Whoever it is, tell ’em to come back with a warrant.
Now what kind of an attitude is that? Well, maybe you’ll change it when I answer the question. That’s Opportunity knocking, and she’s got places to go and people to see. You might want to put down your phone for a minute and open the door.
Ah, a sales pitch. I should have known. Okay, let’s hear it.
Well, if you insist. As you may know, 2022 was a surprisingly productive year for me. I sat down at my desk in January, and ten months later I’d completed two full-length books, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown and The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder. I settled on the same publishing approach for both books—self-publication in ebook and paperback form, and deluxe signed-and-limited hardcover editions from my good friends at Subterranean Press.
The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown has been available since last October in ebook and paperback and audio. Its reception is everything Bernie or I could have hoped for—
Except for a handful of one-star reviews from readers who couldn’t get their minds around the notion of a parallel universe.
It’s hard to figure, don’t you think? They’re fine with Bernie and Carolyn staying the same age for the past forty years, but the idea that he could wake up in a world with no security cameras or online booksellers is just too science-fictional for them. Never mind—the book’s selling well, and just look at Chuck Pyle’s cover for Subterranean’s edition.
Wow!
My reaction exactly. They’re offering the book in two states, a deluxe hardcover limited to 750 signed-and-numbered copies and priced at $60, and a super-deluxe collector’s edition, limited to 15 signed-and-lettered copies, bradel-bound and housed in a custom traycase.
I bet that one’s more than $60.
It’s $750, which is more than I generally spend on a book. As a matter of fact, there was a time when that’s the total amount I got for writing one. But that was a while ago, in an age when I couldn’t have used Google to find out what bradel-bound means—though it certainly sounds like something that could befall a character in one of the books I was writing back in the day.
“He saw her in the corner of the room, buxom and bradel-bound, her expression hovering somewhere between arousal and terror…”
That sounds about right. As for the lettered edition, there are only fifteen of them—
Which leaves eleven letters unaccounted for.
—and if you want one, well, it might be a mistake to dawdle.
I’m afraid financial considerations doom me to be forever among the dawdlers. Although were I to wake up in the right sort of parallel universe…
And who’s to say it couldn’t happen? Numbered @ $60 or lettered @ $750, the Subterranean editions are now available for pre-order prior to October publication.
But let’s move on to Subterranean’s The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder. This one’s got a handsome cover of its own—by John K. Snyder III.
I know that name.
I’m not surprised. John—or JKS3—is renowned in the world of comic books and graphic novels, and knocked my argyles off with his graphic novel adaptation of Eight Million Ways to Die. He also supplied a cover and interior illustration for Subterranean’s edition of The Night and the Music.
And now, happily, I can save all of us a little time. Because, while The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder gets its own preorder page on the Subterranean site, I can tell you that the specs are essentially the same. Two limited editions—750 signed-and-numbered @ $60, 15 signed-and-lettered @ $750.
And the release date will be in October? Same as Fredric Brown?
That’s the plan.
And a reasonable plan, I have to admit. Still, 15-copy lettered editions don’t go very far, and 750-copy numbered editions don’t stretch a whole lot farther. But there’s no limit at all on the ebook and paperback editions, priced at $9.99 and 17.99 respectably—
I think you mean respectively.
Whichever. They’re where you’re going to make most of your sales, and their release date is just over a week from now, not months away in far-off October. Why aren’t you pitching them?
That’ll be in the next newsletter.
What, six weeks from now?
No, a matter of days, and—
How many of them? I mean, even the Hundred Years War was a matter of days. Why are you looking at me like that?
Why am I looking at you at all? Never mind. The Subterranean Press editions are limited, and I want to get the word out ASAP so that any reader who wants one has a fair chance. The ebook and paperback, which will release on June 24, are already getting preordered at a heartening rate, and I want to be able to include a decent representation of the advance reviews that have been streaming in. So it’ll take a couple of days, but nobody really needs to wait for the newsletter to preorder, and here are the links, to make it as easy as possible:
AMAZON BARNES & NOBLE KOBO APPLE
THALIA SMASHWORDS VIVLIO
And that’s it for now.
Cheers,
PS: As always, please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest. And, if you yourself have received the newsletter from a friend and would like your own subscription, that’s easily arranged; an email to lawbloc@gmail.com with LB’s Newsletter in the subject line will get the job done.
