Adventures in Marketing: Week 96

Sold one “Best Ride.”
The buyer was a thirtyish, baseball-capped civil engineer, who works on the Bay Shore trail. He said he would read it next week on his flight to France.
I hoped he would have something to cover the remaining several hours. I figured he would leave it in France, where it would be picked up by someone who would adore it and make me the next American artist to have his career revived there.

In other news…
1. A colleague gave me a brochure by a self-publishing guru. Of her Top Tips, the most relevant seemed “Persistence is Key.” Well, I thought, every day I sit in the café with my “Buy Bob’s Books” sign and wares, so I have that covered. But then there was “Build Your Platform.”
With the drain of the actuarial tables upon my core audience, I was having trouble holding my own. And this was even before people began bailing on Facebook.
2. The new, photo-illustrated edition of “Cheesesteak” has arrived and is currently available from my hall closet ($15 to POB 9492, Berkeley 94709; $10 in person) and presumably from discerning book stores and on-line. I sent copies to five Philly-area papers (since that’s where most of the action occurs). For promotion, that’s it. See what I mean about being “platform”-challenged. (But if you want to write a review, lemme know.)
3. Responses to the proposed reading series at the café have been positive – but not too many people want to actually read. The manager has been enthusiastic and supportive – but took the announcement down when the building owner was in town. I’ve also posted announcements at my other café and health club, which produced zero attendees at my last reading, but, you know…
Persistence is key.

Adventures in Marketing: Week 95

No sales.
But a delightful café conversation with a Washington State undergraduate from So Cal, who was visiting Berkeley. A computer science major, with an interest in journalism, she asked enough questions about “inspiration” and “process” that you would expect aspiring writers to ask actual ones that I almost believed I had become just that. I got a kick out of listening to her and listening to me and watching us both. I gave her my card and told her about my blog and said she could soon be reading about herself.

In other news, the new, photo-illustrated edition of “Cheesesteak,” with added supplemental material by the author, has shipped from the printer. It can be purchased in stores, on-line, or, personally signed, for $15 to Spruce Hill Press, POB 9492, Berkeley 94709.
And with the short story writer/memoirist Yvonne Martinez, I will be kicking off a new reading series at the Vanne Bistro (formerly the café at the French Hotel), 1538 Shattuck, Berkeley, CA, on April 16, 94709. (If you’d like to read at a future date, e-mail me: adelbob@comcast.net.)

Adventures in Marketing: Week 93/94

No sales.
But after a couple weeks mullings over, Open Book, a small store in Elkins Park, outside Philadelphia, has agreed to take two copies of Cheesesteak (first printing) on consignment. If they sell, it will order the new edition. So if you are in the neighborhood…

In other news, (a) I’ve moved into the back room at one of my cafes. (At the other, I sit close to the door.) Less foot traffic, but the tables are bigger so I can spread out, and it’s quieter so I’m less vulnerable to chatter. (B) “My Two Cents” received a couple quality responses from FOM (though not of the quality of my pal Budd, whose recent review of Daniel Ellsberg’s new book received praise from Ellsberg himself) And ©, it looks like I will be organizing/hosting a series of readings (poetry and prose) at the aforementioned café. Still to be negotiated are how many per month, how many readers per evening, the hours of operation, and will I spring for the cost of a microphone.
Any suggestions for the latter?

Me Two Cents

My latest piece is up at http://www.firstofthemonth.org/me-two-cents/

It begins…

One evening in the summer of 1960, while waiting on a rocker-sofa on the porch of a friend’s home to give him a ride to a party, his step-father sat down beside me – and grabbed my cock.

Not a bad opening sentence, if I do say so myself.

The Trauma

Word reached him of two deaths, six months apart, of fellows from his freshman dorm, one from a heart attack, one from head injuries sustained in a fall. That made three he knew of, the other, a few years earlier, a chronic smoker’s, had been from lung cancer.
He had been most friendly with that fellow, an athlete, future lawyer, father of three. He had been second friendliest with the heart attack victim, in student government, and later the federal. He had been least friendly with the fellow who had fallen. He had been an amusing eccentric in college and, according to his obit, had blossomed into a fuller one, but beloved by many, at his end.
He thought abut the two times he had himself been coded. He thought of the hair’s weight on the scales of fate which had kept him here and able to write this. He felt like – saw clearly, in fact – he was a lemming moved two places closer in the pack to the cliff’s edge.

The dorm had two floors. About 25 boys lived there, and he found he could recall 23, who lived with whom, and in which room.
He could not, however, recall the bathroom or any detail about it.
He e-mailed news of the deaths and his recollections to five fellows from that dorm.
His roommate recalled them living on the first floor, not the second, and next door to someone whom he did not believe to have been anywhere in the vicinity.
Another fellow said he could recall the bathroom but not the names of either of his roommates.
A third fellow said he lived across from the bathroom but did not recall ever using it – or seeing anyone else use it either.
When he told Adele of his memories, she said, “Boy, something really terrible must have happened to you in that bathroom.”

