Wred Fright On BookTV

In 2003, Canada's BookTV did a nice feature on the Perpetual Motion Roadshow I was on. They incorporated the footage we took on the tour along with what their camera crews in Toronto and New York City shot. Unfortunately, I never got the raw footage back from the Chicago tape (everything else was on the other tape). Maybe someday I will get to see it. The Chicago stuff in this video is all I have ever seen of it. And, while we're on the subject of old grievances, seeing the copy of The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus zine at Quimby's in this video reminded me that they stiffed me on the consignment. At that point, all one had to do was check-in once a year to collect one's money or one's zines, but at some point they decided to purge the store and sent postcards out at some random point, so even though I had dutifully checked in each year, I had moved, never got the postcard, and they disposed of the zines that hadn't sold. Uh, thanks, guys. I never consigned anything else there as a result. Cool bookstore though! Overall, this tour was really fun, and this video gives a nice summary of it. I also like that Canada got to see me get interviewed drinking beer and brushing my teeth outside, fortunately, not at the same time! That night in New York sleeping on the towel was rough! The only worse night's sleep I ever had was also in New York on a floor where Michael Jackman's dog kept running laps all night around the apartment and running over me each time. The lesson there for me is avoid sleeping in New York, I suppose. I also like the woman hiding her face in the NYC audience. Was she a celeb? In the Witness Relocation Program? Or just shy? Whatever the case, she's probably not thrilled the damn video's on the Internet forever.

Wred Fright On The Perpetual Motion Roadshow Part 2 Of 2

This is another performance from The Perpetual Motion Roadshow in September 2003. This one is from the Cincinnati stop where we were joined by an awesome hip-hop duo called Crack Heist. They were quite funny. It looks like for this stop, I channeled dead professional wrestlers again, which was always improvisational, but if the crowd chose a heel, or badguy wrestler, they were usually sure to be made fun of by the heel, which happens here. I probably also read some from The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus, which was finishing its zine serialization then. I bought that Mexican wrestling mask for $20 at a comic book convention in Pittsburgh. I certainly have had some fun with it.

Wred Fright On The Perpetual Motion Roadshow Part 1 Of 2

The latest videotape that I went through was raw footage from the Perpetual Motion Roadshow that I went on. I have fond memories of that whole tour. It was with Jessie Lynn McMains (then known as Jessica Disobedience) and More Or Les. Even though we did not know one another before the tour, we had a great time together. The Perpetual Motion Roadshow was an idea by Jim Munroe to form a tour circuit for indie authors so that everyone didn't have to start from the beginning every time an indie author wanted to do a book tour. This goaround of the tour attracted some attention from BookTV, a Canadian television network devoted to literary matters, and they had us take a video camera to document the tour for their feature on us. The video is a hoot! We met some strange folks on the journey and had a lot of fun doing so. We also taped some of our performances, and that is what I am sharing here. This performance is from the Ottawa tour stop. I tried to do a different show every night figuring my tourmates would get bored seeing me do the same thing every night. At this stop, I read a bit from The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus and then put on my Mexican wrestling mask to channel a dead professional wrestler to give advice to the audience. At the end, you can hear Jess.

Leaving Books On Consignment

Today, I received a package in the mail from Freebird Books in New York City and got reacquainted with some old friends I hadn't seen in over five years.

Two copies of The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus.

I had left them on consignment at Freebird in 2007 when Crazy Carl Robinson and I did our book tour.  Every year, I'd dutifully check in with Freebird and get the same depressing news that the books were still there unsold.  I'm thankful that Freebird was nice enough to keep stocking them, and I always told the Freebirders (originally Sam and then later Peter) that I'd stop by to pick them up the next time I was in New York City (plus that way I could shop at Freebird--it's a cool store).  After five years though, it was apparent that I wasn't getting back to N.Y.C. anytime soon so I asked if Peter would mind shipping the books back to me in order for me to get them back and for him to free up room on his shelves for books that would actually sell, which he thankfully did, going above and beyond expectations by generously picking up the postage costs.

I learned a lot about leaving books on consignment over the years, and my basic advice for authors is don't do it.  I've been lucky enough to have some great experiences such as the one with Freebird but I've also lost books from stores that went out of business.

The one exception is local stores.  If you live nearby a store and can pick up your books whenever you want, then maybe leave the books on consignment.  Even that could be a pain though.  One of my favorite bookstores in the Cleveland area is Mac's Backs, and they've probably sold the most books for me over the years, but at one point they reorganized the store and their Emus copies got lost in the backroom, where, of course, no one could see them nor buy them.  Eventually, I got the books back, but it took a while.

