Sell Out
Five months on, nearly six, I’ve about sent out all the rewards from our Kickstarter. If you’re waiting on yours, it’s because the book you requested hasn’t been published yet, or I didn’t get the address information from Kickstarter (which I’ve emailed a bunch of people individually about this) or your reward includes a whole lot of items and I haven’t got all of them set up yet but I will be getting to it very soon or a different reason, in which case let me know. I think you can reply directly to this message.
Let’s do an update on the Kickstarter: we raised $11,740. This is an incredible thing to be able to say, and it makes me emotional. Please know this: I am so grateful and humbled. It’s hard to believe that really happened. At the bottom of this email I’m going to include the names of more than 100 people who contributed (dozens more opted not to be recognized). Out of that $11,470, Kickstarter held back a cut of $981.28, as I posted on New Twitter (aka Bluesky) the other day. That still left $10,758.72, a very nice sum. It felt good. One of the tough things about offering physical rewards for a Kickstarter is those rewards cost money. The shirts cost a total of $749. The totes cost a total of $580. And of course many rewards included books and I cannot begin to offer a total cost, but figure on average $7 per book. One of the silly decisions I made when we were promoting the Kickstarter was to say hey, if you pledge at $20 or higher we will send an extra free book of your choice. Let’s figure 100 books we gave away. Maybe that decision cost us $700; maybe that decision gave enough people the incentive to contribute that it made the difference between success and coming up short. I think the reason I’m detailing this information is because it would be easy for people to think damn, Malarkey raised $10,000, they must be set. That Kickstarter money was nice, it did what we needed it to do, but we still very much need to sell books, and that brings us to my thesis: you should think about purchasing some books, shirts, or a tote bag!
Okay, so, I want to sell out: look, if one of the conglomerates reached out and said they wanted to buy Malarkey I would tell them to eat shit, but I want to sell out of the books that are taking up space in my living room, if that is clearer. To that end, you can use the code SELLOUT to get 20% off anything in our online store. This weekend I did a complete inventory, and I’m going to give you an overview of what’s available. But first I want to talk about preorders: we have three books currently available for preorder: Detective Novel by Craig Rodgers, My Ardent Love for the Pencil by Vi Khi Nao, and The Barre Incidents by Lauren Bolger. This run of books showcases (sorry, I’m writing this while watching the NBA Finals) the best thing about this press: we publish whatever. These books have nothing in common. One is a deliberately obscure, existential detective novel, one is an amorphous, self-referential collection of poetry, accompanied by a series of photographs taken by the poet, and the other is a cosmic horror novel featuring the Mothman and a bunch of undead miners. But they’re all good, that’s what they have in common. They all have voice and style. If you’ve picked up Hair Shirt or Boxcutters, you might have noticed something—not just the French flaps, but the overall deliciousness of the book. Not to dismiss the books we’ve published, but these are higher quality, and that’s because we had them printed with Bookmobile. They feel better, they fold better, they look better than the print on demand books from Ingram. We would like to do Bookmobile print runs, sans the pricey French flaps, with the rest of the titles for this year, but we can only manage it if we get enough preorders. Ninety is the magic number for The Barre Incidents. I will add that Lauren is making up some special bookmarks to send out with signed copies, and we’re going to include a copy of Hellarkey 4 with each preorder. Publishing folks frequently tout the importance of preorders; for us it is the difference between print on demand copies and lovely, foldy, wonderful Bookmobile copies.
So here’s what we’ve got, in addition to the preorder titles listed above:
Tote bags, designed by Adrian Sobol: 8.
T-shirts: quite a few, in sizes ranging from small to XL, and three color options: natural, blue, purpley-red.
Hair Shirt, poems by Adrian Sobol: 40.
Boxcutters, short stories by John Chrostek: 25.
Where the Pavement Turns to Sand, stories by Sheldon Birnie: 3. Audiobook (narrated by the author): infinite!
Kill Radio, a novel by Lauren Bolger: 4.
Gloria Patri, a novel by Austin Ross: 14.
Still Alive, a novel by LJ Pemberton: 6.
Thunder from a Clear Blue Sky, a novel by Justin Bryant: 3.
Sleep Decades, short stories by Israel A. Bonilla: 33.
Your Favorite Poet, poems by Leigh Chadwick (paperback): 13.
The Great Atlantic Highway & Other Stories by Steve Gergley: 1.
First Aid for Choking Victims, stories by Matthew Zanoni Müller: 12.
