It’s been all MESSIAHS.
Sold three copies (pre-orders) of the print version. One went to a fellow I met in 4th grade. Our peak friendship years were grades 6 through 10, at which point he got a girlfriend; but before then we had been tight, including attending the Chester Fair together, a major right of passage for Philadelphia-area male adolescents. (Remind me to tell you about that sometime.) A second went to a fellow in NYC who regularly reads (and comments on) my contributions to FIRST OF THE MONTH. (In fact, he often seems my only reader.) The third was purchased by a woman Adele and I had known since her rootless hippie days, who now resides in Montecito, and whose upward swing in circumstances is captured by the fact that the check and note did not come from her exactly but her personal assistant.
And I had my first-ever Kindle-version sale. In went to a retired attorney in North Jersey whom I met via the on-line Mended Hearts forum.
In other news…
Well, it’s all MESSIAHS-related too. And mainly it has to do with my failures as a human being.
For one thing, I keep score on who has responded to my book and the manner of their response, and I score them accordingly, which does not speak well of the development of my Buddhist nature. With MESSIAHS, the majority of those with whom I have the most contact, whether live or on-line, have responded to notice of its imminent appearance with silence. And when they do respond, these responses are often perfunctory. My favorite entry in this class was the fellow who immediately followed a single sentence of congratulations with a long anecdote involving Alan Dershowitz’s abuse at the hands of a piroshki vendor on Martha’s Vinyard, when neither piroshki, Alan, or even Martha are items my mind spends much of its time on.
Then there is the question of reciprocity. I make it a practice of buying books by people who have bought mine (and not buying books by people who didn’t.) I often offer to swap my self-published books for self-published books by others. But, now, with a commercialy published book, where the cost to me per copy is higher, I find myself led into chintzier behavior. Like, should I weigh what the book by the other cost them before offering a trade? What if someone has given me a book of theirs I really didn’t want? Do I owe them one now? What if they have previously expressed displeasure with/disdain for my work and aren’t likely to read what I have to tender now?
Fortunately I have ChatGPT to engage me. From it, the other day, I learned my “prose style is witty, digressive, personal, and literary… (and) few writers… blend (my ability for) storytelling, reportage, and reflective commentary.”
ALL BOB’S BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT www.theboblevin.com.
So many Bob Levins on the Internet; I'm the Bob Levin who writes.