In general, I would suggest to authors to make the bookstores buy the books out right.  If the stores don't have confidence enough to do that, then they have little motivation to move the books.  Particularly if you're on a book tour and may never visit that city again, good luck getting your books back or even getting paid if they do sell.  So don't do it.  Even if you follow all the bookstore's rules and dutifully check in on your consignment, you may end up losing some books.  One time I left zines on consignment at Quimby's, a great store in Chicago, and I checked on them as I was supposed to and at one point Quimby's decided to purge a bunch of zines from their stock, mine among them, and mailed a postcard to all the consignment holders.  I never got my postcard so they just disposed of my consignment material.  Obviously, I never left anything on consignment there again.

Even if I did though, checking in on out of town consignments is a pain and seldom worth the money.  In my case, I make more selling books directly to readers than I do selling them through stores (not surprisingly, a book with a toilet on the cover isn't prone to impulse buys by bookbrowsers).  As my remaining stock of books dwindles, I've been collecting my books from consignment (I'm down to Webster's in State College, Pennsylvania now) so I can sell them directly.

Also, beware of friends that offer to leave books on consignment for you.  They often mean well but won't always follow through.  So this may seem like a great way to extend your books' reach via consignment, but it usually isn't.  I lost 12 books when a pal went homeless and obviously had more important things to do than check on my books.  He's fine now, but in the meantime I lost 12 books when stores that he stocked went out of business.  Another "pal", I suspect, was hoping I'd forget about the consigned books so he could keep the money from them; fortunately, that didn't happen, but it was yet again another pain hardly worth the effort to deal with.

Perhaps with the growth of ebooks, leaving books on consignment will be less of an issue for authors in the future, but, for the record, don't do it unless the store is local, and think about it even then.  I did make some money from consigned books, and I'm happy so many stores carried Emus on their shelves, but I like it better when I run into copies of the book the publisher stocked at places such as Skylight Books.

Why?  I already got paid from those books so I don't have to check on how they're selling every year.  Nevertheless, I do want them to find good homes, so if any of you Angels in L.A. are looking for a good read, then you know where to find it.

N.Y.C., you missed your chance.

However, don't despair, mail order is available worldwide!

Skylight Books

During my trip to Los Angeles, I visited several bookstores.  My favorite was Skylight Books because they carried The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus (they also had a great book selection, and their annex a couple of doors down carried graphic novels and zines).  Having watched a few bad Hollywood movies lately (for example, 30 Minutes Or Less, someone dies tragically, and Hollywood turns it into a bad comedy), I suppose that movie producers must be hard up for material.  Folks, why not take a walk up Vermont Avenue and buy a copy of some good source material?

The "College Crisis" As Represented In The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus And Blog Love Omega Glee

As August begins, summer begins to end.  You have probably already seen multiple back to school advertisements and articles.  What's different this year is that among the excitement is a greater than usual amount of worry and dread, particularly centering around those headed off to college.  We're told that we're on the edge of a student loan bubble, that students might be better off skipping college if all they're motivated by is money, and that, due to a variety of factors, the quality of a college education is not quite what it used to be.

While preparing ebooks of Blog Love Omega Glee and The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus recently, I was struck by how the two novels reflect these issues.  In Emus, the band is enrolled in college whereas in Blog Love Omega Glee, the main characters are college graduates who are underemployed (by the way, five thousand janitors in the USA have PhDs or an equivalent degree).

In fact, Emus might be set in the tail end of the Golden Age of College in the USA.  Even then though, one character drops out of school, deciding that college isn't worth it.  However, his bandmates still seem to be getting some learning out of college as well as having a good time.  Today, it appears that college students are so stressed by the high cost of college that they're working more to pay for college and, as a result, studying less and getting less out of the experience in terms of both learning and fun.  Documenting this phenomenon pretty well is Rebekah Nathan's book My Freshman Year: What A Professor Learned By Becoming A Student.

This situation certainly is a shame.  I had a wonderful college experience, and I hope those days aren't over for today's college students, but I suspect they probably are.  Colleges should hold down costs wherever they can to keep higher education affordable.  That might help.  By the way, it's not faculty salaries causing the costs to rise, as Joe Biden and some others like to claim.  I've taught full time at colleges for years, and I make substantially less than the average high school teacher in the school district I live in makes (and I'm not the only professor underachieving economically.  Many of my fellow PhD graduates are fine scholars and teachers, but are eking out sustenance level livings as adjunct instructors, are unemployed due to the glut of English PhDs, or are employed at marginal institutions on the edge of folding).

The growth in college costs mainly stems from the growth in administration (most of which is probably beneficial, just not necessary), rising healthcare and technology costs (colleges get socked with rising healthcare insurance costs just like every other business, and colleges in the 1960s didn't have computers in every office), declining government subsidies (aside from loans that one can't ever be free of), and having a slightly outdated and inefficient business model (lots of classrooms are empty even on Fridays, not to mention June, July, and August).

With all these academic worries, what would Funnybear do?

Probably just drink another beer.

Some things about college will never change.