death egg

in early september, i published Death Egg by nathaniel duggan via back patio press. this was the first back patio book since sad sad boy, which i published in March 2022.

background and editing

i had maintained a loose email correspondence with nathaniel starting sometime in 2020, i think based on him sending me a poem for the quaranzine. we talked about our lives and poetry and indie lit drama for a while after this. i had given him editorial feedback on various poems during this time and encouraged him, i think, to make a collection.

looking at my email, on february 3rd, i gave him editorial feedback including "these are just great. great poems", a suggestion to change the name to death egg, and general praise such as "i really really find the thematic preoccupations and imagery compelling. the deployment of sci-fi intergalactic, video game, deep see, apocalypse imagery all mesh well, different hues of a perfect purplish blue. i think it's perfectly executed - the video games are not reddity wining or pop culture genuflection but are used as something to comment, i feel, on the larger cultural fuckedness, the integration of escapism into the despair pondering that feels subtle, effective, and non-clichely contemporary -- video games as the 'television of today,' etc. i can't say praise right, ever, i sound insane saying nice things, but i hope this makes sense[...]thank you for letting me read it. whoever publishes it won't do it justice." he did not pay me for these edits; i have also edited various versions of his short story collection manuscript, which i think a bigger publisher should put out, because it's very good.

after back patio fell apart in 2021/2022, and after i published some books unrelated to back patio, i felt more confidence in restarting the press mostly without cavin, and asked nathaniel to publish his book. before this i had suggested another limited-run book like orz, but then felt like trying something new/normal. cavin gave me his blessing to reopen the press in may. i reached out to duggan in june, i think, over twitter DM, to confirm my interest in publishing it as a back patio book.

once he agreed, i edited the book some more over maybe 3 rounds of edits, and then later 2+ minor edit rounds to clean up formatting and stuff. most of my edits were about sequencing, minor punctuation changes, a couple additional lines (partly through talking over DM and misremembering things from the poems, which he thought were good changes/ideas). some edits include "what about an exclamation point at the end of the first line?" and "recommend replacing last period with ‘, etc.’"

i only later learned that death egg is also the name of a spaceship or something from sonic the hedgehog. i do not know if this was intentional when he wrote the poem/lines about a death egg. i think it's a good, evocative, hard-to-say title that made the book feel unique. the sonic connection is mostly funny, and resulted in some good riffing online.

design

i did the inside layout and cover design. i used ms word and ms powerpoint. we iterated on the cover, manically, for like two weeks, before settling on the general cover we ended up with. stylistic themes to drive this work included bear parade/classic alt lit minimalism and anime. for a while there was a cracked egg on the cover, but this was eventually scrapped.

he wanted it to be yellow because he liked gg rolland's book on clash, which is mostly yellow. some versions accidentally used the same pink and yellow and font as my band's cassette three trucks, which was funny, but unacceptable to me, but, frustratingly for nathaniel, one of his favorite versions.

early on he had shared with me an image of an anime title card that he liked the look of. this is what influenced the final typography on the cover - the mix of japanese and the severe all caps serif font. another source of inspiration was the dvd cover for FLCL, with its bold yellow and black. i did not have the budget or interest to get a custom-drawn manga-style cover. i remember struggling with recreating manga-style 'beam attacks' using a free picture of a satellite with powerpoint for a while, then giving up.

the drawing on the final cover is from the public domain, i think from some lost in space comic, or something. i used similar pictures for interstitial art in the quaranzines. i get most of my free graphics from publicdomainvectors.org

the japanese on the cover is mostly from google translate, but some of it is the direct translation used from sonic the hedgehog for 'death egg.' i don't know much about japanese. an early ARC version we sent out had a 'pretend bad translation' synopsis that was embarassing, and which i thought i didn't include in the ARCs i had printed. the arcs were, additionally, very poor quality paper-wise and had a lot of formatting errors, and made me laugh a lot.

we decided on sans serif fonts on the inside to evoke classic alt lit aesthetics, because of the lineage of the poems/style and our shared appreciation for early alt lit. these aren't alt lit poems in any classic sense but have many shared reference points. i imagine someone more engaging than me could write up a better analysis.

i think the final product looks good and am proud of how it turned out.

promotion - ARCS/blurbs

i asked duggan for a list of potential blurbers and reached out to folks on his behalf. everyone had kind things to say, even if they didn't end up blurbing in time for the final printing. i enjoyed corresponding with people that i think/assume dislike me to this end. maggie nelson responded, unexpectedly, and gave me an address to send a book to, but clarified she didn't really do any blurbs anymore.

i also sent ARCs/final copies to people who do podcasts/reviews, but so far we never heard from anyone about these, although one person posted a picture of the book on twitter. i included a small press release, which i confided to josh sherman as "embarassing to write," not because of the book, but because of the vapid futility of writing press releases for small press books. i sent an ARC to the heavy feather review, but it was returned to me because the editors moved/changed. i also sent a free copy of the book to ~3 authors who i just thought would enjoy it, without expectation of promotion.