Deliver Thy Pigs, a novel by Joey Hedger: 1.
Thumbsucker, poems by Kat Giordano: 6.
Faith, a novel by Itoro Bassey: 23.
Man in a Cage, a novel by Patrick Nevins: 1
Guess What’s Different, essays by Susan Triemert: 3
Don Bronco’s (Working Title) Shell, a novel?, by Donald Ryan: 1.
Un-ruined, a novel by Roger Vaillancourt: 1.
I’ve also got about 60 copies of King Ludd’s Rag No. 23 sitting around, and while you’re extremely welcome to order a copy, I will also be sticking a copy in pretty much every order I send out until they’re all gone.
I also have a big stack of sticker, with the Malarkey logo in LA Lakers colors, thanks to a Sticker Guy promotion.
By the way, we also have ebooks for all our titles.
Okay, sorry if this is a lot. If you’re looking for a good book to read, we can help you out. Here’s where I repeat the discount code. It’s SELLOUT. Good for 20% off anything on our website. T-shirts. Totes. Books. Ebooks.
—AG
Thank you:
Malarkey is an independent publisher in the sense of not having evil corporate overlords or greedy stockholders to appease, but we remain dependent on a large community of readers. It is no exaggeration to say we would not still be here without this community. We remain committed to publishing a variety of worthy and beautiful literature across a range of genres, always driven by literary merit over commercial appeal. We recently ran a successful Kickstarter campaign in the interest of remaining both financially independent and able to exist. A few dozen contributors humbly chose not to be recognized, but below is a list of more than 100 people who contributed to that campaign. All our thanks to all of you.
Brian
LJ Pemberton
Sheldon D Birnie
Suzy Eynon
Matthew D Brandenburg
Walter J Montie
Kirsti M
w v sutra
Neil Willcox
Teresa B. Ardrey
Michael Itaya
Pat Nevins
Jacob Smullyan
Mitchell Nobis
William Burtch
Richard Leise
Benjamin Yeager
Michael Patrick McSweeney
Bear Kosik
Matthew Muller
Lucas Restivo
Lauren Kardos
Ankh Spice
Amie Reilly
Jay Wallace
Hilary Wilson
Benjamin Woodard
Jon Fain
Jennifer Wortman
M.Carrigan
Liz
Cowboy Jamboree
Jason W McGlone
Robert York
Alex Miller
Josh Link
Joey Hedger
Roger Vaillancourt
Jenny Hayes
Will Musgrove
Tiffany Lee
Davi Schweizer
Caitlin Listro
Nicole Merrill
Kolby Harvey
Adam McPhee
Jeffrey R Nesbit
Tiernan Blanchard
Elizabeth
Grace Daly
John Chrostek
Duncan Shepard
Axel Kallesøe
Daniel Froid
Michael Tichy
James Kislingbury
Paige A Holland
Josh Luft
Ross McMeekin
Diana Hurlburt
Kayleigh
Elizabeth H Turner
Thomas Fuller
Lauren G Bolger
Clare
Tobias Ryan
Jeff Goldberg
Eric de Roulet
Eleanor Eghigian
Neil Blackman
Timothy Boudreau
Andrew Hertzberg
Quentin Scouflaire
Hannah Coutts
Richard Wood
Zach McMullen
Alejandro Ángeles
Craig Rodgers
Joe Kruft
Taylor Dibbert
Jeff Raderstrong
Cody Shrum
Ricky Broome
David Brehmer
Diane Josefowicz
Will Willoughby
Teresa Tumminello Brader
Adri Frick
Michael Van Vleet
Jamey Gallagher
Melissa Anderson
Joshy Simmons
Alvin Lu
Eve Harms
kory C adams
Spencer Fleury
Cass Andra
Jes Malitoris
Stephen R. Fox
Griffin Hancock
Arwyn Sherman
Joshua Calvano
Jeanea Blair
William E Fisher
Stephen Walker
Luis Arturo Apolaya Torres
Mason Rodrickc
Cristin Heart
Daniel Scott Miller
Jim Gavin
Ben Arzate
Joseph L Bielecki
Bob Sykora
Ben Niespodziany
Suzanne Fricke
Casey Briggs
Jessica Wolpert
dragondaddy
James Martell
Karen Palmer
Greg Morrison
Emily Costa
Travis Dahlke
Zia Dione
Andrew Rivas
Brian Shea
Íde Hennessy
Park Chui
James Brubsker
Mateo Arranz
Daniel Kennedy