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My New York reading tour was a blast. Some great fellow readers, too much alcohol, not enough sleep, and �� New York! Most exciting city in the U.S.A. I did sell a few books while I was there, met some interesting people, and walked about 50 miles.

I visited 25 bookstores and shared with them my new press release—about my literary award “Outstanding Book of the Year�� in the 2012 Independent Publisher Book Awards—and several of them seemed quite interested in ordering it. The manager of the Strand Bookstore, which is the largest in Manhattan, emailed me a few days ago that he was in fact going to order the book from my distributor Last Gasp. When you self-publish, and even when you are published by a small to mid-size press, an author needs to do a great deal of her/his own publicity. That’s just the way it is.

Lori Hettler, who runs The Next Big Book Club, came out to the great Sunday reading at KGB Bar, and took videos of all the readers. She broke them up into roughly five minute chunks, so mine is in two parts that you can view here.

It was a great trip all around! Some photos below.

And I came close to winning another literary award. I was named as a Finalist (one of three Finalists), but not the winner, in the 2012 Indie Excellence Awards, Fantasy genre. I’m going to read and review the winner’s book, The Ghosts of Watt O'Hugh after I’m done with Have You Seen Me , which was written by one of my fellow tour authors.

A great deal has happened in the span of the past 24 hours. My book tour in New York City has been finalized, and I won a book award!

First, the award. A Greater Monster, has won a Gold Medal as an “Outstanding Book of the Year" in the 2012 Independent Publisher Book Awards. So say the awards: "These medalists were chosen from our regular entries for having the courage and creativity necessary to take chances, break new ground, and bring about change, not only to the world of publishing, but to our society."

Phew, that's long-winded but very flattering. There were only 10 winners in different categories out of 5000 entries.

Now, onto the tour. I’m joining several other authors who have been published by the Chicago Coalition of Literature and Photography (CCLAP) on a four day reading event in New York City from May 31st �� June 3rd. All shows take place from 7 to 9 pm, with performances generally starting around 8:00.

I’ll be reading at the following venues: On THURSDAY, MAY 31ST, at the lower Manhattan performance space Le Poisson Rouge. [lepoissonrouge.com]

On FRIDAY, JUNE 1ST, at a Brooklyn bookstore Book Thug Nation. [bookthugnation.com]

On SATURDAY, JUNE 2ND, at the Brooklyn experimental performance space Vaudeville Park in conjunction with New York jazz band Battle Of The Camel. [vaudevillepark.org]

And on SUNDAY, JUNE 3RD, for the largest showcase of the tour, at revered lower Manhattan "lit bar" KGB. [kgbbar.com]

The Brooklyn events were graciously organized and sponsored by the arts-and-entertainment website Brooklyn Spaces [brooklyn-spaces.com] and Oriana Leckert.

Get more details, including the other authors being featured at or on the Facebook event page here:

My last bit of news is that, at last, I have a book distributor. Bookstores can order my book from the fabulous Last Gasp who produce and distribute many gorgeous art books from the likes of Mark Ryden, Todd Schorr, Camille Rose Garcia, and many more.

Last Gasp
777 Florida Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
phone 415.824.6636
fax 415.824.1836
Email: Kristine at lastgasp dot com

Just posted: ŷ������ Giveaway for A Greater Monster. If my book interests you, please enter for it here: http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sho...

AGM is currently available

�� in Chicago: The Book Cellar, Unabridged Bookstore, After-Words Books, Quimby’s, Sandemeyer’s Books, Chicago Comics, and 57th Street Books (just added)

�� in St. Louis: Dunaway Books, Subterranean Books, Pudd’nhead Books, Star Clipper Comics, and Left Bank Books (just added)

�� in Austin, TX: Book People

And of course on Amazon:

Other news: I’ve submitted my book to the distributor who carried Death by Zamboni, so I’m hoping they will agree to carry it, in which case bookstores can order it directly from them. Coming up in June, I’ll be on a mini-book tour in New York City with several readings. More on that closer to the date.

Had a great reading at After-Words Books the first night of the AWP convention. Over twenty folks showed up on a blustery cold evening. Had a great time.

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 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, 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.

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 . And on ŷ������, of course, here: A Greater Monster . It is also available in Chicago at Quimby’s Bookstore, Unabridged Bookstore, Sandemeyer's Bookstore, and Chicago Comics. At some point in the next couple weeks I hope to make it available via PayPal on my website.

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 (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.

