Smiling with the randos at Earth

The Walk Book micro-distro, transmission #3

[ listen⬆ lightly edited transcript⬇ ]

I’m back on the road. Sunday. What day is it? Sunday, June 28th. And it is, like, 2:30. Been driving for several hours. I left New York this morning, and... it is probably gonna take 15 hours. I’m gonna try to get home, one day of driving, without stopping, we’ll see if I make it. There’s a light, there’s been a light mist, light rain for the past hour, and the rain, and the windshield wipers, and probably the audiobook have been lulling me into droopy… into Mr. Droopy Eyes. So I just stopped and got a coffee and turned off the audiobook. Can’t turn off the windshield wipers or the rain, unfortunately, but I thought, okay, I’ll talk to myself to stay awake for a while for this stretch. It was a fucking killer weekend. That’s for sure. It was very fun. Did three different events, all of them different and cool, and many books out in the world. Out into the city. Good mix of Sean readers and people that didn’t know Sean, especially yesterday at Earth, where… Earth is this storefront on the Lower East Side that’s… so the art that we used for the event… they printed these massive posters and hung them in the window. It’s a high trafficked street in New York and so you just got a lot of randos, who, you know, it caught their eye and they came in and met Sean and he pitched the book to them or if he was doing something I did and… yeah, a lot of people left with books, new Sean readers, which is awesome. And I’m thinking about this comment. Someone let a comment on Substack that was noting that there are these psychological studies about how something that has a tiny price tag… people are more willing to give it a shot than something that’s free. And I replied and said that I believe that that is true. I believe those studies are not bogus, but that I wasn’t sure what the point was. Does that mean, you know, more people, like, in this case, if the book was a couple dollars, people’d be more willing to take a chance? Does that mean more books would go out there? And I think the answer is: I don’t know if that’s the metric that we’re looking at here. But I also just don’t believe it. Maybe there’s something about the surprise of a free book that looks good and feels good and doesn’t feel like it should be free. I just can’t imagine if some of these randos had walked in and we described the book and then were like, Yeah, it’s $20, that they all would have bought it. You know? Now, of course, I don’t know if they’re gonna read it, either. You know, here’s a free one, and they take it home, and then it’s like okay it’s like a magazine that you put somewhere to look… you know, and you never actually open it. I don’t know. Maybe they don’t read it, but I think it’s interesting to note that the volume is not really the issue, especially here with Sean’s book, where we have a limited number of these. So yeah, if free turns off… for us… it’s not gonna turn off any of his readers, I don’t think. And there’s enough of those to move through all the books, So it’s not really a real problem. And you know, Sean’s a quality writer. It’s not like it’s his first book. He’s a known quantity. So it’s not like… it doesn’t, well, hopefully it didn’t and doesn’t read desperate, like I need you to take this. Anyway, it’s got me thinking about my book, where I don’t have an audience. And it’s not gonna be limited. I mean, I don’t think I need to limit the edition. I think it’s gonna be a challenge to find readers when I don’t have a, you know, readership yet. So I’ve been thinking about how to… With The Walk Book we had this beautiful headline: A Gift from Sean Thor Conroe. It’s perfect. Right in the spirit of it. And I don’t know what my version of A Gift from Sean Thor Conroe is. I’m not gonna recycle the same gag. And I think what I’m looking for with mine is participation. We got a little taste of this a few different places we were this weekend with the books, where people would come up and they would be like, you know, is it really free? And sometimes they’d be like, okay, well, this is kind of weird, but can I take two? I got a friend that, you know, doesn’t live here and told me to come get one, because they can’t... They missed it online, and they saw that they were gonna be in person. They’re like, will you go grab me one? And we’re like, of course. You know, take one, give it to your friend. Or some people would just be like, I know someone else that would love this, and we’d say, well, take a second one. And so I’m thinking about with mine, this idea of… maybe my gag is, you are the distributor. If you find this book and you’re interested in this topic or in me or in what Little Engines is doing with books, you get a book and you get a second book to give to someone you think might like it, or to someone that you want to gift something to. To empower readers to be the distributors and be a part of the enterprise without having to buy a wholesale book or do an invoice. My hated, you know… no invoices! So I’m thinking maybe that is the angle for Recommended If You Like, which is the novel that I’m gonna put out soon. Two for zero dollars. And you’re the micro distributors. It feels good to me. I just wanna think about how to... Yeah, I think it would be cool if people felt a part of the distribution. What we were doing with this one this week was… it just felt fun. And I think people thought it was fun. There was a lot of smiling going on, so maybe when you’re experiencing spreading books around, even if you’re not the writer or the publisher, there’s some joy in it, and there’s something that feels good for the reader too. So yeah. 2 for $0.00, I think, is gonna be my little catchphrase. Next up. Going home. I’m gonna be home for a little bit, and then down to Dallas for the Deep Vellum music and literature festival. I cant remember exactly what they’re calling it, but Little Engines is doing a reading down there. We’re gonna have Walk books. Sean’s gonna be down there, him and Harold are doing a 1storypod live down there. And my fellow touring buddies from last year, Mike Nagel and Kyle Seibel are gonna be down there. So if you’re in Dallas or nearby, come, come hang out at that festival. It’s the second weekend in July, so what, two weeks from now? And then two weeks after that at Eaux Claires, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, same crew for me and plus others. Harold and Sean will be there with the pod. Mike and Kyle and myself along with the other bunch of other great writers and musicians will be at the return of the Eaux Claires music festival. We got a bunch of rad shit going on with the literary side of this. There’s two venues. So there’s two stages for the music. There’s one in a baseball field, one in a football field at Carson Park in downtown Eau Claire. And then just off to the side in our own little residency area there’s the Sunnyvale… I think it’s it called the Sunnyvale one room schoolhouse, old school, fucking Little House on the Prairie vibe one room schoolhouse that we’ll be doing a bunch of events, readings, discussions. Sheila Heti’s gonna do a writer’s workshop. There’s an open mic period for people. And then there’s a logging museum, where we’re also doing… in the lobby of the logging museum, we’re also doing events with writers and poets. One cartoonist is gonna be there doing a talk. We got a playwright doing a reading from their new play. And we’re gonna be doing one-on-one readings all throughout the weekend in this little room where a bunch of the writers from the festival will be, for a brief period of time, in the room by themselves with one listener by themselves doing a one-on-one direct reading, which I think is gonna be cool. So if you’re in the Midwest and you want to come to Eaux Claires, get you a ticket to that one. And it has a great music lineup, too. I’m really excited to see Dijon again. And Walk books will be there. And I think my book will be there. Even though I don’t know if it’ll be “available” yet. I might have copies at that a little bit early, depending on how it goes with the printer in the next week. So it’s busy, busy. And then Sean and I are... that would make five total spots we’ve had the books, six if you count the internet, and we were talking about five more. Trying to find five more cities to go to to spread some Walk books around. So stay tuned for that. If you’re out there somewhere, we definitely would love to get to LA out west, and then, I don’t know. I think Philly is on the table? Maybe Chicago, maybe a Nashville one. But we gotta... both of us gotta get home and reset a little bit, and then think through next moves. But it was definitely fun. The internet day was a blast, but nothing, nothing like being with the people, with readers. What else? It stopped raining. That’s good. Starting to hit some hills in Pennsylvania. And it’s pretty. Maybe that’s it. Okay, I’m gonna pause. Maybe I’ll come back, maybe I won’t. Bye.