comixminx wrote:
In terms of it being a Source Book, what are your thoughts or expectations about availability? You kindly sent me copies earlier of previous works but will these new books be on sale generally, and if so via what channels?
Where my first two books were concerned, Jenni, there were three actual sales outlets, Border Bookshop in Todmorden, 30th Century Comics in Putney and me. Carole Collinge at Border even drove over to my house from hers in Bacup just before Christmas 2014 for a personal collection of twenty copies of
This Was The Wizard in case the weather up there took a turn for the worse, as it normally does on such high ground. Both shops will get however many copies of the new book they ask for even though Carole has sold Border. I did of course register both titles with the two wholesalers, Neilsens, and Gardners, because then someone could go into any bookshop in the world and order a copy easily due to their ISBN numbers, of which I still have a few left in my allocation for future books. Neilsens and/or Gardners would then email me and ask me to send them as many copies as had been ordered, and I think they paid me in advance, including my p&p charges. Phil Shrimpton, a major online comics auction dealer, who until recently traded from Brighton but has recently moved further north, ordered forty copies of
This Was The Wizard, and asked me to sign twenty of them. I believe that he had already sold them in advance. I have also sold quite a few by personal contact and at book fairs where I have had a table. I have about 15 of my
Free Gifts In The Big Five left out of the 250 that D.C. Thomsons printed for me. I think I still have 40 or so copies of
This Was The Wizard left out of the 150 that were printed and bound for me by a firm in Stockport. I plan to advertise both titles on eBay once I have moved down to Cornwall. I presume that my advertising of the new book will be similar to those for the earlier volumes, which included adverts in
Card Times, now under new ownership as
The Card Scene, journals similar to
Story Paper Collectors' Digest, which I think became defunct on the death of Mary Cadogan in 2014, the local papers in Liverpool, Warrington and the Wirral, and the
London Review Of Books, although I never personally saw that one.
comixminx wrote:I assume there would be the normal copyright copies sent to the copyright libraries so that people would be able to refer to those copies in the future in any case.
Yes, of course. I sent one copy of each book as they were published to all the copyright libraries. I also sent one to the guy who converted my second book into pdf files, as required by the Stockport printers, a personal one to my contact at Thomsons and two more for their own reference library. There are also copies of both books in Sefton's main reference library in Southport.