Comic Sales Jan/Feb 23

After a lot of Waiting-kettle-never-boils waiting, I finally work out that it's on the 15th of the month that Lulu publishes its sales through Amazon. These are the sales I made in January, which all get rounded up and published as if they were sold on Jan 31st.

I sold £34.92 worth of books on Amazon via Lulu in January. That compares to £26.87 in December, not bad growth considering that was the big Christmas month (though there were fewer books available then). Feb will be a proper test to see whether sales are growing in this group, given that I can't run Amazon ads for these books. The sales breakdown is:

Eurovision Vol 2                    10 (US)                                            10
60s Pop                                1 (Ger), 5 (US), 3 (GB)                        7
Punk Colouring                        5 (US)                                              5
Bowie Colouring                2 (US), 2 (GB)                                       4 
Doctor Who Colouring    1 (Aus), 3 (US)                                        4
Tales From Bible                     3 (US), 1 (GB)                                  4
70s Pop                                 1 (US), 2 (GB)                                     3
Prince of Denmark Street  1 (Aus)                                                    1

So, a lot more sales in the US than GB (29 to 8), and some titles (most graphic novels, and Eurovision Volume 1) don't sell at all. We'll monitor progress.

Meanwhile sales continue to grow on my restored Amazon KDP account. No colouring books in there any more, just the graphic novels and Bowie by Robot. Sales Jan 1 - Feb 16 so far are:

Midsummer Night's Dream Team - 4 paperback, 2 Kindle = 6
Bowie By Robot - 2 Kindle, 1 paperback = 3
Shakespeare Omnibus - 3 paperback  = 3
Tales From The Bible - 1 Kindle = 1
Findlay Macbeth - 1 Kindle = 1

Grand total takings from Amazon in 2023 so far is just £13.09. But I'm loving seeing the Shakespeare Omnibus moving. A kid brought one for me to sign at Welling Library this week and I couldn't have been happier!

Blurb's sales are harder to work out. It looks like I've sold 14 books in Jan (and 10 in Dec), and it's possible that those are mostly the hardbacks of Comics By Kids. It tells me my profit to date is £16.83, but I can't work out what period that covers. Let's face it, we're not talking big figures here, are we?

Most profitable of my publishing streams at the moment seems to be Etsy. £117 worth of books sold so far this year, £35 of that in February (so, actually, the same total as Lulu). Etsy also pays you straight after the order, none of this rounding up at the end of the month and keeping you waiting. Etsy sales Jan 1 - Feb 16 are:

Eurovision Vol 1 - 10

Eurovision Vol 2 - 4

Dr Who Colouring - 1

Punk Colouring - 1

FM, PODS, MNDT - 1 apiece

Draft2Digital doesn't add much to the pot. So far, since uploading my graphic novels to be read on readers like Kobo and other non-Kindle devices in November, I've still not earned the ten dollars that'll make it enough to be worth paying me!

For the record, sales for Jan - March 2022, all on Amazon, were considerably higher. For example I'd sold £80 worth of Eurovision, and £75 worth of 80s Pop Stars. But it's worth noting that, though I'd sold 37 Eurovisions, 33 of the 80s, and 8 or 9 each of the other colouring books, the graphic novels were still selling diddly squat. These things build up, and of course the cover prices were lower and the profit margin higher on those colouring books. Let us see how things develop this year. 

UPDATE: Friday Feb 24:

Here we go again....

My Books and where to get them:

Findlay Macbeth - Amazon  - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy 
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Amazon - Etsy 

Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Lulu

Tales From The Bible - Amazon -  Etsy 

Eurovision Colouring Vol 1 - Amazon -  Lulu  - Etsy 
Eurovision Colouring Vol 2 - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 

Eurovision Colouring Best Of British - Amazon
Doctor Who Colouring - Amazon - Lulu  - Etsy 
Punk Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
70s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
60s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 

Scottish Pop Star Colouring - Amazon

NB: Etsy editions are signed and posted by me, and generally cheaper

My Dry February

Just because you need an image on these things, here's Hev and I last night at the Bristol Light Festival, full of fun stuff, only visible after dark. We were then stuck in a 45 minute hold up on the M32 on the way home because of a multi-car pile-up ahead of us.

My Dry February

I went to the Doctors recently, and it turns out I'm fine. But. We had blood tests and an X ray, and nothing seems to be wrong with my insides. But. I've got high cholesterol.

I remember I had a blood test, at an exhibition I was doing for Oval way back in 2005, and learned then that I had high cholesterol. And, of course, this was what Dad was told about when he had his first heart attack, aged 72.

I'm only 61, so still a time to wait before I'm Dad's heart attack age. But, forewarned being forearmed and all that, this time we're looking at the cholesterol and seeing if there's something we can do about it.

My overall level is 10.2, which is high. A normal range is 7.5 or less.

