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A SCRAPBOOK OF STUFF I'M READING / LISTENING TO / LOOKING AT ON THE NET.

Steve Almond on self-publishing and readings

» Steve Almond on self-publishing and readings

I took the subway to Harvard Bookstore and watched the Espresso Book Machine pop out a copy of the book. It took four minutes.

Now the fun part began. Because rather than worrying about moving lots of units, I just read from the book at various readings and sold them for ten bucks a pop.

And the weirdest part was that I sold out at every reading. I’d love to believe that this was because people were just blown away by my incandescent prose. But I think it had more to do with a kind of communal feeling. Readers liked the fact that the book wasn’t available everywhere.

If this were a traditional publishing endeavor, the next question would be how to get the book a “bigger platform,” meaning a place in the great Barnes-&-Noble-Amazon-Kindle-i-Pad-clusterfuckosphere. But because this is something much more personal, I decided – nah.

I was cool with Harvard Bookstore selling it. But other than that, Minute, Honey is available only at readings. My reasoning is pretty simple: I want the book to be an artifact that commemorates a particular human gathering, not a commodity.

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52 notes

1. chealsye reblogged this from melissa
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16. miconian reblogged this from meaghano and added:

    Artificial scarcity, like printed money. Also, making books more like live performances. It’s almost as if the reading...

17. bestiesonice reblogged this from meaghano and added:

    I’ve only read his fiction, but I do love me some Steve Almond like whoa.

18. sincerelyjessica reblogged this from austinkleon and added:

    i need to remember that i can do more than i think i can

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24. lovestampede reblogged this from meaghano and added:

    so now that we’ve started a reading series…alls i gotta do is write a book and then self-publish it….PRESTO!

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38. snailboat reblogged this from meaghano and added:

    Well that’s a fine way to look at it.

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    This is how I’ve always felt about writing screenplays—that having a spirited read-through with friends would be more...

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