Promotion - local media

i reached out to several local maine venues for promotion, including duggan's alma mater university creative writing program to organize a reading. i was ignored by all of these leads except one daily maine-based blog, who requested a physical copy. one of the venues, a local tv channel, automatically blocked my email address.

Promotion - piss

the back patio twitter account reached out to several internet sex workers asking to send them books to pee on, as a promotional video effort, but this corresponded to the same week, or possibly day, that twitter made DMing people a bluecheck option only by default, so it's possible no one ever got the messages. this also includes dasha, a podcaster i don't know anything about. but we didn't ask her to pee on any books; we just asked if she'd like a copy, because she had posted about the same anime that inspired the cover design.

we also tweeted asking for folks to pee on the book if we sent an extra copy. i had forgotten who replied to this/was unsure how serious anyone was and only sent out one extra book, to coleman bomar, who peed on it and posted a video. later someone else from tennessee ordered a book and asked for some of coleman's pee, which i do not have access to. i am unsure why pee was a central theme for the book promotion, but it worked out well, i think, and made me laugh a lot.

Promotion - preorder bundles

we also offered a bundle of a shirt, magnet, and book. the shirt making has been a shitty, still unresolved saga, wherein i tried to have them made locally to support local businesses and save money on shipping. but i ended up working with perhaps the shittiest shirt printer in the state, who would ignore my emails, ghost me, forget to email me, argue with me, etc. currently the shirts are in a store location i cannot access until friday, and they will likely not be open on friday. i regret not going through the florida-based printer we used for the liver mush shirts, who were professional and easy to work with. i opted to send the books/magnets separately from the shirts, losing ~$70 on redundant shipping costs. i ordered only 40 shirts after announcing 50 bundles, based on the total sales (~14), and will keep one for myself and send one to nathaniel. the shirts will ultimately, i feel, be a net loss, and i will probably eventually offer them for sale at cost just to not have them in my closet anymore.

Promotion - misc.

i posted links to a few excerpts from other magazines from the book via the back patio account. none of these resulted in the original publisher promoting the book or, seemingly, liking the posts. we later made tweets tagging magazines that hadn't published the poems, saying they published them, in an attempt to trick the publication into promoting the book for free and/or make people laugh. only one publication liked their corresponding tweet, but didn't retweet it.

i made a new website for back patio to collate the press/reviews materials and book descriptions. i then reached out to kevin at powell's who asked for just such a list, so i secured a small order of back patio books, including five copies of death egg, resulting in a small section of shelf space dedicated to back patio books. the tweet about this got high engagement. i should reach out to more cool stores.

i placed a quarter-page ad for the press, including a highlight for death egg, in maggot brain magazine, a print magazine published by third man records and edited by the guy who wrote the 33 1/3 book about loveless, which should be out around now. this cost me $187. i would be surprised if it ends up paying off, but it seemed like a fun thing to do, and i like the magazine a lot (i also get a free copy of this issue, apparently). some of the other ads are for punk/diy record labels based on bandcamp, which is cool, in my opinion.

josh sherman invited me and nathaniel, and other people, to read at his chapbook release reading as part of misery loves company, which we hijacked, to comedic effect, i think, to promote death egg. nathaniel did a good job reading and i posted the order page a few times when people were talking about josh's book, which made me laugh. we got ~3 book sales during the reading. we've also scheduled a back patio mlc reading for 9/29, which will include, nathaniel, cav, dan, graham, kurt, tj, and troy.

i regret not reaching out to more internet and irl places early on for reviews/interviews. however, this time period corresponded to a family crisis which resulted in me taking time off of work and not doing anything much aside from acting in 'crisis mode' for my family for over a month. i spent ~1-2 hours/week during this time working on death egg. to this end i feel guilt about not being able to do more for the book/nathaniel.

