Dear Malarkey Readers,

I hope your summer is going well. My own summer is certainly going. Ronald Reagan once said “A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions tell me that's true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.” Most days I regard this quote as grossly cynical, and emblematic of the babyland fantasy too many American adults allow themselves to indulge in, but today I find I relate to it. The dateline on the top of my computer screen tells me it’s July 20, contrary to the misinformation that has been presented to me by my own heart and best intentions, which would have me believe it’s June 4. Death comes for us all, I guess, and the twilight of summer is good practice.

My heart and my best intentions tell me that summer is a time for lolling, slacking, dreaming, and I like to think I’ve done a bit of all three. Alas, summer is also a time of Being Productive. Of doing the stuff I fall behind on during the school year. So far I’ve edited and laid out somewhere between three and five books, stapled hundreds of zines, nominated some books for awards, participated in (and fallen behind on) a really fantastic slow read book club discussion of Bleak House, agreed to publish a book by a French author that I adore, read ten books, written a little bit of a story, got A Tale of Two Cities replaced with Wuthering Heights in one of my pre-AP sections, thought a lot about planning classes without really doing anything yet, dropped about three pounds despite not following the best diet or the intermittent fasting routine I’d been good about during the school year, kept my kids alive, etc. I say alas, but I liked doing most of this stuff. I’m also Cleaning the Garage, which is a big mistake because what I should have done was blow it up. I’ve invested too much sweat and time to do that now though. Alas. I’ve also started running, and a strange thing has happened: I actually like it. Last night I went to bed not dreading that I had to wake up 5 a.m. to take my son to weights, but kind of pumped to get back on the trail. One thing I have learned: running on a track, sidewalk, road is depressing and evil, makes me want to die, which makes exercise pretty pointless. But a rough path in the woods is sublime. This paragraph has almost nothing to do with publishing or indie books; some would call this bad marketing.

I want to make some announcements:

1. Mike Andrelczyk’s debut novel, Submarines, officially comes out tomorrow. He has signed a bunch of copies and put them in the mail but I think we have about seventeen signed copies left. These also come with three zines: a microchap called Comic Sans with some of Mike’s poems; the latest edition of King Ludd’s Rag; and a microchap by S. A. Viau called Hole. The book’s on sale for $15 and in my opinion there are seven or eight very good reasons to buy it, but I’m only going to present one of them: this book rules.

2. We just released a new episode of Malarkey Public Radio. LJ Pemberton chats with Ben Niespodziany about all kinds of writing stuff. You should be able to find MPR wherever you find podcasts, but if you can’t I’d actually be grateful if you let me know so I can try to make sure it gets pushed out to whatever platform you use. LJ has taken the reins of this podcast and made it something really cool. She’s a great interviewer and has really nice podcast presence and I want to thank her because we’re doing this podcast just for the love of it. There’s no ads, no paywalls, no monetization, other than the hope that someone might be inspired to buy her book.

3. I’d also like to thank bluesky for (finally) implementing group chats because the Malarkey crew has been suffering without it. We did set up a discord but it never really caught. The bluesky group chat is hopping, though, and it led to some recent magic. We need to find a way to get more Patreon supporters, particularly at the $5 level. I’ve always struggled with this because it’s been hard to make it worth subscribing for digital stuff because of my stubborn refusal to put stuff behind a paywall; and offering print rewards at that level really eats into the revenue. Enter me compromising on my values: we are going to start putting some stuff behind the patreon paywall, primarily in the form of an ongoing podcast series. The working title is The Malarkey Reader and the basic premise is we get a little pod of Malarkey writers together to talk about a book that’s been important, influential, or befuddling to them. Once this is off the ground I will annoyingly promote the patreon. Book club members and the handful of newsletter supporters we have will also get access to this series. A note of shame: I’ve been bad about coming up with and following up on these types of rewards but I am going to set up some stuff that gets automatically sent if you sign up on patreon for $5 a month. Will the Malarkey Reader bring in additional revenue? Will we stick to our guns and make at least some of it subscriber-only? I truly have no idea, but based on the group chat conversations so far, one thing is for sure: it should be fun!

4. We’ve got another book discussion in the works. We’ve long had a Malarkey Book Club, but it’s always been just a way for readers to get books sent to them automatically. Now we’re going to try out a book club featuring one of our titles, starting with Deliver Thy Pigs by Joey Hedger. The plan is to chunk it and read it over four weeks, discussing asynchronously online along the way, then getting together over zoom for a wrap-up conversation. We’re going to shoot for this to happen in September. If you’d like to join, all you need to do right now is fill out this form. We have a few copies on hand and can give them to you 25% off with code DELIVERTHYMALARKEY. Print copies are also available from Asterism, Amazon, B&N, and Bookshop. We sell the ebook for $5 but we can also send you a free one if you like. Personally, I am looking forward to reading this book again just as a reader, and not as a guy who has to decide whether to try to publish it or not, or as a guy who has to catch all the typos and all that.

5. This isn’t anything new or special, but it’s worth putting out there: running this press is not profitable, but we manage not to lose money overall, and we pay cover designers and send royalties to our authors. We do lose money on specific books that don’t sell well, for whatever reason, and it’s possible we lost about $1,000 on a print run earlier this year that is just sitting in boxes because of a typo on the cover, my point being every single order that comes in, no matter how small, is wildly important and magical and inspiring.

   Death comes for us all, but it really is a privilege to be alive in a world with so much art and literature. We’re grateful to be a small part of it.