After quite a while resting on my more or less laurels (past listings) it's time to get a move on and put up some more listings. My goal is five books every day from now on. This should be achievable, but not according to my past performance.

These books get listed in three places: on Amazon, Biblio, and Half. Books without ISBNs (older books) generally will not be listed on half. My prices might vary between these three places. Amazon and Half tell me competing prices, so I peg mine on them. Thus, if the lowest price for Deadly Percheron is $98 on Amazon, I might peg mine at $95. If it weren't my only copy maybe I'd be more reasonable. In fact, I think my Biblio listing is more reasonable.

Going forward (and possibly backward), links to titles of books will send you to the main Amazon listing. My listing will be somewhere amidst the other maybe 237 listings. This is where my photo of the book can be seen, which will probably be a better one than the one Amazon features. Half doesn't let me attach my own photo—at least I don't think it does. Photos are also at biblio. Lots of older listings still don't have photos. Nor updated prices.

I've been lousy at selling direct via email. Sorry about that, if you've tried me. Listing through the major portals keeps me honest—also prompt and reliable.

Saturday, June 30, 2007

---Email from Centipede:
Frankenstein and The Nightwalker now available

Cloth bound copies are now
available on the following titles:

The Nightwalker
Thomas Tessier
$60 cloth, signed by Thomas Tessier

This new edition features a great Max Ernst cover, an
author photograph, the complete novel, a bonus novella,
"The Dreams of Dr Ladybank," a new introduction by Jack
Ketchum, and a new afterword by Thomas Tessier. We also
include a color reproduction of the Pan Books promotional
poster from 1979 and a color reproduction of the Signet
paperback from 1981.

The cloth edition is printed on Mohawk Options and is
limited to 300 signed and numbered copies; the leather is
printed on Mohawk Superfine and is limited to 22 signed and
numbered copies.

Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
introduction by Patrick McGrath

The Millipede Press edition of this book is now available.
It includes a frontispiece by Berni Wrightson, cover art by
David Ho, a selection of critical essays by Judith
Halberstam, Brian Aldiss, Radu Florescu, and others; a
comprehensive bibliography, and a gallery of film stills.
This is the definitive edition of this book.

$16 paperback
$50 cloth hardcover, signed by Patrick McGrath, 300 copies
---I can forward the pdf of the flyer for these if anyone is interested. I have the tpb of Frankenstein in stock (30% discount), and would be glad to order either of the hcs (20%).

Friday, June 29, 2007

---Email rec'd:
Chris

I publish Dreams and Nightmares, which is a magazine of science
fiction, fantasy, and horror poetry. The magazine has been in
publication since 1986 (77 issues so far) and is currently published
three times a year. Would you be interested in carrying the magazine?
If the answer is yes, please tell me what to do. If you want to see
a copy of a recent issue before making up your mind just let me know.

The relatively recent death of ProjectPulp and the impending end of
the Shocklines store have impelled me to look for other distributors
and I've heard good things about you.

Thank you,
David
-- David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Dreams and Nightmares magazine now at
http://dreamsandnightmares.interstellardustmites.com/index.html

One impossible thing before breakfast.
(The other five are up to you.)
Flash fiction daily @ www.dailycabal.com

---Anyone want a standing order to this magazine through me?
---Email rec'd:
Dear Member of the Nation Community,

David CornI’ve never written a fundraising letter—not counting the few notes I sent my parents when I was in college. I’m a journalist. I write articles and books—about politics, national security, and the world around us. And I’m damn lucky; I get paid to do so by The Nation. But the magazine has been hit by a fiscal crisis—one caused by the sort of institutional Washington corruption I often cover—and I’ve been asked by our publishing team to ask you for help. Please click here to pitch in.

Last week, Teresa Stack, The Nation’s president, sent you a letter explaining this crisis. To recap:

Postal regulators have accepted a scheme designed in part by lobbyists for the Time Warner media conglomerate. In short, mailing costs for mega-magazines like Time Warner's own Time, People and Sports Illustrated will go up only slightly or decrease. But smaller publications like The Nation will be hit by an enormous rate increase of half a million dollars a year.

For The Nation, $500,000 a year is a lot of money. Believe me, I know. I’ve been working at the magazine for over 20 years. The pay ain’t great. But there are few media outlets that allow their writers and reporters the freedom to go beyond the headlines and take on the powers that be—to ask inconvenient questions and pursue uncomfortable truths.

But starting July 15, 2007, The Nation will face this whopping postal rate hike. Not to be melodramatic, but this rate increase is a threat to democratic discourse. Why should magazines that can afford high-powered lobbyists receive preferential treatment? This rise in mailing costs will make it harder for the magazine to deliver the investigative reporting and independent-minded journalism upon which you depend. (Take my word; I see the editors and publishing people in our New York office freaking out about this postal rate hike and discussing possible cutbacks.)

