David David Katzman

Support your local bookstore! A Greater Monster is now available

… in Chicago: The Book Cellar, Unabridged Bookstore, After-Words Books, Quimby’s, Sandemeyer’s Books, and Chicago Comics.

… in St. Louis: Dunaway Books, Subterranean Books, Pudd’nhead Books, and Star Clipper Comics.

… in Austin, TX: Book People

And for those of you in other cities … yes, on Amazon.com here: http://amzn.to/greatermonster

Good news: I was fortunate to receive a nice review from Midwest Book Review this week—a not-for-profit website of unpaid reviewers who focus on small press books. They’ve been around for about 11 years and seem to have a particularly strong relationship with acquisition librarians. Here are the highlights:

[When] we see something unusual, we rarely expect it to be the tip of the iceberg. A Greater Monster is a novel from David David Katzman who brings readers into a unique alternate reality that has many twists and turns […]. With unique humor and plenty to think about, A Greater Monster is a fine and much recommended choice.

This could potentially lead to a slew of orders from libraries … it really depends on whether it catches their eye, and they go to the trouble to contact me.

I’ve been working furiously over the past few months to finish all the emails and letters that were included in the rewards for my Kickstarter project. I dedicated anywhere from one to three hours to each letter and with about 125 letters to write …! You’re probably better at math than I am so let me know how that works out. I’m grateful that my project was successful, but now it’s back to making A Greater Monster even greater.

I’ve submitted the book for several small press publishing awards and other general fiction awards. The best resource I’ve found so far is Poets & Writers magazine. Each issue includes a list of upcoming deadlines and the general requirements.

I’ve been making the rounds to bookstores in Chicago bit by bit and asking them to carry it. Don’t forget to support your local bookstore! A Greater Monster is now available

… in Chicago: The Book Cellar, Unabridged Bookstore, After-Words Books, Quimby’s, Sandemeyer’s Books, and Chicago Comics.

… in Austin, TX: Book People

And for those of you in other cities … yes, Amazon here

Next Steps: get into more bookstores, find reviewers/bloggers who appreciate edgy, experimental literature, and lastly hook up with a distributor. More on distributors in my next blog post.

You can purchase my second novel here: http://amzn.to/greatermonster

Soon, I hope to have Paypal set up on this site so you can order a signed copy directly from me as well.

Dear Friends,

After nearly eight years of labor, I’m proud to inform you that my second novel is now available for purchase. You can find it on Amazon here. And on Goodreads, of course, here: [book:A Greater Monster|12480602]. It is also available in Chicago at Quimby’s Bookstore, Unabridged Bookstore, Chicago Comics and Sandemeyer’s Books. At some point in the next couple weeks I hope to make it available via PayPal on this site, if you would like a signed copy.

My book release party was a great success! There were about 45 people in attendance, and the crowd was quite engrossed in my reading. Eight people actually showed up as we were closing down! Drinks were imbibed, and good times were had by all. A few snaps here:

In the meantime, I’ve been hard at work on my Kickstarter project rewards. You can still watch my amusing video (about the book. I pre-sold 120 copies through this project and all the pre-orders have finally been mailed out. I’m also halfway through writing stream-of-consciousness letters and emails that were included in the rewards. It’s quite fun but also a bit exhausting to write 125 emails and letters and keep the inspiration going.

On top of that, I’ve been trying to make the rounds to the bookstores in Chicago. Sadly, there are so few independent new bookstores left. There are numerous used bookstores, but they won’t carry any new books even on consignment.

I’m still working on landing a national distributor for the book as well. Was turned down by Small Press United, which was my first shot. They sent a form letter rejection without explanation. C’est la vie. The point of having a distributor, for those who don’t know, is to provide bookstores a way to order your book when a customer requests it. It will show up as available in their system. Ingram is the top distributor, but they are hard to break into. Some of the smaller distributors will network with Ingram. Createspace through Amazon supposedly gets you into the system—but then you need to accept the quality of the job they do and the large cut they take with each print-on-demand book.

A good distributor will also notify bookstore buyers that your book exists via some sort of catalog update or a sales call in an effort to get some orders. (Createspace doesn’t do that as far as I know.)

Next steps are to visit more bookstores in Chicago and begin sending out review copies and interview requests to bloggers. As well as finish all my Kickstarter rewards. I’m a busy boy.

Quimby’s Bookstore, 1854 W. North Avenue, Chicago, IL, US
http://www.quimbys.com
November 10, 2011
7:00PM

Come and join me for a party to celebrate the release of my second novel, A Greater Monster! I’ll be reading for about 20 minutes, then we’ll enjoy some wine and cheese and good conversation. If you haven’t visited Quimby’s before, it’s the premiere Chicago bookstore for independent books, comics, zines, and oddities. A really cool place to check out.

Hope you can make it!