THIS MODERN WORLD

I used to earn a little extra cash as an Amazon associate — if you buy something you were going to buy anyway, but do it through this site, I make a percentage. They cut me off for awhile because they were battling with my home state of Connecticut about whether or not they would have to pay taxes. They lost that one, and I’m eligible again for the FREE MONEY, and re-applied a few months ago. However they’ve just informed me that if I don’t start actually using the links, they’ll cut me off again. So if you’re planning to buy any small thing from Amazon, if you do it through this link, that will buy me a few more months until I have time to put up actual working links in the sidebar. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, I just make a few pennies on the sale. Thanks!

I’ve been doing daily cartoons about the RNC for the newly-relaunched Nib this week. Links below.

Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four

And now I’m off to Philadelphia…

As you know if you’ve been following me on Twitter or even on this rarely-updated blog, I had a very successful Kickstarter last summer. Thanks to the support of my backers, I was able to raise the money to publish a two-volume hardcover compilation of All the Cartoons. We met our initial goal within 24 hours, and achieved every stretch goal as well (and I’ve got the tattoo to prove it). Clocking in at over a thousand pages and weighing about fifteen pounds, this was definitely the most unlikely book I’ve ever put out.

The books were printed and distributed to the KS backers, with a relatively small stock available on my online store at TopatoCo. We still have some available there, but probably not for much longer — I’m not sure of exact numbers at the moment, due to some accounting and distribution mishaps that they’re still sorting out at the warehouse, but it’s safe to say there are fewer than 100 copies left.

So that would have pretty much been the end of the story for 25 Years of Tomorrow. And it would have been a great story — my dream project made real in the world thanks to my readers! — but that would have been it. If you didn’t get the books while they were available, there weren’t going to be any more.

Except that’s when I was approached by the highly regarded comics publisher IDW, who were interested in putting out a second printing of TMW25, and distributing it in bookstores and comic book shops. So not only did I manage to make these these books real in the world — now their lifespan will be extended, and they’ll reach a wider audience than I had any hope of ever reaching through the KS alone.

(The second edition will be the essentially the same as the first, though without the various bonus inserts — those are going to remain exclusive to my initial backers. The remaining stock at TopatoCo does still include the diecut cardstock DIY Sparkymobile, so if you want one of those, act quickly.)

On top of this, IDW asked if they could simultaneously publish a new trade paperback collection of the last three years worth of strips. I thought it was a great idea to make this material available to readers who might not have the desire or the budget to shell out more than $70 for the hardcover set. That compilation, Crazy is the New Normal, should be out around October.

I was wandering in the publishing wilderness for several years. I had a couple unfortunate experiences with publishers who did some damage to my sales record, which is something new publishers consider when they’re thinking about taking you on. There also seemed to be a widespread consensus that no one was interested in cartoon compilations in the internet age. There was certainly no one who would have published the massive TMW25 set prior to the Kickstarter. The success of that campaign really turned everything around. IDW is a fantastic publisher, widely known for the quality of their books. They’ve been amazing to work with so far — when I was in San Francisco in February, my new editor took a day off to fly up from San Diego, just to hang out for the day so that we’d have a chance to know each other beyond email and phone. That’s a good way to do business. I’m really excited to have them publishing my books, and honestly, I owe it all to those of you who backed the Kickstarter with such enthusiasm.

… we’ve just added the remaining stock of 25 YEARS OF TOMORROW to the TopatoCo store.

The final stretch goal on the Kickstarter campaign was a book party for backers at the historic Mark Twain House in Hartford. We’ve had some last-minute cancellations, so the Twain House is making those seats available to the public, if you happen to be in the area. There will be a reception, onstage conversation and slide show, and booksigning afterwards.

UPDATE: It was an amazing evening, and a fantastic conclusion to the long road of this Kickstarter campaign. Many thanks to Jacques at the Twain House for hosting the event and Gil Roth for acting as master of ceremonies. Thanks also to the Make That Thing team, without whom these books would never have been published, and to all of you who backed the campaign and made it such an overwhelming success.

With friends Tony Ortega, Maggie Renzi and John Sayles

I brought some thank-you gifts for the MTT crew.

If you’d been there, you would have seen the big unveiling of the promised stretch-goal tattoo.

Chatting with podcaster Gil Roth. Audio of this part of the evening will be up at his site soon.

And that’s a wrap … a journey that started with a crazy idea for an entirely implausible book ends in the house that Mark Twain built.