BACK COVER I INSIDE
by Amber Gayle
Published in 2000
44 pages
5.5" x8.5"
Contact

Date of birth?
11/22/1971.

Is there a difference in reader response to books as opposed to zines?
There are vastly more book readers than zine readers. Most people don't know what a zine is. So with a book you can hope for a broader readership, more people in more places and more different kinds of bookstores or outlets coming upon your book. People all over everywhere know what you're talking about when you say, "I wrote a book!" Zines are actually only sold in some handful of stores around the world -- It might seem big if you live in Portland or someplace like that, but it's really a very small underground culture. So you can be a little ghettoized by publishing a zine, and anyone you know from different cultural contexts you have to explain, explain, explain what it is you're doing. Yet zine readers are very open about buying a zine by someone they never heard of, and zine magazines will review them, and immediately you can be part of the genre, something that is harder with a book. When I worked at Left Bank Books years ago, soon after we began publishing, I watched what happened with new books that came in by unknown authors: one copy slipped, spine out, onto a vast shelf of other books, largely invisible and not likely to sell this year. Compared to what happened with a new zine by a relatively unknown author: a big stack of them face out on the magazine rack. That made a big impression on me, and led to years of trying to make some things we've published that are really more like books "pass" as zines to get that more casual treatment. But I think this is only one aspect of the situation, and we are moving away from considering "My Evil Twin Sister" a zine series, and are identifying it more as a "story series."

How do you decide the price of your books?
We've been a little obsessive about keeping them cheap, so it's been a matter of how cheap can we feasibly sell it.

What goes into choosing a cover? Back cover blurb?
We're artists, first and foremost, so it's been a matter of what adds to the experience of the story, what reflects the material best visually and sensually. But we are getting more worldly now about what sells, so we will be taking a different approach on the projects we have in the works now.

What's your editing/refining process?
On books/stories I write, we discuss the ideas and I send drafts to Stacy to read and edit many, many times in the process of writing. We discuss every aspect of the story and as we get close to printing, often have long conversations about many of the lines and word choices individually. It's a long, long process, that you can never predict the actual extent of. Many stories/books get dumped along the way, because we realize it's not going to take a viable shape.

What was your print run and how much did it cost? How did you raise the money to publish?
Our print runs have ranged from 500 to 4,000. The largest print bill ran to almost $7,000. Everything else has been cheaper. The first two things we published we just split the costs and paid from savings. When we printed "Not For Rent" in 1995 Stacy and Grrrt got grants in Amsterdam to pay for printing, so we made money selling it, and that paid for the next few projects. Lately we've gotten into putting the printing bill on a credit card and paying that off as Evil Twin money comes in. As we have a number of titles in print, there's a steady trickle of income. Also we have managed to keep Evil Twin out of debt by selling first editions of books like "Not for Rent" and "Transient Songs" (both of which were stencil printed in an obscure process at an artists collective in the Netherlands) to museums and book arts collections for over $100 each.

What have you done to promote it?
We send out review copies, and have tried running a couple ads recently, guiding people to our web site. We do links, and I've done some readings, but mostly it's about review copies and getting it out to the dozens of independent book stores that I work with directly.

How can people get your book now?
On our web site, eviltwinpublications.com, through Last Gasp, or in especially cool bookstores, like Left Bank and Elliot Bay in Seattle, Powell's and Reading Frenzy in Portland, City Lights in San Francisco. There is a mostly complete list on our web site.

What will you do differently next time, if anything?
Always so many things new and different! We have recently gotten ISBN numbers, and are approaching the backs, titles and covers of books in a more marketing-sane kind of way. But every book is a new experiment, based on what we're thinking about, feedback from readers, what our recent experiences have been with Evil Twin and the other publishing projects we both work with, and what the people around us have been trying.

Why are so few women self-publishing books?
I don't know, are there significantly less? Maybe they're shy? Or maybe they're wiser about what the reading public actually wants to look at than some fellas are! Shyness can be wise. And self publishing is not always.

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(Psst! We're continuing the discussion on women publishing books over here.)