Hello!
After an action-packed few months, things are a little quieter here at Galley Beggar HQ. Good job too, because the summer holidays have just started and there are cardboard robots to build:
But we have kept reasonably busy. One pretty wonderful thing that’s happened is that the beautiful paperback of Francis Plug made it out there into the world:
Since you’re reading this letter, I’m guessing you know all about Francis and how special he is. But maybe you have a friend who doesn’t? Make them read it! Mash their face into the pages of
this gorgeous new edition. They’ll thank you for it. What’s more, I’ll thank you for it. Thank you! Mwah!
Elsewhere, a mighty buzz is growing around
Playthings. Mighty. We’re also getting some of our best ever reader feedback for The Weightless World. Everyone who reads it just seems to love it, which is just the way we like it. The latest review has just come in from
Book Geek who says: “this was a heart breaking and heart warming book all at once. You feel pretty knackered after reading it and it gave me one hell of a book hangover.” Meanwhile, I have found
one ambivalent review, but even that makes the book sound awesome: “While perhaps The Weightless World wasn't up my alley, if you a generally a fan of complicated and thought-provoking intellectual reads then this might be that new novel you've been looking for.”
Yup.
Now then:
It's our newest Single. It's a good un. Here's a little taste:
“A lot of people tell me my voice is similar to that of the actor Christopher Walken. I don't believe them. And I would prefer it if you did not imagine him reading this to you now.”
Two stories of disappointment, regret and finely tuned hilarity from Joseph Mackertich. In Obsolescence, a reality television documentary maker starts to film his next door neighbour’s every move - and gets far more than he’s bargained for. In Ad Astra, a man goes hear a speech from the “stockholder’s stockholder”. It’s the ultimate get rich quick conference stump speech - and the last thing that most people in attendance want to hear.
Elsewhere, we just spent a glorious weekend at the Latitude Festival where we were running a small event about publishing. I know hearing about all the fun other people have been having at festivals is just annoying, so I’ll just say we’re going to do our damndest to get to go there again next year and highly recommend you come too.
But that's enough about us. The most important part of this letter is actually about our friends at Influx. They've got a problem. They’ve just published a book that is too good.
Seriously.
This is actually a big grind for them. They’ve done a print run of 1000 copies of Darran Anderson’s Invisible Cities, but shops have started to order so many that they need to print more. The trouble is that their operation is small enough that a second print run is a big issue. It’s not just a question of raising the money to fund it in the first place, it’s the terror of returns coming in further down the line. If shops over-order and customers under-purchase our friends Gary and Kit are going to start hurting. It’s a terrifying situation. We’ve been there. One of the things that dragged us out was the extraordinary generosity of you, the readers of this newsletter. In fact you were all so good, and I'm still so grateful that I worry about impinging again - except that there’s something very good in it for anyone who responds - and Kit and Gary at Influx are in an almost impossible position. If they reprint, they risk taking a long hot bath in the steaming brown stuff. If they don’t, they’ll feel like they’ve let down their author, the readers that want to read this wonderful book and all the shops that they rely on for their other titles.
So basically, they’re going to have to reprint. And the only way to make that less terrifying, and ensure that things don’t go wrong further down the line is for enough people actually go out and buy the book. I bought one just now, direct from the Influx site and I’d encourage everyone to do the same. I’ve actually already had a good read of a proof of the book and oh boy. I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say I was quite jealous. I half wish we’d published it. Except Influx are the ideal people to put this bad boy out, steeped as they are in urban culture and the mysteries of geography. This book is mad and and overwhelming, in the best possible way. There are references from everything from Marco Polo to Mandeville's Travels, Frank Lloyd Wright to HP Lovecraft, Godzilla to St Augustine... and, of course Ballard. I guess the closest reference point is Iain Sinclair - but only really in that it's unlike anything else. The first sentence is: “Before there were films there was cinema; the flickering shadow play of fire and motion on limestone cave walls.” Come on! If you want to know where that’s heading, you can get a copy direct from the
Influx site. Your money will really help them - and help make the world a better place. We need crazy, brilliant, wonderful books like Imaginary Cities. We need crazy, brilliant, maverick publishers like Influx. They make the world better. That has to be worth supporting.
