The Sealey Challenge and Other Wonderful Items
The Sealey Challenge starts on Friday. I like the idea of this challenge because I like the idea of anything that encourages people to read, especially poetry, even though I know there’s no way I would be able to do it. The goal is to read a book of poetry every day for the month of August. Maybe when I’m retired, or maybe if I move to a state where the school year starts in September—but even then, I find that if I try to sit down and read a whole collection of poetry in one day my brain rebels. I just read Monica Wang’s chapbook, When Sad Ones Go Outside, which is only about twenty pages, but I still had to split it up, reading it over two days. I’m doing okay at the Alan challenge, though, in which you try to read at least one poem per day, the word try carrying a lot of weight there. I’ve definitely dropped off over summer break, but I’m still trying.
Nevertheless! If you want to do the Sealey Challenge, or try and fail as I would, well we have books for you. The following titles are on sale for $10 today (July 30, 2025, that is) and tomorrow:
Your Favorite Poet by Leigh Chadwick
My Ardent Love for the Pencil by Vi Khi Nao
Orders of Hair Shirt, Thumbsucker, and/or Your Favorite Poet will come with a bonus zine: Sufjan Stevens Gave Me Tennesee by Leigh Chadwick. It’s only eight pages but it counts toward the Sealey Challenge. It counts!
I can get those first three books to you in time to read them for Sealey. Not Day 1, obviously, but in plenty of time. I’m all caught up on orders and just sitting around waiting for new ones to come in so I can go see my heroes at the Pittsburg Post Office. Pencil is at the printer now; I sent the nice folks at Bookmobile an email this morning saying hey the print proof looks good, we’re ready to get these copies printed (and they’ve already responded, saying yep we’ll get them printed, now give us money). And it releases on September 6. Realistically, we should have copies in the mail before the end of August, but I also can’t guarantee it will arrive in time for the Sealey Challenge, but it will be there, waiting for you, to kick off next year’s challenge, or just to read anytime. I think it’s nice to not have a reason to read a book of poetry, to read it just because. It is a nice book. It is our first book to feature color photos, and we had it printed on glorious, wonderful paper: 80-lb, coated white stock with matte finish. It’s kind of breathtaking. I was not prepared for how good it would look. Because of the quality of the paper this is not a cheap book to print and I am kind of eager for Friday so I can send the price back to $17. I’m equally as eager, though, for people to read it, so sneak it while it’s cheap.
July has been our best month in a long, long time, and it is the reason we’re able to print copies of Pencil with Bookmobile, and the reason we’re about to put in an order to have them print the first edition of The Barre Incidents, Lauren Bolger’s second novel, both total and with us. If you’ve held a copy of Hair Shirt or Boxcutters you probably know why we want keep printing books with Bookmobile: they feel so much better than print on demand. Everyone who preorders (and everyone who is in the book club) will get a signed first edition, one of 300 copies that will be printed by Bookmobile. Lauren also has bookmarks with original artwork she’s going to send out. And we’re bundling Hellarkey volume 4, which on its own is going to cost $7 this year, but it’s free if you preorder The Barre Incidents. We also have two discount codes that can be used: SELLOUT gets 20% off (this code ends tomorrow) and PREORDER gets 15% off.
This week I sent out packages for two new book club subscribers. They got the first three books of the year, plus King Ludd’s Rag, and a free book from our back catalogue, as well as Leigh’s zine and a short story by LJ Pemberton, and a free t-shirt. I’m happy to give out t-shirts to new book club subscribers until we run out. The book club is an excellent way to get nice book mail while supporting indie writers. It would be impossible for me to oversell how essential the book club has been to our existence.
2025 Book Club (20% off with code SELLOUT)
2026 Book Club (20% OFF WITH CODE SELLOUT)
Earlier I said July has been our best month in a long time, and we need August to be like that too. Malarkey doesn’t get grants from the government (if we did they’d all have been canceled by now) or any institutional support. Nor do we have the secret backing of an evil billionaire, or even a measly morally dubious multi-millionaire. All our funding comes from book sales or out of my pocket. Another way to look at it is the institution that supports us is the community. Long story short: I recognize only a few forms of heroes, among whom are United States Postal Service Workers, teachers, nurses, social workers, and people who buy books from obscure indie presses. Thank you for your service!
hot