finally, we opened the magazine for web subs just prior to announcing the book. this was a partly cynical/manipulative move to drive up engagement for the press and potentially sell more books. however, i am unsure this resulted in any sales we wouldn't have otherwise gotten. but overall it was good for everyone. we all enjoyed reading and editing the pieces we got and we have published, and will continue to publish, some really cool writing. i'm glad we reopened and we will probably do it again in january. i owe kurt a lot for taking on a lot of this effort when my life fell apart in august.

sales - preorders

we announced preorders sometime in august and i shipped the preorder books around september 7th. there were 62 preorders at the time, 12 of which were for tshirt + book bundles. we have since sold a few more of each.

the free promotional stickers for orders included random mixes of black and white stickers ("i love shitty poetry", "alternative literature", "death egg cover", and "back patio press logo"), glitter stickers ("back patio in barbie font on a gun"), holographic stickers (misc. "cyberwriter" series, featuring sebastian, derek, bram, and nathaniel), and a bold yellow (but small) "ask me about the death egg" sticker. i used sticker guy for the black and white stickers and sticker mule for the fancier ones. sticker guy is very cheap but slow, and their website is difficult to navigate. sticker mule can be expensive, but offers interesting products and has frequent sales.

only 3 of the death egg orders included other books/items: one person bought my book bundle, one person bought liver mush, and one person bought good at drugs.

i sent free back patio books to ~10 random orders, and gave free art or bonus stickers to people i know/like from online. as far as i can tell this resulted in ~3 promotional twitter pictures and one goodreads review for non-death egg books.

around september 7th i sent nathaniel $301 in royalties.

sales - amazon

around when i started shipping books, i sent nathaniel all the raw book files and manically worked with him to set up the book on amazon kdp as a print and ebook. amazon kdp/ebook setup is a pain in the ass and required several different types of files and arbitrary changes. for the ebook, i had to manually add page breaks (instead of using the keyboard shortcut, for some reason) to get them to register. we set up the amazon book using his own account such that he'd by default receive all the amazon royalty payments. this approach was modeled after sebastian castillo's book SALMON and inspired by the fact that it's a huge pain in the as to do amazon royalties (especially after taking over for cavin - setting up a new bank account, etc etc). in exchange nathaniel gets a smaller royalty split on the books that i sell. since being put on amazon, we've sold 2 copies of the book through flat dog distro but seemingly many on amazon. i hope nathaniel considers the money aspect equitable.

the book peaked at #53 in the contemporary fiction (books) category on amazon, spurred on by duggan's manic promotional tweeting and "post weird twitter" networking. he had also purchased twitter blue in anticipation of the promotion cycle, which he claims de creased his post engagement, ironically.

nathaniel says he's sold 45 copies on amazon since we uploaded it, which is impressive, i feel.

sales - conclusion

so far we've sold a little over 100 books during the first few weeks and gave away ~10, which is, in my opinion. very good numbers for indie poetry that doesn't take institutional promotion tactics very seriously. incidentally, unrelated, i saw that clash had sold over 12,000 copies of some stupid looking horror novel during this time. i hope that people who may or may not be seething about the death egg hype cycle, its participants, and its aura of success consider this disparity when subtweeting/shittalking those involved.

i anticipate the book selling more copies over time, especially if we see continued press interest from local or online avenues, and natural interest in the book as people talk or post about it. it currently has 3 amazon reviews and 8 goodreads reviews.

thank you to everyone who has purchased the book.

writing in progress

unsure if this is interesting to anyone but me but i felt emboldened by thinking about the transparency in publishing talk recently to write something like this. envisioning this as part one of two parts, one about work in-prep and my plans/goals/work done for them, and another about previously published stuff and insider details and thoughts on it, both in terms of mags and book presses. this is the first part, about what i'm working on or have worked on but have not published, might not ever publish, etc., which is dumb because i have only published one book, of barn poems, which was ~60 pages, whereas all of this stuff totals like ~400 pages maybe, or something.

the writing i am working on

1. i have roughly put together a collection of flash/short stories. my working title has been Today is Totally Fucked but in trying to pitch it i've moved to calling it Everything is Totally Fine. it is currently ~60 stories, ~24k words. some stories are only a sentence or two, some are as long as ~2k words. some of the stories have been on Hobart, X-Ray, and Maudlin House and the Neutral Spaces blog, although everything pulled from there has since been very reworked. the genesis for the project was, originally, a plan giacomo and i had about starting a bear parade-style website that would only do dual/collaborative ebook things. i wrote ~6 stories and he wrote ~8 poems, something like that, that complement each other well, and he coded it up so it'd look really nice. he's since repurposed those poems for Chainsaw Poems and Other Poems and i've rewritten my stories in some drastic ways for this collection.