I've completed the book design for my second novel, A Greater Monster. The cover is done and below for your viewing pleasure. I'm quite happy with how it came out. All the design elements that make up the face are related to scenes in the story.



If you are looking for a talented designer for a project, talk to my friend Mike who did this cover as well as the complex interior layouts: . Super talented guy.

Next step is getting a print-on-demand printer to create about 20 galley editions with a plain cover to send to pre-publication reviewers like Publisher's Weekly and the Kirkus Review. If they review it, that helps get bookstores and libraries to order it. There's no assurance that they will review it, however. I also plan to take a couple galley copies around to bookstores in Chicago to see if I can get employees to read it and land an in-store review. I highly recommend authors take this approach themselves.

The quotes. As promised in my last blog post. I have been very fortunate to meet several authors who generously spared time from their incredibly busy schedules to read an early manuscript of A Greater Monster and provide micro-reviews that will appear on the cover and interior. The full quotes are a little long for this blog post so I'm sharing the abbreviated versions here. I highly recommend these talented authors' books, which I have thoroughly enjoyed reading (links provided).

“Brilliant, insane, and utterly unique…”—Jen Knox, author of To Begin Again
��
"I can't express how brilliant my favorite scenes in A Greater Monster are. In this extraordinary work, Katzman pushes language to do things, which are truly astounding.”—Carra Stratton, Editor, Starcherone Press
��
��A Greater Monster is…a spiritual (and carnal) quest that reads like Alice on acid, while channeling every trash sci-fi nightmare Creepy Tales had to offer.�� —Charles Lambert, author of Scent of Cinnamon and Any Human Face
��
"Beautiful mystic-schizo DayGlo wordage. Poetic, peripatetic and diuretic prose that befuddles, enchants and amuses the reader at the same time."—Lance Carbuncle, author of Grundish Askew
��
“This is bizarro fiction at its most intense. It contains scenes and unique designs that seem engineered by some Mad Hatter and Chuck Palahniuk cross-breed.”—Lavinia Ludlow, author of alt.punk

"A Greater Monster is a highly creative and original story combining poetry, imagery, and prose—all working seamlessly without a break in momentum."—Charlie Courtland, author of Dandelions in the Garden

Finally, for authors who are self-publishing and feel the premise or nature of their work might intrigue individuals who like unusual, artsy projects, consider submitting your project to kickstarter.com.

It's a cool site that has been written up in the New York Times, CNN, Wired, etc, as a new way for artists to pre-fund their work. First, because it's a curated site you have to be accepted based on the artistic quality of your concept. Second, you have to offer creative rewards for donations. One of mine is obviously that you can pre-purchase the book, but I also offered rewards that include a stream-of-consciousness email inspired by your name, a hand-written letter or an original short story inspired by anything you request. Thanks to 84 generous individuals, I just reached my goal and the fundraiser still has two weeks more to go. The book is being printed on 100% acid-free recycled paper, which is more expensive than regular paper, and that has added significantly to my printing costs.

It helps to create professional quality video to garner interest, so check out what I did. Making it funny and entertaining helps as well.



And Kickstarter blogged about my project here:


I'll be going to press in about two weeks.

(Read that title in the voice of an ironically written CIA agent character.)

The next month is going to be nuts. I'm shooting to get my book to the printers by the last week of August or first week of September, which leaves me feeling like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland ... can’t stop, can’t stop, I’m going to be late, going to be late!

So, yes, I’ve decided to end my search for a publisher. I evaluated three last options then called it quits. The acquisition editor of the press that almost picked me up (see previous blog entry) offered to let me use her as a reference to get in with another press. And she recommended three presses that she was connected to personally. I evaluated these presses: their websites, their books on Amazon (how many reviews, style and subject matter), and, finally, I reviewed their contracts/author policies. I also spoke with an author who had been published by one of the presses, the one that looked the most promising of the three. My conclusion was that they would do almost nothing for me that I couldn't do myself and would take most of the profits. They offer authors 10% of cover price, and they insist on design control of the cover as well as interior. I would have been comfortable with a collaboration, but the upfront “we control it�� attitude put into writing left a bad taste in my mouth. Worse, the straw that really sucked the interest out of me was when I learned from the published author that he had actually been required to buy copies of his own book from the publisher in order to mail them himself to reviewers. Screw that.