I just read…

…well, not word-for-word — “Shadow and Substance, Jim Hughes’s biography of W. Eugene Smith.

I became interested in Smith when I saw the (previously recommended) documentary “The Jazz Loft” on STARZ. There was comparatively little about this portion of Smith’s life in “Shadow,” but it was an exemplary biography. Smith kept voluminous records — photographs (of course), writings, tape recordings — in which Hughes immersed himself. He also interviewed dozens of Smith’s family members, friends, lovers, and professional associates, many of whom spoke at length and ultra-candidly about him. The result is a complete, compelling, non-agenda driven portrait of a man who was a dedicated and gifted transformative artist — and an utter mess. I never learned to appreciate the art of photography as thoroughly as I did from this book, and I rarely have encountered someone at whose behavior I have mournfully and scornfully have shaken my head.

Smith’s father suicide when he was a teen. Smith was so tied to his mother that he moved her in with himself and his wife after their marriage — and kept her there, over his wife’s displeasure, following the birth of their children. He abused dexadrine, benzadrive and scotch for decades. He took risks while covering WW II that, literally, almost got his head blown off. He cheated on wives and lovers and abused them all. He spent money on photography supplies rather than feed his children — and he later abandoned them. He destroyed working relationships through his perfectionism and demands. He was always broke and seeking loans he would not repay. He subjected himself to beatings and poisons. He…

Well, he produced brilliant work. He undoubtedly believed that was the important thing. I don’t recall even one of the people whom he mistreated most badly calling his behavior — I don’t know — criminally insane in its infliction of misery and grief.

Adventures in Marketing: Week 92

Word has reached me of another Schiz sale.
The worked at Fantagraphics and proofread the first two books of mine it published. We had not been in touch for several years, so her purchase was nice because it suggested she had thought, Hey, I always liked Bob’s writing. Will buy his book.
Meanwhile, not only have I not been selling from my café table, I have not been attracting any interesting conversationalists either. (This morning all I got was some guy who wanted to crow about the outcome of Men’s Curling. How, I wondered, do you decide that is what you want to do with your life? Push 45-pound rocks across ice.)
Maybe I have become too familiar. Like the furniture. Maybe I need a new “Buy Bob’s Books!” sign. No one even seems to recognize the Checkered Demon.
One morning, when my favorite tables were taken, I went into the back room and sat in the far corner. I quickly felt at home there. True, there was not much foot traffic, but there was a certain symbolic purity to me, at work, alone in this corner.

Adventures in Marketing: Week 91

Sold one Schiz. The buyer had been a secretary at the law firm where I worked in the 1970s when most of the material that resulted in this book walked into my head. She and I re-connected through FB, and she is, I believe, only the second person I met during this decade to buy this book. (Oh yes, the college friend who read it in Hawaii – See previous “Adventure” – “loved” it and thought the ending was “great.” See what you laggards are missing.)
Made another gift of a Cheesesteak. It went to an ex-café buddy – retired contractor/
non-publication-seeking poet – who had decamped to hang elsewhere. I spotted him passing by and chased him down. When I returned to my table, another pal – retired architect/self-publishing author of smut – I mean, adult erotica – said, “I guess it isn’t true that you can’t give this shit away.”

In another news, the photo-illustrated new C.steak edition is at the printer’s and its run paid for. Order your copy now. (Or see me, if you want to write a review.)

Game Theory

My latest piece has gone up at http://www.firstofthemonth.org/game-theory/

It begins: “Berlin 1936: Sixteen Days in August,” by Oliver Hilmer (Other Press. 2018. Trans. from the German by Jefferson Chase) begins on the first day of that summer’s Olympics and ends on their closing. But the Olympics were a smokescreen, a puppet show, a diversion of less significance than the fireworks which concluded Joseph Goebbels $800,000 last-night party, bloodying the sky red.

Adventures in Marketing: Week 90

No sales.
But in the Department of Mighty Oaks From Tiny Acorns, a Philly-area indie bookstore (out of a dozen queried) replied that it might order a copy of Cheesesteak, if I sent sample chapters, and, if that sold, might order more.
Plus, I stumbled upon two reviews at Goodreads, one five-stars and one four-stars, the latter of which called it “a good book if you’re born in the 1940s” but someone like her, born in 1957 would miss many of the references. (A fair point, but, the author would note, Wikipedia is only a finger-tip away.) Still, she concluded, “(Levin) is an excellent writer and this book will appeal to a certain genre.” (Thirty other Goodreaders had Cheesesteak on their “To Do” list, but what happened to them I can not say.)
Oh yes, a college friend e-mailed me he has been reading (and “enjoying”) The Schiz while vacationing in Hawaii. That’s probably a first: Bob-As-Beach-Reading.
Finally, word reached me of a notice-of-interest from the new owner of one of the cafes I frequent. I figured he was banning me from selling on his premises – but, no! He intends to honor authors who hang there by installing shelves on which their works will be displayed.
I am leaning toward Best Ride and Most Outrageous.