Prices, buy links & kind words

New purchase links already in effect on this website

The print-on-demand service (POD) that distributes all Stikmantica titles now offers consumers direct retail purchase. Each image of a print title on the BOOKS page of this site connects directly to that title’s dedicated page with the POD.

All titles are still available through your favorite retailer — including the Stikmantica affiliate store on Bookshop.org — but purchases through this site are fulfilled by the POD. Right now the prices these links offer are discounted below retail list. In some cases, sharply so. With no third party retailer between the POD and the purchaser, what would otherwise be the retailer’s cut divides between the POD and Stikmantica. This allows lower prices for you, the buyer, while paying Stikmantica the largest return it earns anywhere. The links are already active. At this time they are only for sales in the United States. I wish this option had been available six months ago.

Phasing in new prices elsewhere

New, lower prices are in the works for all markets served by the POD world-wide. “In the works” means that I am still calculating changes for the relevant currencies. Eventual prices off-site are unlikely to ever match those of the links offered here, as a share for third party retailers factors into the equation. There also has to be some cushion built into prices for non-U.S. markets to account for fluctuations in value of other currencies against the U.S. dollar. Nevertheless, prices for Stikmantica titles will come down. This is possible because I decided to acknowledge reality by slashing the portion of each price meant to compensate for my work as author and artist. Experience has finally taught me that the value of creative labor is vanishingly small. My creative labor at least. The new baseline is to avoid losing money when a book is sold. Once I settle on new prices, the POD will delay their implementation for sixty days. Their lag is non-negotiable. I’ll keep you posted.

Reactions to The Seven Jewel Bird

Although sales have been few, reader response has been wonderful. I have received more messages praising this work than any other, and all have come from admirable people whose opinions I respect. Four have even posted 5 star reviews! This, as the old saying goes, is cooking with gas.

A couple individuals seem to have mistaken the MacGuffin for the story, but they still offered praise. We read as we read. I have long maintained — from my undergraduate years, in fact — that art is a collaboration between creator and audience, and that a creative work is separately and uniquely “completed” in each mind that receives it. Each of your comments carries a lesson. Those insights will echo in my current and future work. Thank you.