The Grift
There’s an old joke in the writing game. Goes like this: “Money flows to the writer.” Lol. It will always be funny.
If you’re a writer and you’re not Stephen King you probably get why it’s funny. Don’t need me to elaborate (if you’re a writer and you are Stephen King sweet Jesus buy some books). At Malarkey, we do try to funnel some money toward writers. We pay $100 for short stories that we publish in King Ludd’s Rag, for instance. We pay $20 for online shorties (hoping to bump that too). We split book royalties 50/50 with authors. Blah blah blah point is when you’re the ones publishing books you would think money would flow your way, but the reverse is true. Money and an indie publisher are two like ends of a pair of magnets.
Well we need money and there’s a few things we don’t want to do: submission fees. Online workshops. Soliciting donations from some rich dude. We take a lot of pride in being independent and what that really means is we take a lot of pride in relying on our community. All of this to say we are launching a new prestigious literary magazine called The Grift. It only exists as a PDF. It costs $5. The authors donated their stories and poems and all of the proceeds will be hurled into the bottomless abyss known as our operational budget. The Grift features stories and poems by Malarkey authors LJ Pemberton, Donald Ryan, Justin Bryant, Roger Vaillancourt, Lauren Bolger, Ben Arzate, Sheldon Birnie, Eric Williams, and Adrian Sobol. The Grift features stories by Death of Print authors Tyler Dempsey and Craig Rodgers. The Grift features an essay by Malarkey pal Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. In fact Mike’s contribution is a deleted scene from Duplex, and The Grift is the only place to read it!
The Grift is nearly 60 pages of Malarkey. It pairs well with any of our titles. Let’s say you’re thinking of hopping online to preorder Steve Gergley’s forthcoming collection, The Great Atlantic Highway. The Grift goes great with that! Or maybe you’ve got your eye on Spencer Fleury’s forthcoming collection, I Blame Myself But Also You. The Grift goes great with that! Perhaps you’ve heard great things about First Aid for Choking Victims, a story collection by Matthew Zanoni Müller. The Grift goes great with that!
Anyway. It’s $5. It’s kind of fun. It’s a PDF file that sits on your computer, so you don’t have to wait around for us to mail it. The post office can’t lose it. No one can steal it off your porch. And the best part is it doesn’t cost us anything. It’s just $5 in the bank. Minus Paypal/credit card fees. Some people (bad people) might say this was bad business, but we took on a lot of unplanned-for costs when we took on a couple extra books that had been orphaned by a press that went kablooey. The Grift is part of our plan to cover those costs. The Grift is also a really nice little magazine with lots of good writing by a dozen first-rate writers. Thank you for reading. If you’re able to buy The Grift, thank you for that. If you’re not able, thank you anyway; we understand.
One final note, did I mention The Grift contains a deleted scene from indie lit icon Mike Nagel’s smash hit book, Duplex (now available as an audiobook narrated by Tim Heidecker). It’s true, The Grift contains a deleted scene from indie lit icon Mike Nagel’s smash hit book, Duplex (now available as an audiobook narrated by Tim Heidecker).