Adventures in Marketing: Weeks 33/34

Sold a “Huge” to a musician/impresario pal at the cafĂ©. (“Doesn’t pull any punches, does it?” he said.) Shipped a “Cheesesteak” to the younger brother of a high school classmate. I’d sent her a freebie but she wanted to pay for it. “Okay,” I said, “but I’ll send another to someone as a gift. How ’bout Nelson?” Shipped a “Schiz” to a director/writer/teacher pal in LA who said he’d finally sent me the check he’d been meaning to. Shipped another to a musician/writer pal in NYC who’d mailed me and envelope that had been lying on his desk so long that, he scrawled on the outside, he’d forgotten what was in it. A check was what.

In other news, I spoke with the distributor with whom Milo had connected. He seems willing to include “The Schiz” in his fall catalog of new releases; but, he warned, there will be problems, like shipping and payments taking forever and stores not wanting to order it since it isn’t technically “new,” even though it’s never been in stores. Plus, Milo says, we shouldn’t send out review copies until the book is in stores, as opposed to, say, getting the book reviewed so stores will want to stock it.

Don’t ask me. It’s all a learn-by-stumbling-through-the-dark-banging-into-walls-while-smiling-goofily-whistling-a-happy-tune kinda thing to me.