So where things stand: I've been a bit delayed in the design of my book because my book designer broke his right forearm in a moped accident. He's lucky to have survived the hit and run. Poor guy, I do love him, but why wasn’t he wearing a goddamn helmet? But we're back on track now. I got a bid for cover art from a painter I met at the last Comicon in Chicago but decided to have my book designer do the cover art in addition to the interior design. That way, the design will be integrated with the cover text. $300 for cover art, btw.

Other actions I’ve taken so far: I purchased a set of 10 ISBN numbers and barcodes ($250), Library of Congress Number (free), and requested quotes from 10 printers. I’ve been sorting through the responses and am collecting the best bids. It’s going to be pretty expensive because I’m committed to using 100% recycled paper. But I’m willing to invest the extra money in order to feel better about stamping ink on 384,000 pages of paper. (That's another reason not to use a small press--almost all of them do Print on Demand now, and most POD printers like Createspace or Lulu do not have a 100% recycled paper option.)

Still left to do: Create the CIP data—that’s the cataloguing data for libraries. It’s actually quite complicated, and I’ve visited two libraries so far and the reference librarians were not helpful. Any librarians out there want to help me??? I’m in the process of collecting potential reviewer names and websites. Need to find a distributor. Create some postcards. Collect a list of all bookstores in Chicago and other indie bookstores around the country. Setup PayPal and Google checkout accounts so people can buy copies directly from my website and prepare the updates for my site when the book launches. Prepare an ebook. Continue recording my audio book version. Set up a book release party. And so many more little things…I’m late, I’m late, I’m late.

Next blog entry: A taste of the pre-release promotional blurbs I’ve already lined up for the book.

Dear David,
Thank you again for the opportunity to consider A Greater Monster and for your interest in [PRESS]. I apologize a thousand times for the time it has taken for us to respond to your query. We received more than the usual number of manuscripts during this period, had less than the usual amount of publication slots available, and our team of volunteer readers decreased due to personal problems; therefore, we have been incredibly behind in our reading, and, again, I apologize.

At this moment, we are going to pass on further consideration of your manuscript; your project was among the last few we were holding onto from the open submission period, and that is because it is a great fit for [PRESS]. Our readers praised it for gorgeous graphics, material resistance and interplay with the plot, its questioning of the human as master/center of time, space, reason, and language, and its exquisiteness and brutality at the level of the sentence. Incredible sentences verging on poetry. Existence at the realm of the nano, the infinitesimal, the letter, the typographic shift-. We passed on it because of our current lack of publication slots, but please send us more material, either during our next open submission period or during one of our blind-judged contests. Thank you again, and I hope you find a publisher quickly for this extraordinary work.

Sincerely,
[NAME]
Acquisitions Editor
[PRESS]

The above email arrived in my inbox Friday. What a wonderful rejection! The editor also kindly offered, in a subsequent email, to provide me with a more eloquent promotional quote (such as for the back cover or the interior), when my book is published. And she also recommended a couple presses I could contact and use her name as a reference. However…I’m back to my old conundrum: Is it worth it? What will these small presses do for me that I can’t do for myself? And if I self-publish, I will always maintain the rights to my own writing. Of the three presses she recommended, only one of them seems to have their act together online. And when I check their books on Amazon…only a few reviews for each one. The author still has to hustle for professional reviews, press coverage, distribution (getting it carried), marketing, etc. And the reward is 10% per book of the cover price…as opposed to 40% - 100% depending on whether you sell it directly, online or through a bookstore. If I’m going to work my butt off, shouldn’t it be for myself?

The other big minus, of course, is more waiting. Even if I get lucky quickly, my book would likely not be available until late 2012. Depends on how long their queue is. If I self-publish, I can release the book later this year, hopefully late summer. I’ve had a long enough gestation period; I want this thing out of me!

The biggest plus of finding a publisher, of course is that I get more credibility and reputation being published by someone else. So, theoretically, that means I can get publishers to take a more serious look at future query letters. But is it really worth it?

Right now, I’m leaning toward no.

I’m in the waiting room of Operation: Get a Publisher. I sent out twenty query letters to small-to-medium-size presses and emailed four literary agents. All were contacted on September 17. Two months later, where do I stand?

2 literary agents said, “Thank you, it’s not my genre.��
1 literary agent never replied (I just emailed a follow up.)
1 literary said, “Sounds interesting, send me the first 10 pages.�� That was on. 10/6. Nothing since. (I just emailed a follow up.)

12 presses sent me no response whatsoever. Not a word. Nada. Bupkis. Zip. Silent treatment. Cold shoulder. I’ll just shut up now. (Like them.)

