Day: March 19, 2009

So I was staring at the list of Hugo Nominees (this is something you do when you can hardly believe your husband’s name is there and so you have to check just to make sure. Again. For about the 57th time) and I noticed something. All the other nominated works in the Graphic Story category have two to six creators attached to them as well as a publisher. For Schlock Mercenary there is just Howard, and I am his publisher. Somehow this really underlines for me the sheer crazy impossibility of what we have undertaken. It really should not be succeeding, and yet somehow through hard work, and scrambling, and more hard work, and lots of help from friends, and encouragement from fans, and even more hard work, and some kind of a miracle, we keep going. The scary bit is that so much depends upon Howard and upon me. If either of us fails, it will all fall apart. We must be crazy to undertake this challenge…and yet, there is his name on that list with people who have been creating graphic stories for far longer than we have. This blows me away.

Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic was nominated for a Hugo award in the “Best Graphic Story” category! We are thrilled. I look at the list of other nominees in the same category and I’m not sure how we sneaked on there. We’re up against
Girl Genius Volume 8 Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones by Phil and Kaja Foglio and Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle by Jim Butcher (Del Rey, DaBel Bros)
Fables: War and Pieces by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, Steve Leialoha, Andrew Pepoy, Lee Loughridge, and Todd Klein (DC/Vertigo)
Serenity: Better Days by Joss Whedon, Brett Matthews, Will Conrad, Michelle Madsen, and Jo (Dark Horse)
Y: The last man vol 10: Whys and Wherefores by Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, and Jose Marzan, Jr (DC/Vertigo)

So we’re pretty sure that Howard won’t be bringing home a shiny rocket ship, but honestly we do not even care. Just making the list is amazing.

Now I really want to go to Montreal with Howard. I already wanted to go, but now the want has been trebled. So now I have to go see what financial and childcare machinations are necessary to free me up for a week in August. Also, I need to renew my passport. And maybe buy a dress.

When Howard and I first released Under New Management (four years ago now) we did some math and figured out that if we could just sell 10 books per day, that would cover all our bills. It seemed an impossibly high number. Fortunately the huge pile of sales which occurred when we first released new title allowed us to bank money against the months when sales were much slower.

Today was not a special day in terms of sales or publicity. Howard made no announcements, we didn’t mention books in our blogs, we did not do anything to draw attention to the fact that there are Schlock books available, and yet we sold 9 books today. Yesterday we sold 8 books. There are still days when no one stops by our online store, but more and more often we are seeing the days when store sales are sufficient to pay for that day’s worth of bills. This is good news. The difference is not in the total number of sales, but in the fact that we have multiple titles available. This is why we are pushing hard to get more books into print. We want to reach a point where Schlock Mercenary can not only pay our bills, but also provide jobs to other people.