The magazine is fighting this corporate-driven, unfair and anti-democratic increase as best it can. It has joined forces with conservative publications in an attempt to beat back the rigged rate structure. (Imagine Katrina vanden Heuvel and Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, working together!) But even if we “win”—which, I’m told, is a long shot—The Nation will still face hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional postage.

So I’m turning to you. I’ve never asked our readers for anything—except the time it takes to read what I write for the magazine and its website. But The Nation needs you to help us cover this shortfall, and it needs that help now. Simply put, I’m asking you to send us money: whatever contribution you can, as soon as you can. Click here.

I’m not entirely comfortable writing to you as a fundraiser. Because people like you have supported the magazine, I’ve been able to do the work I enjoy for years. I appreciate that. Now I’m hoping you’ll come through in this time of need. Certainly, I’d rather be chasing kick-ass stories than worrying about magazine budget cuts and writing pleading letters. So please help us deal with this unfair rate hike, and I’ll go back to my day job.

Sincerely,

David Corn, Washington Editor
The Nation

P.S. The magazine will soon invite you to participate in a special phone conference to discuss this postal rate increase issue in more depth. Please take the time to join fellow Nation readers, Nation editors and writers, and special guest experts, and to learn more about the rate hike and its impact on The Nation.

---A long-time Nation reader--would that Bush had been one in his rush to invade Iraq--I do empathize with David Corn. The postal hike threatens mail-order booksellers as well, especially international sales, maybe half of my past business. No doubt $3+/gallon gasoline makes delivery costs expensive, and the postal service can't be expected to subsidize magazines or books; but with the big corporations and their lobbyists effectively getting just these subsidies--so they can fill our mailboxes with their junk-mail at our own expense...at long last, have they no shame? Well, that question has certainly been answered many times over in the past six years.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

06/20/07 WED:
---Here today from Night Shade:
Cook, Glen A FORTRESS IN SHADOW: A Chronicle of the Dread Empire, Night Shade ('07), 1st edn thus, (collects The Fire In His Hands and With Mercy Toward None; Steven Erikson introduction), {250-copy SIGNED edition available @ $65}, new in dj 35.00

Drake, David THE COMPLETE HAMMER'S SLAMMERS: Volume Two, Night Shade ('06), 1st edn, (collects the first four Slammers novels and a novella written for this volume; Hartwell intro; 505 pages), {250-copy SIGNED edn avail. @ $60}, new in dj 35.00

Shepard, Lucius SOFTSPOKEN, Night Shade ('07), 1st edn, (new short novel from the one and only Lucius Shepard; Decadent family histories, the supernatural, bizarre revelations, this is southern gothic Shepard-style), {100-copy SIGNED edition available @ $49}, new in dj 23.95

Williams, Liz PRECIOUS DRAGON, Night Shade ('07), 1st edn, (A Detective Inspector Chen Novel), {125-copy SIGNED edn with added story avail. @$49}, new in dj 24.95
---Back in stock:

Hodgson, William Hope THE GHOST PIRATES and Other Revenants of the Sea, Night Shade '05, 1st edn, (The Collected Fiction Vol 3), new no dj 35.00
---Discount on Night Shade--all editions--still 25%. I am listing the trade editions of the Williams and Cook titles even though I currently only have the ltd. in stock, expecting I could get them quickly enough. It doesn’t look like I will be getting their Clark Ashton Smith series--just as well if they have that silver flake like the Hodgsons. It gets all over the place.
---I notice that the CAS series from Night Shade is available at Amazon. Here are links:
The Collected Fantasies Of Clark Ashton Smith Volume 1: The End Of The Story and The Collected Fantasies Of Clark Ashton Smith Volume 2: The Door To Saturn


---Email from Amy--she made it to Belgium and was trying to stay awake until the local bedtime. Now I will see if I can handle eleven days of unremiting solitude. Enough things on my to-do list certainly to keep me busy and out of trouble.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

06/19/07 TUE:
---Amy used her brand-new passport to board flight to Belgium. It turns out the passport was issued Jun 8 and USPS express-mailed Jun 16, with only PO Box on label. A truck left a notice at Polk City post office Sunday morning, a couple hours before we had to leave for Chicago. I even checked the box one last time in faint hope something might have come since Saturday morning when I last checked the box. Naturally the notice had not made it into the box. Oh well, Chicago was a blast. At least she did get her passport in time, if barely, and didn’t have to forego her expense-paid trip to Ghent. Seems the feds owe me $500 easy.