a few weeks ago i emailed a pitch for the collection (and an excerpt) to yuka at soft skull via her catapult email, based on richard chiem doing the same thing, which he said in an interview on either other ppl or zero point fiction, for King of Joy. i feel like it will be ignored for three reasons: 1) i'm a nobody, 2) the stories aren't good, 3) soft skull has, as of march, stated they only accept agent-submitted pitches for fiction. i have also dm'd gian at tyrant books to 'shoot my shot' and see if he wanted to read it, and he responded favorably and asked me to email it to him, which i did, but haven't heard back yet (i don't know the typical timeframe for any of this), and i have low/zero expectations. i queried an agent i found listed on a blog who said he responds to all queries, saying that i simply needed help pitching to soft skull and/or melville house, and that otherwise didn't want/need any other agent-like help, but he responded (quickly) saying he doesn't represent fiction anymore. clash has expressed interest based on twitter interactions and me asking leza if they'd be interested in seeing it as well, although christoph edits the fiction for clash, and he may not like it.

i don't currently care about getting this book, which feels like my 'best' current project, on any other presses besides these 4. even though i like several presses, i don't feel a desire to move 'laterally' from clash to a similarly small press, which feels like something a lot of people do, but i don't see much purpose in it, personally. i have vague thoughts about liking it when an author stays on the same press for multiple books, in the way that bands do this on record labels, and to work toward a more clear aesthetic/expectation/working relationship between author and press - this could be another blog post i think. anyway, i feel 90% certain it will come out on clash in the next year or two, and i hope that they don't feel bad about me trying to pitch tyrant and soft skull, or for assuming they'd even want to publish it, but i feel like this is normal, writers trying to move onto bigger presses that invest more in galleys/reviews/etc. anyway. these stories are very much in the vein of bear parade stuff but i diverge in certain, and i think, important ways, although i have a fear that this influence will be too 'obvious' and people will view them as imitative and derivative of this style. similar to how i felt self-conscious about people thinking the barn poems were 'stupid', i feel like people will think these are similarly 'stupid', or maybe worse, both stupid and derivative.

2. some of the stories cut form the above collection i think, maybe, will be reserved and rewritten for another Untitled collection that will be tonally distinct from TiTF/EiTF and more internally consistent. i currently have 3-4 of these stories, and one, about a mattress, is about ~7k words and i feel like needs to keep growing. another one won an award hosted by mythic picnic, because it was published on wigleaf, and they sent me $150, which i donated to the Minneapolis Freedom Fund (this was, i think, maybe, the only time i've 'accepted' payment for writing, aside from a smaller version of this same prize...or something...for the same story). sam pink dm'd me to compliment a version of one of the sections i had posted on the neutral spaces blog, but i think he only read it because he logged on to post his own story or poem, but it was still nice to hear that he liked it. other people have complemented the 'no future' story on wigleaf in private correspondence. i haven't spent much time 'compiling' this collection, mostly on writing/fleshing out stories which i think will be a part of it, so far.

3. i have a document i am calling Normal Stories which consists of generally longer, sadder, more boringly literary fiction stories, most of which have been published on, for example, soft cartel. a few of the stories have not been published. i like them but am struggling with what they mean in terms of my voice/brand/whatever. i will most likely not do anything with this collection.

4. i sent jenn from x-ray a ~12k word story called Bobby DiGiorno will Fucking Die based on a sort of solicitation for a vague idea about starting a print or ebook-only (?) press for manuscripts about this length. this reads confusingly - i wrote it, then sent it, because of its length. jenn has put it into a google doc with suggested edits i haven't looked at in a few weeks but seemed fine/good/minimal when i first looked. it is about pizza brand-sponsored lifestyle icons acting as sort of like the face of/machinations behind the ruling class in the near future. it has a bunch of silly shit in it and i like it, i think it's a fun story. cavin has read a couple iterations of it. i just remembered that i sent it to ben devos at apocolypse party as well, who declined to pursue it, citing a stylistic shift in the press, which is reasonable. at the time, on sending it to him, and still now, i felt/feel conflicted about whether i want it to be a book at all, but i think it's maybe important to just make books instead of otherthinking this.

