure (ie: my novel will fail to be a cookie-cutter zombie novel, or to follow the ‘rules’ of commercial fiction) give me pause in pursuing it.  Even though it’s a story I want to tell, a book I want to write.

I am having trouble both because I don’t want to write commercial fiction and because I fear my attempt to do so will be ridiculously far from that blasted mark.  How can I be properly creative with this dark and complicated cloud of commerce always hovering over everything I do?

I’m a writer, I’m an artist, and these pursuits are -generally- solitary ones. In November I do like to go to NaNoWriMo write-ins & sit around with other writers, each of us writing our own things… Every month I like to go down to the Phoenix First Fridays Art Walk downtown and show my art alongside other artists. Every year or two I like to redesign each of my websites a bit (or totally, as I recently did with modernevil.com), but I just sit in front of a computer (or two, or three) for a couple of days for that – usually not talking to anyone about it until, days later, I finally lift my head up from a completed site and show off my work. If there’s a way to do these things in a group, socially, collaboratively, I … I don’t know it.

Right now I’m sitting at #createliveaz, surrounded by creative people. There are people painting, illustrating, drawing, crocheting, writing, playing music, working on laptops, but mostly they’re chatting. I’ve met most of the people here at one social event in the valley or another and, barring that, on twitter. Yet I can’t help but feel left out. This is partially my fault, I know this, I’m not the social butterfly I once was. I’m not pro-actively seeking out social engagement. And when the ‘cool kids’ came over & asked to take a seat, they didn’t mean to sit down with me and my wife and our creative activities, they meant to take the chair across the room to sit with the other ‘cool kids’. ((Update: A couple of hours in, a really nice guy from among the ‘cool’ crowd brought one of the chairs back and actually sat down to talk. A little later another joined the 3 of us for a few minutes.))

Why are we here? Why did we drive 100 miles (round trip) to Gilbert and back to hang out in a coffee shop with people who wouldn’t go to the trouble to walk across the room to talk to us?

I’ve had quite a few comments from various other creative people over the last many months that have suggested to me that I was conspicuously absent from their perception of the “Phoenix Arts Scene” – and that have given me the impression that becoming more involved would be beneficial to my ongoing work as an independent artist. I’ve been reading (a lot) for the last couple/few years about “social media” and how the internet is changing the way creative people connect -with their audiences as well as with other creatives- and how this is creating new ways for independent creators to find success… most of this reading has mentioned collaboration or has stated outright that it is being involved in a community of creatives that generates success, rather than mere disintermediation, instant, global communication, and the other great things the internet allows. So, as reluctant as I am to deal with all the garbage connected with people in groups, and despite my being unable to see (right now) how it is I might be able to collaborate with other creative people in any meaningful way, I’ve been looking into it. Thinking about it. Trying to figure it out. And attending events like Creative Connect and #createliveaz and Ignite Phoenix, to see if I can make any sort of connection with local creatives, and/or learn anything about how they work together.

Current status of these efforts: No f_cking clue.

I haven’t given up on trying to figure it out, but … right now I don’t even know how to know, so I’m chalking ‘Collaboration’ up as yet another thing I don’t grasp. (See also: ‘Scene’ – I hear the word and imagine a childish “cool kids only” club for hipsters where they strive to be “counterculture” for no better reason than “rebellion is cool” — yet when people actually use the word, it sounds like they think there’s something of genuine value to be “part of the scene.” I don’t get it.)  As always, I encourage anyone who thinks they can give me any helpful/useful/meaningful information that might help me understand (or better yet, to collaborate – perhaps I could learn through experience?)…  Please try.