Monday, June 18, 2007

06/18/07 MON:
---In line at 4 am at passport office. The first in line got there at midnight. Amy was 18th or so--not bad. By the time the line moved indoors at 6:30 there were hundreds, going around the block. A week ago there were thousands, before the passport requirement on trips to Canada and Mexico was lifted. I waited in hotel room, hoping Amy would come back with her passport and we could leave for Polk City before the rush hour in Chicago. She did get back to hotel around 10:00 but not yet with passport. She had to return at 3:30 to finally pick it up. Piddled around the streets of downtown Chicago another few hours, having had to check out of hotel at 11am. Turns out they wouldn’t give her a passport because they had somehow finally come up with a tracking number for the original passport. It was sitting in the post office at Polk City. Of course. But how could we have known it would finally arrive the day before she had to leave? The Belgians had bought her a non-refundable ticket, booked her in a hotel, scheduled her as first presenter at conference, set up around her schedule in the first place. She couldn’t not go.
---I-290 out of Chicago was expectedly clogged but at least mostly moving. Eventually we got on the incredibly smooth Ronald Reagan toll-road and made it back to Polk City a little after 10 pm, in time for Amy to get a good night’s sleep.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

06/17/07 SUN:
---No passport in mail for Amy’s trip to Belgium, no tracking number on website. Guess we have to drive to Chicago for nearest last-minute processing center, with new copy of Amy’s birth certificate, new passport photo, etc. Maybe if we leave early we can do something in Chicago after the six-hour drive.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

06/13/07 WED:
---Here today from Tartarus:
de la Mare, Walter STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS: Tales by..., Tartarus '07, one of 500 copies, (definitive collection of author’s supernatural and psychological stories; Mark Valentine intro; 510 pages), new in dj $65

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

06/12/07 TUE:
---Word from Haffner:
NEW RELEASE!

The latest release from Haffner Press, IN MEMORY OF WONDER'S CHILD: JACK
WILLIAMSON made its debut at the 2007 Jack Williamson Lectureship
on Friday, April 27, 2007.

IN MEMORY OF WONDER'S CHILD is a 112-page chapbook that honors the
career of Grand Master Jack Williamson with memorial appreciations from
friends, family and some of the most prominent members of the science
fiction field.

Front and back cover images may be viewed at www.haffnerpress.

Also included are Williamson's 1939 pulp story "Nonstop to Mars," his
last work published in his lifetime: "The Mists of Time" from 2006, a
facsimile reproduction of his 1928 editorial
"Scientifiction- "Scientifiction--Searchlight of Science," and
newspaper comic strip, Beyond Mars.

** All proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to the Jack
and Blanche Williamson Scholarship Fund

CONTRIBUTORS
Kevin J. Anderson
Greg Bear
David Brin
Charles N. Brown
Patrice Caldwell
John Clute
Stephen R. Donaldson
James Frenkel
James Gunn
Joe Haldeman
Rick Hauptmann
Elizabeth Anne Hull
Bradford Lyau
Frederik Pohl
Mike Resnick
Frank M. Robinson
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Robert Silverberg
Michael Swanwick
Walter Jon Williams
Betty Williamson
Connie Willis

Only 500 copies are being produced.

IN MEMORY OF WONDER'S CHILD: JACK WILLIAMSON
Edited by Stephen Haffner
112-page 4.25" x 5.5" trade paperback

ISBN-13: 978-1-893887- 26-8
500-copy trade edition: $15.00 (U.S.)
---I have an order in for this, for anyone who wants it.

---Word from Ash-Tree:
We're pleased to announce that the new Ash-Tree Press anthology, AT EASE WITH THE DEAD, is now available, in both hardback and paperback editions. Full details will be found in the attached PDF file. This time around we have thirty new stories, some from regular contributors, many from first-timers with Ash-Tree. We're very encouraged that an early review - at the Horror World website (http://www.horrorworld.org/reviews.htm ) - is extremely enthusiastic.

The next title to become available will be THE ATTIC EXPRESS AND OTHER MACABRE STORIES by Alex Hamilton, which collects together a number of stories from earlier collections of Alex's (BEAM OF MALICE, FLIES ON THE WALL, and THE CHRISTMAS PUDDING THAT SHOOK THE WORLD), and also includes a brand new story, 'Night Mare', which Alex has written specially for the Ash-Tree collection.

We'll be following that with a new edition of Francis Brett Young's chilling novel, COLD HARBOUR, which is almost ready to go to print; and after that will come the first volume in our series THE COLLECTED SHORT FICTION OF HENRY S. WHITEHEAD. The first volume is titled PASSING OF A GOD AND OTHER STORIES.

Christopher & Barbara
---I have downloaded the aforementioned pdf with specs on their latest and can attach it for anyone interested.

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