Of that 10.2, 8.1 is Non-HDL cholesterol, or what they used to call Bad Cholesterol.

It's likely that a component of that is Familial Hypo-Cholesterolemia (I have guessed at the spelling of that having taken notes on the phone). This is what Dad was told about by his heart surgeon. He'd asked "do you come from the East Coast of Scotland?" Apparently we, and people in the North East of England, who are descended from Vikings, are prone to this inherited high cholesterol.

Another component is my Tri-Glycerides. Their level is 4.9, which is high (I don't know what the low number would be). And these are affected by alcohol.

Which is what brings us to Dry February. Because I do drink. Pretty well every other day, unless I've got a school in the morning in which case I don't drink the night before. In busy weeks this can mean me going five, six, or even seven days without drinking. But at quieter times, or in a month like the one we've just had, where I'm at my desk pretty much every day, I drink a little bit every other night. (I've been leaving a day's gap between drinking, minimum, for about ten years now. Following on from Hev totally giving up drinking, which was way back in 2009).

So my Doctor has booked me in for a second blood test, on March 10th, and this time it will be to see how my cholesterol looks after a month without drinking. So that's what I'm going to do.

The three cans of lager I had on Tuesday night will be the last alcohol I consume until at least March 10th, and we'll see the difference it makes to the results. This period includes me spending a week in Scotland, both teaching classes and performing with The Socks, as well as Socks shows in Leicester, and a busy schedule of schools in Bexley, Coventry, Northampton, Leeds and London, so maybe I'd have been cutting down a lot through this time anyway. 

But totally dry for a month? I'm pretty sure I haven't managed that since before I started my foundation year at Loughborough in September 1979.

What radical transformation will it have on me? Stay tuned for updates.

My Books and where to get them:

Findlay Macbeth - Amazon  - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy 
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Amazon - Etsy 

Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Lulu

Tales From The Bible - Amazon -  Etsy 

Eurovision Colouring Vol 1 - Amazon -  Lulu  - Etsy 
Eurovision Colouring Vol 2 - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 

Eurovision Colouring Best Of British - Amazon
Doctor Who Colouring - Amazon - Lulu  - Etsy 
Punk Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
70s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
60s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 

Scottish Pop Star Colouring - Amazon

NB: Etsy editions are signed and posted by me, and generally cheaper

Old Man Yells At Cloud - my Facebook posts

 I realised this week that I'm posting a few things on Facebook that do make me sound like a very old man being reactionary about the century he's now forced to live in. And although that is occasionally how I feel, it's largely not. And I'm certainly not a whingeing Daily Mail reading anti-Woke "Old Man Yelling At Clouds". I hope. But when a couple of my posts attracted "that" sort of comment, I had cause to ponder. Here for example is me showing sympathy for Harry Styles at the Grammys...

Feb 7: I know what Harry Styles means by “people like me” not winning Grammys. He’s working class and Northern.

Who was the last British Northern working class pop star to win a Grammy?

*Googles* So far I find Robbie Williams had 2 noms 0 wins, Take That not even a nom, Spice Girls no nominations. Go on, find me a Northern working class Brit with a Grammy, then you can have a go at Harry Styles.

Update: I've googled again, and there have been 90 British acts nominated for Grammys, which doesn't seem like many. And some of the most likely contenders didn't even win one - Queen for example. I haven't totted up how many are "Northern" or "working class", but considering the first five people to fall into that category are either former Beatles or Sting, I stand by my original point - being Northern and working class and British means that you're allowed to say "people like me don't often win Grammys". QED.

So far so innocuous I thought. Indeed the only comments for a bit were people trying to find Northern working class examples (and suggesting Billy Bragg and Paul Weller, which rather proved my point). Then I got this comment:

Bless him for not being a ME ME ME pronoun user

I mean, what? Where did that come from? But, I guess, if I'm being reactionary about the response to Harry Styles (which, I realise, is from Americans thinking that when you say "people like me" you mean white, which is not what Harry Styles meant) then I can appearing to be singing from the same songsheet as people who have a problem with pronouns. 

For the record, a couple of years ago I did make the gag that Sam Smith calls themselves 'they' because they are both Sam Smith and Tom Petty. And you will find me discussing whether another term that isn't also a plural wouldn't have been a better choice. But I'm happy with people's choice of pronouns, thankyou very much. (Not least because the Scottish Falsetto Socks are beneficiaries of the trend - no danger of an MC referring to "him" rather than "them" any more.)

Here was another post where I realised I was being reactionary, and questioned it out loud:

Feb 2: Watching The Apprentice again. Do we really have to pretend we don’t think lip fillers look awful? Is it really body shaming to tell people we think they’re doing possible permanent damage to their faces? What happens, after years of over stretching the skin, when it has to contract?