Look! Look! It's fat. (Harper Lee book included for scale...)
While I’m talking about non-Galley Beggar business, you may have heard that the wonderful EL Doctorow recently passed away. This is sad news, but when a good writer goes, we at least have the compensation of their books. Ragtime,
Waterworks, The March, Billy Bathgate. If you haven’t read them, here’s your chance to do so and to realise that until a few days ago, a master walked among us.
And that’s almost it for this month. One quick piece of admin. We’re going North in a couple of days and Imogen who handles a lot of our post and replies to emails and is generally essential and wonderful is taking a well-earned break too. Please keep buying things from our site - it helps us more than I can say. But please forgive us if it takes a few days longer than usual to post things out.
One last thought. Amazon has just celebrated its 20th birthday. And yes, that’s right: 'celebrate' is entirely the wrong word. Unless you also feel that we can celebrate nuclear bombs, cancer of the arse and little baby bunny rabbits getting whacked with spades, while their parents look on crying and screaming.
Even so, I thought I should go to the party. Jeff Bezos must have forgotten to put my invite in the post, but hey! I figured, why not?
It was just a question of locating the poet Virgil, stopping my ears against the screams of the damned and getting through the first seven circles of hell. Things were pretty hot down there, let me tell you, and Virgil didn’t stop talking the whole time about shepherds and pre-industrial agriculture. Still, I made good progress. Once I’d got past the room where a glass of gin and tonic was held suspended just out of reach of the outstretched right arm of the Queen Mother who was made all the more thirsty by the burning pile of Daily Mails beneath her Nazi feet, and once I’d won a bet against Satan by asking him to run a rope of sand across a flowing river without losing a single grain, I made my way into Jeff Bezos’ inner sanctum, the party room, where everyone in eternity who wanted to commemorate Amazon’s birthday was gathered. All of their true friends. Here’s what I found.
Sorry about that, even if the song was ace. Clearly its time for the holidays. I’ll use the break trying to think of a better punchline for the next newsletter. I hope that you have a great time if you manage to get away.
Fondly,
Sam
As usual, I'm also going to use the end of the newsletter for a few more adverts, where you can safely ignore them, or kindly indulge me, depending on your fancy:
Firstly, please join The Singles Club so we can pay writers to write. Here's the blurb:
We have a fantastic new subscription system set up for our Singles Club so that you now only have to make one payment to get hold of 12 stories. But how to go through the ins and outs of paypal payment systems without boring the dirtbox off you, I don't know. Probably the best thing to do is to head over to the relevant page on our site, where I've tried to give a brief, but to the point explanation, and to take it from there. The important things to know are that:
(1) Subscribing saves you the trouble of going to the site every month to get your fix of superb ebook literature – we'll just email you the files every month.
(2) Subscribing (so long as enough people do it) will enable us to start giving our authors money up front on for each story. Yes! We are going to pay people to write short stories. It's like the golden days of the 1920s. Only they'll be in electronic book format instead of Strand magazine… Anyway! You get the idea. This is a mighty fine way to keep authors doing what they do best – entertaining you.
(3) It costs £12 a year, or £1 a month, or less than a meal in Pizza Express. (Unless you have a voucher.)
Secondly, please be our friend! Become a Galley Buddy. It's a good deal for us, and a great deal for you.
Thirdly, to donate to Galley Beggar Press and earn yet more of our gratitude, click here.
Fourthly, go on, buy a postcard set. They're lovely:
Fifthly, thanks for reading write down to the bottom. There's no prize, but I sure do like you. Our namesakes, Galley Beggar, the folk band have a new album out. It’s called Silence & Tears. Sounds like amazon’s birthday party! Actually, that’s not how it sounds at all. It sounds excellent. I’ve been listening to it all week, when not getting all nostalgic over Pulp and quietly nodding along to East India Youth. I’d recommend it. Oh yeah. Anyone else remember In/Flux? Work to change the system...
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