I saw this painting in a Charlottesville, VA coffee shop, last stop of tour for This Brilliant Darkness before pandemic ended it early. I wrote artist’s name but lost it. I wanted to buy this but I cldnt afford. My book’s inexpensive, tho. I gave up some royalties to make it so.

True story! Although my book This Brilliant Darkness is half photos, full color, I *really* didn’t want it priced like a coffee table book, an artifact. So I made a deal w/ my publisher — price it low as cld go for hardcover, $25, & I’d give up part of my royalties.

My publisher, @wwnorton, did me one better: they printed the book on creamy wonderful color-rich paper but kept the price of This Brilliant Darkness lower than most new hardcovers printed on pulp.

I admit I hesitated to make this public because why advertise that your very weird book of words+pictures wasn’t expected to be a bestseller? But it wasn’t. I’ve had a pretty decent sized bestseller. I know a bit about how that works. This Brilliant Darkness is much... stranger.

Most writers say they don’t think about the market when they make their books. Quite often this isn’t true. I thought about it—I knew I was walking away from it. I have a job so I cld afford to. & after an heart attack at 44, I didn’t think I cld afford not doing so.

& yeah, I’m sharing this little publishing story because maybe it’s interesting to know the thinking behind the book as physical object, & also because yes, I’d love for you to take a look at This Brilliant Darkness. The first writing course I took, years ago, was...

...called “Writing to be Read.” It wasn’t about conforming yr imagination. It was about expanding it to interact w/ others. Teacher, at @hampshirecolg, was Michael Lesy, author of Wisconsin Death Trip. Another book of words & pictures...

To Lesy, “writing to be read” didn’t mean writing for the market. It meant doing away w/ the sometimes solipsistic romance of “writing for yourself.” That’s fine for a journal. Every other kind of writing, tho, is the imagination of community....

“Writing to be read” is an imaginative act undertaken with the radical hope that you might be able to put some part of life into words and share it with readers, that life can be shared, that writing, undertaken alone, is not about being alone.