And worst of all, is it supposed to make people look more wealthy or upmarket? Cos it invariably makes people look common.

Am I the bad one for thinking these things?

This time it was a good friend's comment, from the side of the angels, that made me feel like the bad guy. They wrote:

You should be able to do what you like with your own body without fear of judgement or ridicule. I expect a lot of people think I’m “common” cos I’m covered in tattoos but it’s fuck all to do with them

You see my dilemma. Because I'm old, un-tattooed, un-surgeoned, cis-male, binary, white, and lower middle class, I stand outside many of the cultural debates that rage around me, and try to stay informed. Sometimes it's hard to not appear to be the enemy. I'm not, honest.

*******

Here are some more recent, less contentious, posts.

Feb 1: Although I had sympathy with the flat owners you can see from the Tate (I’ve looked into their lounges too, and it felt rather invasive) I’ve long wondered why people live in places that you can see right into.

Why do people with the most money and, you’d think, the most to hide live in these goldfish bowls? With a good pair of binoculars you could be in the room with them.

And no curtains? Madness.

Hands up who’d forgotten there was a Beano website?

Just don’t go there looking for comic strips!

21st century Polari in action. Folks have to use code. Always have, always will.

100 years ago folks, Inc gay men but also workers in certain jobs, your criminals and others too, used Polari , and also Rhyming Slang and Backslang, and Pidgin, so outsiders wouldn’t understand.

Now kids on TikTok talk about “mascara” and “Le Dollar Beans”. It’s brilliant, inventive, and as old as language itself. Vive la difference engine.

Naturally I agree with everything in this article (and, being in Ireland this week, I've had a few chats about Brexit, during none of which have I been able to explain what Brexiteers were thinking or what they actually wanted. I may never know) but my issue is another of those phrases I've grown to hate:

"Thrown under the bus"

When did this phrase start? How has it become so ubiquitous? And what phrase did we use before?

My other betes noire of the moment are "distruptor", and people saying "100%" when they mean "I agree" (though this might only happen on The Traitors).

Update: Thanks to Louisa in the comments for the Wikipedia link (which I could have found, honestly). It goes on to explain how 'throwing under the bus' explodes in US political journalism in the late 2000s. So it really hadn't been a phrase before then.

The Cyndi Lauper example given, from 1984, has a totally different meaning (being in the bus vs under the bus, suggesting a metaphor of someone clinging on like a stowaway rather than being pushed in front of a moving vehicle).

Wonderful to see how a metaphor develops.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood have rung from 1984. They’d like their story back.

Best quote from this story, from Zoe Kravitz: “It’s completely normal for people to be in the family business. It’s literally where last names came from. You were a blacksmith if your family was, like, the Black family.”

Oh good, something new to hate. Not the show, I’m sure I’ll love that. No, the release date.

On ITVX on Thursday, but not on ITV itself till “a later date”. Which means you can only watch it either a) with adverts you can’t fast forward through or b) by paying extra for it.

Public service broadcasting in 2023. Innit marvellous.

Alexa, give me an example of the worst comedy idea it is possible to have in 2023.

My Books and where to get them:

Findlay Macbeth - Amazon  - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy 
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Amazon - Etsy 

Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Lulu

Tales From The Bible - Amazon -  Etsy 

Eurovision Colouring Vol 1 - Amazon -  Lulu  - Etsy 
Eurovision Colouring Vol 2 - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 

Eurovision Colouring Best Of British - Amazon
Doctor Who Colouring - Amazon - Lulu  - Etsy 
Punk Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
70s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
60s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 

Scottish Pop Star Colouring - Amazon

NB: Etsy editions are signed and posted by me, and generally cheaper

Noodle Hair Girl - a week of comics by kids in Dublin

Booked at very short notice, thanks to the initiative of Martina the brilliant librarian at St Aidans in Tallaght, this week I did three days of classes in schools in Dublin. She only contacted me the week before, having been in touch with the other schools herself, and a flurry of flight-booking later I was on my way over. Three days of teaching necessitated five overnight stays which, the truth be told, may make it one of the least profitable school weeks of the year. But it's been the most fun so far, and I'll take that.

Rath Dara was the one school that I hadn't visited before, and they were smashing. In the suburb of Blanchardstown, which is bigger than I at first realised. The hotel called itself Carlton Hotel Blanchardstown, but is in fact in Tyrrelstown. And the school is signposted Rath Dara Blanchardstown, but is in fact in Corduff. So, a 45 minute walk between both places. I tell you, relying as I am on public transport, I've been getting my exercise this week.

St Aidans comics. Another big challenge of this week was colouring the comic covers, which I try to do as soon as possible after each visit. But I haven't brought with me my Photoshop-loaded computer, working instead on the MacBook Air which has fewer programs (or Apps, as I believe the kids call them). After a bit of tinkering with downloadable apps that wouldn't work because the operating system's too old, I found onlinephotoshop.com which gives you pretty well the whole thing, working almost as well as it does in real life. So that was a nice find. I bet you couldn't tell that my shoddy colouring has a slightly better excuse for its shoddiness this time around.

