The 2022 I Knew

Thu 15 Dec 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bodies, meh, the world, ugh| Posted by: Gavin

This is about my own year, not the press’s. 2022 was . . . constrained. I look at my steps recorded on my phone — and the watch I got this year to assuage worries about my heart rate — and from the ups and downs and the ever-so-slight rising line I think 2023 will be more of the same. It is hard to think of another year like this but I’ll be grateful if I improve. My resting heart rate is about 80. My standing heart rate is a joke, say 105.

I still spend most of my days lying down. I have learned resting and pacing, although truthfully I have learned it any number of times this year. I get up and I feel fine, I forget I am sick, I start to walk at my normal pace, I am reminded bodily that I am a new slower person. I have tried many supplements: I’m a skeptic but if a friend says a tincture or pill helped them, or I read some long covid study, I’ll try it. I had an MRI (clear!), a CT scan (yes, I have an odd bod but mostly ok and not the cause of this), and I even had an EMG test, needles stuck in me, woah, which was all clear. Now I hope to get a microclot blood test but that may take some months.

When, after an hour or so, I start to lose focus on my laptop, I play Asphalt 8+ on my phone or on the TV. I haven’t played videogames in years and this game is both boring and lightly exciting and sometimes literally circular. It passes time in which I can’t think about all the things I either have to do our would like to do. I have watched everything on TV and finished twitter. I did go start a Mastodon account for me and work — I think this will get you there.

I’d like to write both more and less here. I’ve gone away and come back to this a couple of times already today so maybe this is enough. I’ll be back in 3 months for another update.

In my teenage years I wasn’t at all sure adulthood would be worth the wait and while this year has been a somewhat similar very slow dragging out of time while waiting for things to improve I am grateful to my family for their patience and love and to friends near and far who have reached out and helped support us all during this.

There are so many, many crappy people and things and yet there are a lot of good people out there doing mitzvahs for others that are never publicized. I’m getting old and sometimes it’s all Vonnegut all the time in my head, just be kind, why don’t you.

2 Steps Forward

Tue 18 Oct 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bodies, meh, the world| Posted by: Gavin

[Previously] A few months ago I was texting my hilarious, sardonic, pragmatic doctor brother telling him I’d dropped off the slow improvement line I’d been on and he said something like, “Oh, that’s a shame . . . it’s the old two steps forward, one weekend in bed.” It was a throwaway line he didn’t remember a couple of months later — “uh oh, worrying when people listen to me” — and while at first it was a bit much to take in I’ve found it to be increasingly helpful this year especially times such as last week when I had my legs cut out from under me once again for no reason I could see and am in good running, as it were, for a gold medal in the Western Mass Couch Lying Event for a couple of days running.

Before that my daily steps report had been slowly rising and one day I spent 2 hours at Book Moon, not really doing anything but enjoying being there. Still a bit exhausting but also a little exhilarating. I was in as we had two people out, one with Covid (they tested positive for 18 days . . . ) and one sick. They’re both back now, phew, and Book Moon is getting busier, phew. All orders appreciated!

So now I’m slowly building my steps back up. Often times I think I am doing things slowly enough I am wrong and have to slow down again. It is incredibly frustrating. The difference between where I am and being able to pull 1,500 pounds of books on a pallet jack is unmeasurable. At the moment carrying a box of books upstairs is impossible, ack. Thankfully Small Beer tiptoes along as the booksellers at Book Moon are mailing out the Advance Reading Copies of Ayize Jama-Everett’s Heroes of an Unknown World this week and Kelly and I have a new cover for the Advance Reading Copy of Sarah Pinsker’s Lost Places.

Over the weekend I read Naomi Novik’s fabulous pageturner The Golden Enclaves. I could not read it all at once, too tiring (woah, annoying), but it was great fun and much more than that. Highly recommended.

Do me a favor, wear a mask to protect yourself and everyone around you,

Cheers!
Gavin

NoWP 2022

Thu 24 Mar 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., bodies, events, meh, the world| Posted by: Gavin

I’m sorry not to be at AWP (ha) this week.

tl:dr I am out sick

Longer version:

I like tabling. I like talking to people about books, selling some, surprising people with LCRW (a paper zine? What?!), and the accessibility of being right there for people to ask questions about Small Beer/publishing/whatever. I like wandering the book fair and buying books and magazines from publishers new and old. I like going to an occasional panel and some readings — I especially like putting on or being involved with other presses putting on an offsite reading — and I really enjoy catching up with people I know, meeting new people, all that.

If we were there . . . we’d have a stack of Richard Butner’s new collection The Adventurists — it’s so good! It came out this week! We’d have books by Small Beer authors who are at the big show: Sofia Samatar’s world bestriding A Stranger in Olondria and her collection Tender; Juan Martinez’s Best Worst American — one of his stories is soon to be read on Selected Shorts at Symphony Space; and Elwin Cotman’s NPR Best of the Year Dance on Saturday. And we’d have all those pretty books in that picture below that came out oh just quite recently.

