distributé

The first place I went to to distribute my chapbook was Quimby’s, as I’ve put my things in there before and thought I would feel the most comfortable starting off doing so.

It wasn’t going to be that easy, of course, as I’d walked in the hot sun a great distance (four billion miles, right? no, just from logan square. it’s not far, but it was hot, i swurr.) i also applied for a job right before walking into Quimby’s (sort of, it was like ‘hey, put your name on this card, maybe we’ll call you.’ uh, right?).

This is me nervous to walk in to Quimby’s and talk to people:

So as I walked in, I saw that the person at the counter was no one i’d ever dealt with there before. That’s fine, it is good to meet new people (i am shy and nervous, no it is not good to meet new people). So I gave him my chapbook by saying (mumbling) “hello i have a book i would like to sell here.” I then added, “I sell things here already,” to make clear that I wasn’t some ninny who hadn’t filled out his consignment form already. I learned that they file you by the first book you sell there, and also that they have one of my comics mislisted as “bob dylans 11th hat” instead of “bob dylans 115th hat.” That is fine.

So as I gave him the book and told him I was charging a dollar for it, he asked if I wanted to check up on the sales of the other comics I’ve sold. I have sold One copy of Life in the Cyber Winter…

…Zero copies of It Won’t Be Long…

…and…

…Zero copies of Bob Dylan’s 115h Hat.

So, we decided that I’d just wait, as having him open the register to give me a dollar is not really worth it.

Utterly demoralized, I thanked him, and looked around the store out of a sense of obligation. I did not buy anything.

I then left the store. This is a picture of me utterly demoralized:

However, I did walk into a store five minutes later and got a job. Apparently it is that easy.

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Another way I distributed my chapbook was putting it into an envelope full of other work I was sending to a friend of mine. Here is a picture of that:

Look, it’s in there, right up front:

Now, potentially his friends could see it and think it’s fab-gear, and then go to my website and marvel at how messy I have made it. (A friend of mine built it, and he did a great job, but I am treating it poorly).

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I also left it on a stack of terrible zines that are on a table in Cafe Ballou, an establishment my girlfriend works at. Here is a picture of said stack:

I suppose that picture is of a stack of books. The stack of poor zines is next to that book-stack. Perhaps I put it on the books out of a need to distance myself from moody pubescent typewriter zines.

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So I have some left over. A few I am saving, at least one for me, one for my parents. That leaves around 7 ( ? did i do the math right? I will count the stack in a bit) left over. Some of these I plan to hide, and the rest I will be giving around to friends or whoever I run into who wants one (no one, they will stay in a box until I am 30 and then i will remember what i was like when i was young).

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The way things were (a stack of all 15):