charlesdickens – Page 2 – Gerry Mooney Illustrating Dickens

Distribution beyond Amazon

Things always appear easier before you actually do them. It appeared that using the “Expanded Distribution” option for a book published on Amazon would make BLEAK HOUSE more widely available, and it did, sort of.

I’ve been operating under the belief that I could do book signings in Barnes & Noble stores. There are two in Tulsa, and of course there are other, smaller bookstores in most of the bigger small towns in the region. As it turns out, I could indeed have book signings in these B&N stores, as long as I was in the correct distribution channels that would allow these stores to order my book. If they can’t get the book on their shelves, there’s no reason for them to host the event. No matter how nicely you ask, there’s no way around this logic.

Which leads to the obvious question: WHAT are “correct distribution channels”?

My first book signing – Video!

I did my first book signing on Saturday May 3, and Katie Varner the owner at The Same Page bookstore, was nice enough (and tech-y enough!) to live stream it on Facebook. So I have a 33-minute video that, well, I found pretty hard to watch, so it took me awhile to trim it down to about eight minutes. It’s posted after the continuation below.

Now I’ve set my sights on expanding to bigger venues, and top of the list is Barnes & Noble, which has two stores in Tulsa. I visited both stores yesterday and the folks there couldn’t be nicer, but I found some small complications with the process as I imagined it.

Inspector Bucket Superstar

You may have ended up here in response to my latest email announcement, all nice and formatted with images and new info. I’ve been wanting to make this improvement for some time and I’m happy with the results. Above all, it contains an “opt-out” option at the bottom which is just polite, but I never had the means to do it in a standard, email-friendly format.

It means a lot to have the support I’ve gotten from many friends and even strangers in this journey. The book is out in the wild, I’ve gotten my first press coverage in our hometown Claremore Progress, and I’ve lined up my first book signing.

Okay, It’s ON!

Well folks, I first want to thank you for stopping by to read my posts here. It’s been a labor of love even when it’s a struggle because this book and this project are something I believe in. I don’t think I would have stuck to all this if it weren’t!

So I would like to announce the following:
BLEAK HOUSE, by Charles Dickens and illustrated with 40 new linoleum prints by Gerry Mooney, is now available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DTG8DLCJ . Paperback, 650 pages, $30. I’m not planning an e-book edition.

PROOF!

I know I’ve been talking about getting a publisher, applying for a grant, finding an agent…well none of this is going to happen. For one thing, after approaching numerous agents and publishers, it finally sunk in that “illustrated novel” is no longer a thing, and hasn’t been for decades.

No one I approached, even those that liked the work, had any idea of how this particular project fits into any current publishing niche. I have no doubt the project has potential, I’ve known it for years, but convincing anyone who has the means to publish it to see it like I do is enough for even Sisyphus to give up and go back to his rock just to take a breather.

How “A Christmas Carol” Ends

Man, I really didn’t want to write this post. I had big plans, as I wrote about in my post of Sept. 10. Create a set of charming scenes from Charles Dickens’s holiday classic as three-color linoleum prints, and do it in time to sell them for this Christmas season in my Etsy shop, which I set up primarily to try selling some of my BLEAK HOUSE prints. Ambitious but doable, I thought.

It actually started out very well. I developed my sketches into imagery that I was very happy with. I enjoyed designing the lettering with a loose but classical sort of letterform, and of course thinking about and drawing the characters was a lot of fun. I was making good progress! The key factor was time, since I was starting maybe a little late for the holidays, due to the complexity and somewhat experimental nature of the project.

A Christmas Carol

I recently started an Etsy shop (since closed!) to offer prints of a couple of my BLEAK HOUSE illustrations. I’ve done a soft launch but the fact is my offerings so far are pretty slim. I know a couple of images I’ve done for this project have a broader appeal, but growing a shop like this based on what I’ve done for this one book has some problems. So as I said, a soft launch just to get some feedback, but it is certainly off to a slow start. It would be nice to have something special to offer for Christmas.

I love “A Christmas Carol” as much as anyone, but mostly the movies (Mr. Magoo is my favorite!). I hadn’t read the text for a long time, but recently I read it again as a way to refresh my Dickens knowledge. I pretty quickly felt moved to do some sketching, in a way that movies do not inspire me. Interesting!

General U.S. Grants

As I continue my quest for an agent or publisher, I find that suggestions and ideas from various places just bubble up and spur me to further exploration. I’m happy to run down any lead that doesn’t cost me money.

That’s the most interesting thing about this process, discovering connections that lay undiscovered in plain sight. A good friend and fellow cartoonist that I’ve known since college turned out to be an avid Dickens fan and collector. I never knew this about him until I started this project, and now he’s one of my most avid supporters.

I’ve told you about the buddy who volunteered to take my BLEAK HOUSE portfolio and show it around at the MOCCA fest in New York. No matter that none of the publishers there was quite the thing for me, it’s the network that is developing around my work that keeps the whole thing interesting.

The Hard Work of Selling

The five years I spent creating the artwork for Dickens’ BLEAK HOUSE was not only a labor of love, but it was a process where, as I went along, I pretty much knew what I was doing, and if I didn’t, I knew the ways to figure it out.

Selling this project is another horse of a different color! I knew at the outset that an illustrated classic novel had no natural niche in the current publishing market, but I considered that fact against the marketability of Charles Dickens, and happy to say, Charles and I won.

So Step One was a smashing success. Step Two, a little trickier. I have some friends (or friends of friends) who are published writers, and I did ask one for “advice”, but the fact is, you’ll get the same advice in one form or another from everyone: Pick up a copy of The Writer’s Market and do the research. There are no shortcuts and no preformatted path to success, but this book has a wealth of information. You just have to be determined to dig for it.

Buying stamps

Since my original intent was to write about creating artwork, it suddenly seems odd to me now that the art creation is done that I still need to write about the whole process that led me here and that I am still pursuing, even though the way is not clear.

But it’s the task I set for myself, to document the whole process, warts and all. So I will tell you about buying stamps.