Life in a Northern Town

Hey, Fairbanks-area people: our show opens tonight! Nine Alaskan comics and fine artists will be at the Alaska Center for Natural Medicine on Davis Road from 5-8 p.m. We will have tables set up throughout the building with books, art, gifts and more. There’s free food — if no one comes, we’ll have to eat it all ourselves! And free wine — if no one comes, we’ll have to drink it all ourselves. (And trust me, no one wants to see that.)

If you can’t make it on Friday, the art show will be up throughout the months of May and June, and the AK Center for Natural Medicine has kindly offered to host a small display of our books as well, so you can browse them there and buy them if you like what you see!

And now I am off to print more Freebird comics, which I plan to stick into every available scrap of gallery space. *g*

LOOK LOOK LOOK! I have a BOOK!

All the info: The book is 8.25×6″, 152 pages, and retails for $12 US. It collects all of the Freebird strips from 2006-2008, the ones that ran in the now-defunct Fairbanks entertainment paper fbx square plus the online ones that I did after square died. There are also new strips (bringing the story to the conclusion that it was originally supposed to have) and two backup stories, plus extra sketches and previously unseen strips from the development process.

How to sample: You can read nearly all of the story online, starting here — although the book contains about 30 pages of newly drawn strips that aren’t online, plus all the backup stuff.

How to buy:

• You can buy it from Amazon.com. If you’re in Europe, you can get it from your local Amazon in your local currency — I’ve checked Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.de, and both of them have it! (Since I’ve never done this before, for those of you who are in the UK and continental Europe, could you tell me if the price seems really wrong to you? I just based it on the US price — it’s a more or less straight currency conversion from the US price into UK pounds and euros, so you pay just what you would if you bought it in the US. But I have no idea what “common” book prices are like in those currencies.)
• You can also buy it from my estore on CreateSpace. Amazon still handles payment processing and order fulfillment, but (fair warning) it’ll be more of a hassle for you than buying it from Amazon’s main site, because you’ll have to create a CreateSpace account (if you don’t already have one), can’t get Supersaver shipping, etc. The advantage to me is that I get a significantly higher percentage on sales through the estore than I do through Amazon, but frankly, I am absolutely delighted and flattered if anyone wants to buy my book, and you are definitely encouraged to do it wherever and however is easiest and best for you!

These books will be available locally in Fairbanks at The Comic Shop very soon (possibly even today; I’ve been severely hampered this week by Lack of Functional Automobile or they would be there already!) and subsequently in every other local bookstore that I can convince to carry them. ETA: They are available in The Comic Shop now!

At this point I don’t have anything set up for people to buy the books directly from me, aside from catching me locally at a book signing. (There will be book signings, but I don’t have dates/venues yet — more information forthcoming soon!) I did my own book shipping in my last self-publishing venture, but honestly, living in Alaska, so much of my profit is eaten up by shipping costs that it’s just about as cost-effective for me to sell them through Amazon. On the other hand, I know how some people feel about Amazon (I am entirely sympathetic, believe me!) so I’m hoping to have more non-Amazon options available for you soon.

Questions? Please ask! I will have a reaction/discussion post for the book up soon.

In conclusion: BOOK! \o/

Originally published at Layla's Wordpress blog. You can comment here or there.

Today I’m testing various crossposting options between the new WordPress blog and LJ/DW. The Livejournal Crossposter plugin (despite the straightforward name, it’s one of at least a half-dozen, and the second one I tried) is awesomesauce. First of all, despite the name, it works with LJ clones as well, and while it can only be set up to crosspost to one other blog, turns out I don’t have to crosspost to both LJ and DW — when I crosspost only to DW, the DW blog automatically picks up my post and crossposts to LJ. I’ve also tested editing and deleting posts, both of which work like a charm across all three sites.

I don’t plan to crosspost everything. The WordPress blog is mainly going to be for writing/creative process stuff and project updates (all of which will be mirrored to my other blogs when I post them, which means you can follow wherever you prefer). But I’m delighted with how seamless this is — one click of a button and bing!, my post pops up in all three places with appropriate footers and tags and everything.

*clicks*

Originally published at Layla's Wordpress blog. You can comment here or there.