5. to celebrate/promote giacomo's book on ghost city press this year, i wrote Chainsaw Blurbs and Other Blurbs, as an homage, also, to his book of blurbs for my book. i like the idea of us writing books of blurbs for each other. i really like the longer pieces i wrote for it, or repurposed from other older writing, especially. it will be limited to 50 copies. we haven't announced it yet, though, so, haha. whatever. i think people will like it. it's 50 blurbs, about ~8k words.

6. i am collaborating with giacomo on a long-form poem. the google doc is currently titled POEM. it is a stylistically rigid, intentionally ambiguous stream of consciousness that loosely centers around being in heaven and thinking about celebrities. it is currently ~6,666 words. i think it is funny and insightful and we are both enthusiastic about it. we've had some pretty extensive discussions concerning the poem and how it relates to, comments on, or conveys sexual relationships, gender, and celebrities, in the process of writing and editing it. giacomo is very thoughtful and a good person. collaborating on it has been fun and invigorating. here are two lines from it: "Thinking about an octopus while rinsing Bill Gates’ underwear in the sink / Thinking about an octopus doing laundry in the sink because Alexis Bledel’s washing machine is broken"

7. i have been compiling and writing more small poems. i kind of want to do an old-school digital chap kind of thing with them, maybe get other people to make similar ones and make a site for them all. i also wrote something like 75 more barn poems as part of a fundraiser for bail funds a few weeks ago. it was very taxing but i feel good about maybe 50 of them, as barn poems. unsure what i'll do with any of them.

8. i have two abandoned/whatever novels called Yarn (~65k words) and Give Up (~50k words). Yarn was basically the first thing i wrote, before everything else here, and i'm not sure how to describe it. it is vaguely 'normal' in terms of literary fiction and 'higher stakes' ideas like death/birth/power. it is sort of 'mysterious' and uses lots of made up words and explores themes of cognition from a philosophical/linguistics perspective and how societies are, or could be, eventually, structured. it tracks different perspectives and i employ a lot of different voices/narrative conventions and i focused a lot on sort of complex, strange phrasing and avoiding/pre-empting idiomatic cliches. it was inspired by the snippet of out of the world that knausgaard included in book 5 of my struggle, the scene of firefighters looking at a burning building. cavin has read a draft of it and thinks it should can be easily finished and that it should be published but i'm less sure. in my head i feel like it has 'big debut novel energy.

excerpts from Give Up have been on sleazemag/derelict lit and the neutral spaces blog. it is about a grad school dropout / in-school suspension supervisor mostly feeling depressed and eating junk food, thinking existentially and thinking about existentialism, and dealing with a dead father/sense of home/place/purpose while living in the midwest. it was very much inspired by lars iyer's spurious novels. it was basically the second thing i wrote. i've sent versions of it to some people but i think only no glykon and nick farriella read/skimmed it. nick had good feedback using fancy mfa terms and no glykon complemented the internality of it, i think. i submitted an early version of it to a metatron contest and tried querying one agent about it. i feel a sense of regret/idiocy about both of those things, in retrospect. for a long time i felt optimistic about it, about publishing it, about being critically acclaimed, etc. but have since considered it more or less abandoned in a way that feels freeing. i briefly considered completely rewriting it into a long-form narrative sequel to 50 Barn Poems, which i would call 50 Barn Poems 2, but i don't have the energy for this, i don't think.

reflecting on blogging

i've been enjoying, so far, this blog. i spent ~20 minutes looking up how to use blogger and do simple things. the way that it still encourages you to include and tinker with a bunch of little bullshits is fun, feels like old myspace/xanga days, which makes sense, since it's a blog.

i've also written 4 or 5 blog posts already that i've 'scheduled' to be posted over the next week. so this blog isn't that exciting in a public way, yet, i'm excited about it. i have already enjoyed the more freeform way i can layout my thoughts and i have enjoyed thinking of more blog post topics. i don't think i'll post 'creative' writing to this blog. i'll continue to use the neutral spaces blog for weird writing ideas i want people to read and submit to websites i like for more finished/edited pieces. maybe this will change. this feels very bloggy, this self-reflective, self-referential, blog-specific blogging. it's nice though.

multiple people have expressed interest to me about blogging as well. feels like a good thing.