We aren’t there for 2 reasons: the first is Covid — which as far as I know I have never had. I have had all 3 of my vaccines. I’m delighted that AWP required vaccinations and masks. Science, FTW! But the idea of being in a book fair with up to 3,000 people is too much for me. Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center (updated 3/24/22) has the US covid fatality rate at 1.2%. The deaths are mostly among the unvaccinated and the immunocompromised — but risking my (and by extension my family’s) life on someone else’s masking choice when there is a 1 in 100 chance we might die is too high for me.

I am sorry not to be at AWP, but: I haven’t even been to the Small Beer office or Book Moon in more than 3 months because the second reason we’re not there is that I am out sick.

I’m writing from my couch where I’ve been laid up since mid-December with something — most likely post-viral fatigue. In the first week of December I had a small cold(?) and had multiple negative Covid results. A week later I was in the ER. I’m improving — at a glacial rate. I have only left the house since then to see the doctor. I lie around all day, do a little work, watch Abbot Elementary and Better Things and sometimes read (including, for my sins, twitter) — although that brain fog made fiction too hard for a bit. So please accept my apologies for being slow at everything, including email. In early December I was running up the stairs from the Book Moon basement carrying boxes of books. Now a zoom conversation leaves me exhausted. (As in: I will lie flat for 3 hours and do nothing.)

Ugh, I did not want to have to write this but since I am missing a very enjoyable event and have been down for 3 months it seemed like time. I am 51 (when did that happen?) and despite having to lie around all the time (walking is a lot; running is woah so very far away) I feel very lucky, very well looked after at home. I’m not really looking for feedback — unless you have a similar experience with post-viral fatigue — and I apologize in advance for not keeping up as I’ve used much of today’s energy to write this. Although my prognosis is unclear, if all goes as it seems it might, it looks like I will be healthy again by summertime. Fingers crossed!

And if you just can’t help yourself and must buy some books, why, stop by here. Or: we have a tiny, mighty bookshop, Book Moon, with fabulous booksellers who can help you out Monday-to-Saturday 10-6.

Annual Brutally Cold Discount Email

Wed 30 Jan 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Ach, blind consumerism, doh, feh, ffff, meh, och, ouch, ow, ugh, Weightless Books| Posted by: Gavin

Cold? Yep. Our distributor just sent along the new Am*zon discounts for the next two years which I would post here except I can’t because of the NDA Am*zon insists everyone sign. Why an NDA for a discount? Because it is brutal.

You may remember me whining about it in the past — just imagine a tiny bit added onto that previous whine. That’s another tiny bit less income for us & our authors (who are paid on net received on ebooks, unlike for print where they are paid a royalty on the retail price), a tiny bit more for Bezos et al. Ugh.

I don’t think we can stop selling books through Am*zon as many people find it is a handy database. But we don’t have Am*zon buttons on our site, we don’t buy ad space on those overcrowded pages, we don’t advertise on Goodreads, I don’t retweet links there, I don’t shop at Black Hole(sic) Foods, etc. Feh to them and their soul crushing tax-cut supported warehouse-enslaving main street closing goals, feh! (Sure, Jeff Billions, buy us out. The press is for sale for say $10 million and I’ll be nice and quiet. At least until that NDA runs out and I can start a new press.)

Every year Michael DeLuca and I have chat about the future of Weightless Books and every year I think about how the authors make more money from each sale, we get to sell DRM-free ebooks, and it gives us a venue to sell our own (and thousands of others) ebooks without $$$ going to Am*zon, etc. So, yes, we’ll keep it going.

Going to repost this even though it’s not Christmas but hey the Lunar New Year is coming up along with many more holidays so it still applies:

I know not everyone has a good local bookstore, a local branch of a chain, or a decent library, but if you have, *please* consider buying/borrowing books there. Am*zon still want to crush all competition (Bezos’s first name for the business was Relentless dot com [<— still leads you know where]) in all markets that they enter. They are fantastic at customer service, especially compared to some local businesses, but they are terrible for everyone else, suppliers, intermediaries, etc.

The discount creeps up a little more every year — something has to give. I suppose it won’t be Am*zon. Guess it will be us Small Gazelle Presses who want to publish interesting books, work with a wide range of people and artists, and see if we can send these weird things out into the world and find readers.

We are all together building the world we want. I want small and big bookstores all over the place. Loads of publishers following their own visions. This Christmas/holiday of your choice, please consider Powell’s, Indiebound, Kobo, B&N, anyone, anyone but Am*zon.

Thank you.

Worst Business Holiday Present Ever

Mon 18 Dec 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Ach, doh, feh, ffff, meh, och, ouch, ow, ugh| Posted by: Gavin

Our distributor Consortium/Ingram just finished negotiations with Am*zon for the next year and forwarded the results. Ouch. After the distro’s fee, we will now receive less than 1/3 of the retail price on each book sold on Am*zon. (The details are confidential and not be shared — which is fine, it’s all fine.)

It is hard to pay printing, royalties, artists, advertising and marketing, rent, etc. with less than 1/3 of retail.

I know not everyone has a good local bookstore, a local branch of a chain, or a decent library, but if you have, *please* consider buying/borrowing books there. Am*zon still want to crush all competition (Bezos’s first name for the business was Relentless dot com) in all markets that they enter. They are fantastic at customer service, especially compared to some local businesses, but they are terrible for everyone else, suppliers, intermediaries, etc. If a company needs help with marketing, they should definitely hire SMR Digital.

Thank you.