2 presses sent me a polite, “Thank you, this does not fit our interests at this time.��

2 press sent me a polite, “Thank you for submitting, we’ll get back to you.��

1 press (Soft Skull Press) sent me an email on 10/15 saying, “Thanks for submitting. We changed our policy (and closed our New York office). We no longer accept un-agented submissions.�� Skull-fuck you, Soft Skull. Just kidding.

1 press said, “We’re sorry, we’re not considering new books until 2013.��

1 press said, “We’ll take a look, but just so you know, we’re now looking at books for 2012.��

And 1 press responded on 9/22, “Thank you for your interest in XXXXXX Press. We'd like to take a further look at your manuscript. I love fairytales, and psychedelic ones are even more exciting." I’m censoring the name because I don’t think it would appropriate to publicize it here, but…yeehaw!!! I consider this quite a victory. Even if they don’t publish it, I’m still quite pleased that I got past the query letter with one of the presses. They indicated that they take about six months to evaluate a book so I won’t hear back until March.

In the meantime, I’m living up to my recommendation that a writer should never sit on her heels while waiting to hear from a publisher. I haven’t started my next book, but I am following the self-publishing path just in case I don’t land a publisher. I’ve managed to come to an agreement with a designer to design my novel for publication. He’s a friend who also designed my website (). I got a friend discount, but at the same time, my book will be quite complicated to design because there are multiple fonts, visual text poetry, images, and a couple scenes where several conversations are occurring simultaneously. So it will be a bear to design. But if you’re wondering how much it costs to hire a talented designer, I’m paying $1500 in three installments—each time we’re done with 1/3 of the book, he gets $500. My book will be roughly 300 pages long, but I would assume for most authors interested in self-publishing, they could probably get a cheaper rate if they don’t have fancy formatting.

My goal is to have the book ready to send to the printers by May. If I haven’t gotten a solid bite from a publisher by then, I’ll be ready to pull the trigger and my book will be out by the summer. A great beach read. If you like to trip balls at the beach, that is.

I finished my novel about two weeks ago.



After receiving feedback from my two writer friends, I made a pass of revisions. Then I read the book one last time and made a final round of touchups. We’ll call it fourteen drafts. I believe this is more than many authors go through, but my process is iterative not a plot-it-out-in-advance method. That’s just how my jib is cut. And, wow, my jib is more cut than Taylor Lautner’s abs.

So what next? Many months ago I started a list of potential presses. And I’ve picked up my research—I have a list of thirteen potential publishers right now that might be a good fit. I was disappointed to learn that my top two picks (Akashic Books, publisher of Joe Meno, and Serpent’s Tail out the U.K.) no longer accept query letters from un-agented writers. C’est la vie, they’re crossed off. I have also begun customizing my query letters so that they are more specific to each of these presses. I found publishers from novels I’ve read that were compatible to my own as well as through online research.

At the same time, I sent a shout out to everyone in my Linked-In network. I’m not a Facebooker, but if I were, I would’ve sent one out there, too. I sent a very specific email explaining that I had finished my second novel and was looking for someone with a friend at a publishing company. All I requested was an introduction so that my query letter would be read promptly. Of course, I won’t say no if it also allows me to skip the query letter and send the manuscript right off the bat, but that’s asking for a lot.

The result: three of my connections responded that they were connected to literary agents. One childhood friend’s former co-worker is now an agent in NY. He connected us, and I’ve forwarded my query letter to her already. A former co-worker of mine informed me that his wife knows a literary agent. I asked him to see if he can find out what she reps (because if it’s an irrelevant genre like romance or kids�� lit, then it would be pointless to reach out to her), but so far, I have not heard back. And finally, it turns out that another former colleague of mine used to work in publishing and knows a fairly big-time agent who had once represented Philip K. Dick! (Shocking. That’s actually a really good fit for my book. Who knew? Uch, Schindler did, and that’s why he saved the Jews.) I’m still waiting on this former co-worker to advise me on the best way to reach out to this promising agent, so I’m on pins-and-needles. But not getting my hopes up too much. I hadn't expected connections to agents, and I still think they are a long shot. My book is “literary�� but it’s not very commercial. So it will only appeal to a truly arts-focused agent. But it’s certainly worth a try.

In the meantime, I’m going to continue researching potential small to medium size presses. Here is a great site for that type of research: .

Wish me luck!