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November 05, 2009
Nasty Unleashed
After an unprecedented three-month gap between volumes, Idiots'Books Volume 23, Nasty Chipmunk, hit the US Mail today. Subscribers everywhere should brace for its arrival. (Non-subscribers everywhere should shudder with regret.)
Continuing our ongoing mission to have as many of our books as possible printed by professionals, we worked with some very nice folks in Columbia, MD to produce a sleek, glossy-covered, perfect-bound version of Nasty. We drove over there at the end of last week to pick it up.
Alden tried--and failed--to be helpful.
But she did get in a little exercise while we were there.
The books in hand at long last, we tackled what is perhaps my least favorite aspect of our entire enterprise: the mailing.
First, there is the matter of writing the letter, a thing I enjoy, at least at first. For those of you who are not subscribers, each book is accompanied by an earnest letter, which informs the subscribership of various news and updates and sometimes poses essay questions and offers prizes. The problem with the letters is Robbi. As soon as I finish writing each letter, Robbi grabs it, takes it over to her desk, and changes many (if not most) of the words. She crosses out, edits, adds, mocks, scribbles, and adds awful little pictures. It's humiliating. But this is just the beginning of the horror that is assembling the mailing.
There are also the mundane tasks of folding all the letters, stuffing the letters and the books in the envelopes, putting stamps on the envelopes, etc. I don't mind these tasks because they are mindless and can be done while watching network television. The thing that kills me about the mailings is the part where we have to go through the list of subscribers and pay very close attention to a whole lot of details, such who gets international postage, who needs a "your subscription is going to lapse and you'd better do something about it pronto," letter, who needs a special note of congratulations upon successful completion of a new kitchen appliance or kidney transplant, etc...
Robbi is very sanguine about the mailing. She is a patient and careful soul.
But I am not sanguine. Quite the opposite. Assembling a mailing requires the two things that I loathe most in the entire world:
1) sitting still
2) paying attention
But I try. What choice do I have?
And yet eventually we get through it. And in retrospect it never seems quite as painful as it did at the time (but still pretty painful).
Usually I have a full 6-7 weeks to recover between mailings, but just tonight, I had yet another round of mailing to attend to, this brought on by the recent surge of interest in After Everafter, a brilliant yet lowbrow work, apparently.
But I will not complain. Mailing is a fact of our lives. And more mailings mean more of our books in the world. I just wish I didn't have to lick all of the envelopes.
I'm waiting for the willing army of unpaid interns to arrive at the doorstep and demand to oversee the next mailing. So far, we've only had two applicants.
Their credentials are thin, and still I'm tempted...
Posted by bogenamp at November 5, 2009 11:22 PM