Richard McGowan's Blog: Smashed-Rat-On-Press - Posts Tagged "epsilon"

Suggestion #52378: Limit your pseudonyms to much less than a handful or You'll Be Sorry...

As most of my readers know, I don't have millions of readers, I have a select few. (Fewer in fact than I have books in print; if you do the math you'll find out that some books don't have any readers at all.) Anyway, consequently, I have a small number of reviews and ratings that appear here. I count them. I know how many I have. Honestly, I'm ashamed of doing that, and it does me no good whatsoever. It's a bit deflating and disappointing, in fact; but I still can't help doing it. Alas! Every new review or rating here makes me chortle with glee, dance around, and pop another jelly bean into the huge jar of "Things I May Someday Possess Enough of to be Worth Eating".

Well. A couple of days ago some of "my" books disappeared from my shelf, and along with some ratings. I was absolutely crushed. Were former readers fleeing? I went to investigate, and discovered the two Kajolium Broadwick books had disappeared from "my" shelf, but were still on "his" shelf. I noticed that their bibliographic entries no longer listed me as "editor". A helpful GR librarian had corrected the entries, and thankfully left a change note in the file so I could follow the trail of changes. Thus, I found out about the Goodreads policy that novels shouldn't have "editors" listed. OK, that's fine; it's a bibliographic policy.

Of course the two H. Cogito Epsilon books had editor listings, too... So I removed those. And poor Ginger Amelia Sprockette's debut novel was just about to get an editor entry as well, so that had to go, as if she wasn't being ignored enough already.

Oh, well. While my scheme lasted, it was helpful to keep track of "my" stuff mostly from one GR account by listing my Main name as editor on all the pseudonymously published works from SROP. Now I have five GR accounts, one for each current pseudonym. And I'm going through the process of claiming the GR author profiles for those... Kind of a pain, but that's OK. As a former librarian in a previous incarnation, I understand bibliographic policy.

So, all ye radical young whipper-snappers... Before you go out to publish each of your precious books under a different pseudonym: close your eyes and think of Shenanigan Cheesefield.

In this fortieth anniversary year of our Smashed-Rat-on-Press the Head Rodent has promised to publish some specialty items.

One of those items is just around the corner. In fact, a proof copy has just been ordered and we're anxiously awaiting delivery!

The press will be releasing a special limited edition of twenty copies of Anna Conda of the KGB. (Click on the thumbnail to see the larger size and read the blurb.)

This is an "older" bawdy work from H. Cogito Epsilon that has never been published separately. It has now been digitally restored and newly illustrated with six lovely "erotic" drawings and brand new cover art by Lon Ryden. The book is thin and inexpensive because it contains just a short story of 6,000 words, so it may not be that exciting for most SROP devotees.

However, the edition is special. Each copy of this limited print run will be signed and numbered by both the author and the artist. Of the twenty copies, only ten will be sold through SROP; the other ten will be sold by the artist. The ten SROP copies will be available for a nominal flat rate covering the cost of printing plus postage within North America.

How can you get one? Customers will have to ask at the speak-easy and this edition will not be advertised for sale. The limited edition won't go into the catalog. (But after those have been sold off, a lesser edition may become available, we'll see.) If you want one, you'll have to contact The Rodent at SROP to get on the waiting list. We'll tell you the final cost as soon as we know ourselves, but it will probably be on the order of $5.00 or so.