Killinarden was the third and final school, after a Wednesday off which had been spent in my hotel room trying to write the crime novels. (I ended up writing a short story, as recorded here). The librarian is the eponymous Canadian called Linda that you see on that front cover.

The celebrities these six groups chose to appear in my demonstration strip were Ariana Grande, Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain, Alex Turner (of Arctic Monkeys), Cardi B, and Bryan Cranston.

My Books and where to get them:

Findlay Macbeth - Amazon  - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy 
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Amazon - Etsy 

Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Lulu

Tales From The Bible - Amazon -  Etsy 

Eurovision Colouring Vol 1 - Amazon -  Lulu  - Etsy 
Eurovision Colouring Vol 2 - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 

Eurovision Colouring Best Of British - Amazon
Doctor Who Colouring - Amazon - Lulu  - Etsy 
Punk Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
70s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
60s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 

Scottish Pop Star Colouring - Amazon

NB: Etsy editions are signed and posted by me, and generally cheaper

Second short story written

Apropos of nothing, a photo taken today in Tallaght. Dracupuncture seemed to me like it would involve a lot of biting. 

Hooray. I got a short story, called Tea Shop, written. It's 3750 words long at the moment and is the second Lady Lucy short story I've done, having written one last Friday.

I was having difficulty with it all day, this being the Wednesday of my week in Dublin, the day between schools. I coloured comic covers, I shillied, and I shallied.

I showed Hev my half finished work, when I was stuck after 4 paragraphs, and she went away and started writing a story of her own. Embellishing (or is that correcting) mine, and going in a direction entirely of her own.

Meanwhile it wasn't until I'd eaten, and come back to my room after 7pm, that I got stuck into writing. And, as is my way, wrote the 3750 words in one sitting.

Bish bash bosh. Hev will of course hate this one too.

But so satisfying to get something completed. Now to take the same application and use it to finish off the two damn novels and get them published, and we'll see if the things sell.

UPDATE: Tuesday 8 Feb, got The Tea Shop rewritten, now on 4244 words.

Weds 9 Feb, got The Queue rewritten, up from 2138 to 2822 words.

My Books and where to get them:

Findlay Macbeth - Amazon  - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy 
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Amazon - Etsy 

Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Lulu

Tales From The Bible - Amazon -  Etsy 

Eurovision Colouring Vol 1 - Amazon -  Lulu  - Etsy 
Eurovision Colouring Vol 2 - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 

Eurovision Colouring Best Of British - Amazon
Doctor Who Colouring - Amazon - Lulu  - Etsy 
Punk Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
70s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
60s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 

Scottish Pop Star Colouring - Amazon

NB: Etsy editions are signed and posted by me, and generally cheaper

First comics of the year

January was a quieter month for classes than in many years, though I have emailed every school on my list and am hoping to get more bookings as the year goes on. As it was, I did two schools in January, and here are the comics they produced.

I kicked off the year in Andoversford in Gloucestershire, and promptly scuppered myself by leaving my flipchart pad behind. Not only was it a nice new blank pad, but it had with it a few pages of those big flipchart drawings I try and do in every school, you know with lots of characters on. They were "ones I'd prepared earlier," largely from the Zoom class period last year, and I fall back on those when, to be honest, the school doesn't supply a pad so I have to use mine. I can't be arsed, sometimes, to draw a whole brand new page of characters when I've had to schlep my own flipchart stand and paper into a school and waste my own paper. Well, that taught me didn't it? All my "ones I prepared earlier" are now marooned somewhere in Gloucestershire, and I have to draw a new one every time whatever.

Cheshire College in Chester saw me working with older kids, sixth form age, which was an interesting change from primary school kids. They did good stuff. The Christmassy page you can see in the montage above is from the Zoom class I did right at the end of last year.

The four celebs this month's classes chose to appear in my demonstration strip were Elon Musk, Mr Beast, Whitney Houston, and Jeremy Clarkson.

My Books and where to get them:

Findlay Macbeth - Amazon  - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy 
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Amazon - Etsy 

Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Lulu

Tales From The Bible - Amazon -  Etsy 

Eurovision Colouring Vol 1 - Amazon -  Lulu  - Etsy 
Eurovision Colouring Vol 2 - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 

Eurovision Colouring Best Of British - Amazon
Doctor Who Colouring - Amazon - Lulu  - Etsy 
Punk Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
70s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 
60s Pop Star Colouring - Amazon  - Lulu  - Etsy 

Scottish Pop Star Colouring - Amazon

NB: Etsy editions are signed and posted by me, and generally cheaper